m.steinfeld's blog

I really enjoyed doing the activity with everyone during our storytelling presentation. When we created the activity we knew it would be interesting but I was excited to see what everyone came up with (in such little time). All the presentations were so different in medium, style, content and presentation. They all showed something different about the individuals in the group and what was important to each of them. It got me thinking back to Gee and his ideas of discourse. While all the presentations were different they all seemed to fit the standard discourse we have in academia, rather than a discourse that would have been found in a place like Ghana.  What I mean is we have all been told stories throughout our lives, we have acquired (to use Gee’s word) a certain way to tell stories. They are through pictures or narrative and they all come from the narrator. We saw that in Ghana many stories involve movement from everyone or call and response, and those stories were not presented in our classroom. If they were it would have been a learned practice and the class would have been more aware of the choices they were making to tell their story in that way. I am now realizing even more how much our own discourses determine not only how we interact but also how we tell stories about ourselves (to bring in Rob’s class and Narrativity to tell about who we are). Our discourse determines how those stories look and the way they are told. Is it so crazy to ask us to step outside of our own discourse to tell our story? Perhaps it is.

I really enjoyed doing the activity with everyone during our storytelling presentation. When we created the activity we knew it would be interesting but I was excited to see what everyone came up with (in such little time). All the presentations were so different in medium, style, content and presentation. They all showed something different about the individuals in the group and what was important to each of them. It got me thinking back to Gee and his ideas of discourse. While all the presentations were different they all seemed to fit the standard discourse we have in academia, rather than a discourse that would have been found in a place like Ghana.  What I mean is we have all been told stories throughout our lives, we have acquired (to use Gee’s word) a certain way to tell stories. They are through pictures or narrative and they all come from the narrator. We saw that in Ghana many stories involve movement from everyone or call and response, and those stories were not presented in our classroom. If they were it would have been a learned practice and the class would have been more aware of the choices they were making to tell their story in that way. I am now realizing even more how much our own discourses determine not only how we interact but also how we tell stories about ourselves (to bring in Rob’s class and Narrativity to tell about who we are). Our discourse determines how those stories look and the way they are told. Is it so crazy to ask us to step outside of our own discourse to tell our story? Perhaps it is.

This past week I have spent a significant amount of time asking others and myself, how do you teach reading? I realized that in my placement in first grade I am constantly asked to help the students learn to read. But what does that really mean? How am I supposed to help them? My main question was, when do I give the student the word and when do I let them work through it? I got answers from Alice, Amy (our guest speaker) and my field placement teacher.  I got similar but slightly different answers from each. However what I took from what everyone said and my own experience is that there is no right way to teach reading; it is all dependent on the child’s needs and personality and what the goals of the reading are. Are the student learning to read or reading to learn? Do I want them to learn how to sound out words or do I want them to learn how to get a story out of a book? Each case I would have to handle differently, which is true about each of the kids reading. Some will get frustrated quickly and so I’ll have to be quicker to give them the word because I don’t want them focused on their frustration I want them focused on the words, but if they can handle struggling a little longer than I can wait to give it to them (suggested by my field placement teacher). I am excited to get back into my field placement and try my new found teaching techniques with the students. I hope to find that I can learn the needs of each student and adjust my teaching accordingly.

When I ate lunch with the High School students at the Imagine Africa exhibit I asked them what they liked about it and I got rather short answers, nothing too detailed or informative. However when I went into the focus group on what we liked about the museum I saw the students light up. They were asked which exhibit they liked better, what other themes they wanted to see and suggestions of what else to put in the exhibit. While the Bryn Mawr students answered from a place of intense academic study and concern (due to our many hours in class discussing these issues, stereotypes and prejudices that can easily be spread to a less knowledgeable group, needless to say we had a lot to contribute) the High School students were not shy either. In fact they were the ones who had to be cut off eventually because the focus group was taking too long. I was wondering why did these students have so much to say now when they did not before? Why were they so eager to offer suggestions, most of which were incredibly similar to suggestions already made? I wondered how often someone they view as in charge asks them their opinion. I guessed not very often due to the testing nature of public education these days. It was nice to see these students articulate themselves and express what they felt. What was also interesting was their unwillingness to just shout things out. The women writing wanted them to yell out their thoughts but they all insisted on raising their hands and wouldn’t speak until called on.