After NCTE Presentation

The Session (we had 30 attendees)

Doug: Provided the framing for the session and presented two ideas. Began from an inductive perspective.

Activity: Read a poem ("The Beating") aloud and asked the audience to turn to a neighbor and discuss what the text is about. After a few minutes I raised questions about how they knew how to interpret and discuss the text. I suggested answers: that we have experience reading and discussing poems, even with people we don't know; that we recognize the purposes (to participate in the session), and for desired outcomes (not to look stupid and to appear interested, or respectful). These parts represent contextual layers that readers face when approaching a reading event. (Purpose of activity was to inductively explore how we go about reading, interpreting and responding to texts. And the activity leads to questions about how we know.)

Discussion about the Activity: How do we know how to engage in "reading, interpreting and responding" to a text, a poem?
How did teachers know how to read and interpret the text? (they have past experiences and through this activity--if we had more time, they would be able to discuss and make visible what is normal to them in terms of reading, interpreting and responding to a text, a poem. Since we are English teachers, there may be expectations in how to approach. I grew up intellectually on New Criticism. There were particular ways of reading, interpreting and responding to texts. But how do students learn expected approaches? How do we make visible to them the expectations and show them the strategies, which may lead to practices, that will guide them to become more skilled in the context of our classrooms?

Framework for How We View Classrooms
Brief overview of framework: How we view classrooms. Classrooms as cultures where people interact over time through discourse and actions to develop common knowledge, which leads to local, disciplinary knowledge; and there are consequences for what students have access to overtime.

Key terms: events: bounded by time and space and guided by purposes and desired outcomes; practices are constructed by members of the class and include language (discourse), actions, and values and theories--they are not simply repeated actions. Perspective: from whose perspective are curricula developed, how do we approach texts as readers, what lenses do we use.

Distinction among strategies, practices and skills.

Perspective
How do we view our classrooms? How do we theorize and practice reading, interpreting and responding to texts with students? How can we provide opportunities for them to learn how to read the contextual layers of reading events?
Distinction between deficit model and constructionist model. And so what? We should try to consciously construct with students the discourse, practices and events of the class. Make visible to students the discourse and practices that count in your class--and observe with students these actions over time. And develop ways of observing and assessing the "ugly" parts of the process(es) and the consequences for that development.

Examples: Sheridan's read and rate. What if...?

Brigitte Knudson's Presentation.
Keys: she encourages students and shows them how to approach contentious (con)texts. Draws on their background knowledge, particularly of argument. Using the practice of skeptical spectacles

Colleen Tucker's Presentation.
She uses improv to engage students. So by engaging the students through activities that they view as fun, she shows them how to link the improv and fun with texts. For example, in teaching "Great Expectations," she shows them how the action in the book can come alive. They begin to enact scenes, the action jumps into the classroom and students can see, hear, feel what is happening. Pip comes alive.

Discussion
Both Brigitte and Colleen create practices with their students and build on these over time.