Buehl, D. (n.d.).
Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines (p. 163-216)
The question: How
can teachers mentor students as disciplinary reader, writers and thinkers?
In this part of the book
it talks about how we can be a better mentor to our student regarding reading
and writing. It gives a great example involving a sports star and a classical musician.
The sport star was Albert Pujols, and the musician was Joshua Bell. I’m a coach
of baseball team, so of course I knew immediately who Albert was and what he
did for a living. On the other hand I had no idea who Mr. Bell was. It turns
out they are both the leaders in their field both in terms of popularity and accomplishments.
So why am I telling you all of this? Well it has to do with an insider’s view of
them. Because if you are instead in either baseball or music you might have
already thought of deeper knowledge about them and the industry they belong to.
This is a nice example of how two different people with two different interests
would probably have to different insider view points and have two different types
of selective hearing/understanding, or questioning about them. The two super
stars basically act as mentors to the people who look up to them. They give us
something to think about and something to strive for in the field we are fascinated
about or are involved with. They make us want to learn new information about
them and their trade. Now how can we do the same thing with our students in
terms of them becoming voracious for self-knowledge in the subject areas we
teach? Well, we can start with making disciplinary reading less like doing, work
and more self-engaging. Thus far in this book we have learned about a variety of
ways to approach this. In this chapter it says that the critical facet of
mentoring readers in reading of complex texts is to nurture the realization
that reading is inquiry, and thus read to find out rather than reading to get
it done. The hard part is fostering this type of culture in our classrooms. How
we question our students also is vital to their learning experience. Here are a
few examples of good questions that are open-ended:
·
What does it mean to be fit?
·
Are there rules for art?
·
What is the impact of altering a recipe?
·
What makes a mathematical argument valid?
·
What makes business practices ethical?
These are good questions because they should incite
complex answers which in turn can lead to more insight in the subject area. Modeling
self-questioning should also be a high priority when teaching our students. This
is the key for mentoring disciplinary readers no matter what subject we teach.
We need to teach our students that it’s also acceptable to question the author.
These where some of the more thought provoking takeaways I wanted to share with
you in this post. Till next time, thanks.
My post is a little off topic, but I'd like to say it anyway. It has to do with you talking about stars as mentors. This is so true. It's so upsetting as a parent. We (parents and society) have no control over what stars do. Yet, the world is still exposed to them. Children hear about them, watch them and admire them. They are popular so they want to be like them. Then all of a sudden, we have a new style in the latest generation of children. Things change so much and these people have such an influence that I wish we had some way of filtering. It just can't happen, the stars are free and so are the children (even though I wish I could shelter mine lol).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this makes me think of the teacher that I want to be. Using respect and manors is very important within the classroom and everywhere else in life, I plan to show this to my students to my best abilities. I'll stop there because there are so many things that I'd like to expose the young generation to. They have enough bad examples, I'd like to try to be a good one. Although I'm not perfect of course and certainly not all "good".
Thanks for the thoughts.
You're right. We must engender a passion for inquiry. Without some sense of wonder about the world around us we become entertainment driven drones. We occupy space, revel in the consumer economy and continually try to staunch the emotional and financial bleeding that results from the American addiction to novelty. The "in-the-public-eye" celebs have become role models to the young. We can't shelter them as bjreid63 notes, because the popular media is too intrusive and beyond our ability to filter. I agree that all a teacher can do is be a better example. The term we've learned is "modeling." I should say modeling for effect.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of mentors. How do we find a great mentor for students? That goes back to the basic classroom management advice; know your students and their families. Once you do that, perhaps there is someone in the community, city, or even the school who can visit the class and inspire students.
ReplyDeleteBut short of that, your ideas in the blog, getting students to question things is a great way, especially for well accepted social norms. Nothing like motivating students when they can tell most people that they are wrong!
That reminds me of school project where students went out into the public to inform people of a very hazardous chemical that everyone has in their house hold. And the students ask if that chemical should be banned. The chemical was di-hydrogen-monooxide. Nothing more fun that showing people how silly they can be!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax
Just like you said in the in class session! It is important to ask open ended questions because it really gets the students thinking and we don't give them the answers right off the bat. We can see what the students are learning and if they are maintaining any of the information that we are teaching our students.
ReplyDeleteI think it is good to make students questions things. Just because an author is highly recognized doesn't mean that everything he or she says are right. It is good that teachers ask questions that makes students really think about something. It is also important that students learn how to write their own questions, so they can start forming their own views and opinions.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious if all your chapters started with a question and then that question was answered within the chapter? This seems to be an interesting book and I like that the question may set up what the chapter is about to give some guidance.
ReplyDeleteFrank, I really liked your example regarding the baseball player and the musician. It set up something that helped clarify how our own internal interests and background can help (or hurt) our understanding of the mentoring we receive. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI liked your idea of making reading less disciplinary and more self-engaging. If we can get our students to be self motivated about the readings, you will more then likely get better classroom discussions about the readings.
ReplyDelete