Transitioning from Knowledge to Synthesis - A Reflection for EDUC-6712

As a teacher, one of my main priorities is to instruct and guide my students to become more literate. This is especially true as an English/Language Arts teacher. When I first began teaching over twelve years ago, I really felt that meant exposing my students to different types of literature, by different writers from varying backgrounds. That is true; however, I have come to realize that literacy goes far beyond knowledge of the world’s literature. My students must also be able to locate, gather, and compile information from places other than just the literature we read in the classroom. My students need the skills to evaluate and apply the information they find. My students need to be able to communicate to the rest of the world the knowledge they garner from this research. Only then will I have helped my students to become truly literate (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007).

With this realization, I now am evaluating the lessons I teach, studying ways to have my students do some form of research as they proceed. I am modifying some of my plans for teaching units so that I begin the lessons by having my students develop their own questions (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007). I will still be taking my students in the same direction and through some of the same steps, but rather than asking them the questions myself, I know that need to change my teaching practices so that I am instead guiding them to ask the questions. I then will be making assignments in which my students develop their new literacies by leading them to research information to answer their own questions. I will further their skills in these new literacies as I assign my students to produce writings of various forms to communicate to others their findings (Eagleton & Dobler, 2007).

These plans alone are professional development goals I have for myself, but I feel the need to set a couple more goals, more personal goals. As I move forward in teaching my students to become more literate, I first want to find better ways to prepare myself. While I do feel technically literate, I tend to be hesitant to incorporate things into my classroom because of the limitations of the technology in my district, or because of the possibility of students’ lack of technology at home. I have set a goal to go forward with my plans and find alternate strategies and methods to carry out my assignments. Along with this goal, I am also setting a professional development goal to actually do the research to prepare to assign my students to research. I have found in the past when I have ventured out to assign my students to research, there have been blocked sites, poor sites, and confusion with my students on just how to research. My goal is to try to do the research the way my students would go about it, from a classroom computer. This will help me to find the pitfalls my students would otherwise find.

While I will feel the pressures of teaching the English level our state assesses students with the high-stakes test, I have come to realize I can’t let the state test keep me from teaching what my students need to know that won’t just be asked in an exit test. I have to take them to that next level of learning. I need to direct my students to use various resources and expand their literacy beyond the classroom and the textbook. This course has opened my eyes to the fact that I am not completely teaching my students until I take their literacy to these next levels, the digital world.


Reference:
Eagleton, M. B., & Dobler, E. (2007). Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet inquiry.New York: The Guilford Press.