A Teacher’s Opinion says a Thousand Words
We all had that one type of project that just we did not like to do in high school. Whether it is a group project, a presentation, an essay, etc. We probably thought that it did not really help us learn and was just an invention from the teacher to make us suffer. On the flip side there was probably always a specific type of project that you just loved to do and you always felt like you learned best when doing this style of learning. For me it is/was always doing hands-on work, I love to get my hands dirty and actually seeing the result. The worst thing for me is sitting through lectures, in college I always did better in my labs than my lecture classes for this reason. I always wondered if my teachers thought that I wasn’t learning or becoming literate in their subject because I wasn’t performing well enough on their tests. Then, every week I would go to lab and I would be able to do the hands-on work that the lab provides and write the lab reports that followed and get really good grades, so I would think well I am learning the material but I’m just not learning it in a traditional lecture classroom. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences explains why I could learn the material in the lab but not the lecture.
I have a bodily/kinesthetic intelligence meaning I learn best by doing hands-on work. Now according to Gardner I can have multiple intelligences but that one seems to work best for me (Moon, p.42). I’m not really sure that my professors thought I studied well or that I cared about their class. I was quiet and I didn’t really ask questions. My point to this whole trip down memory lane is that my professors had some kind of impression of me because of things I did in class, but they never really go to know me and see what I could do.
I know college is a little different and that professors really don’t have the time to get to know all their students but it ties into what Finders (1997) found in Just Girls with Tiffany, she was seen as a slacker by her teachers because she was always nearly late to class and always had a malt in her hands after lunch. Her teachers had perceived ideas and notions about her, but in reality she read at least an hour every day and had checked out over 40 books from the library that year alone. She was an avid reader, but she didn’t like her teacher and she was not engaged in class (p.76). Students at home are different than students at school, and they learn differently in different environments.
Research has shown that school classrooms have an effect on how students learn. If a classroom is set up correctly then it will provide a place for students to think creatively and be a positive place for students to grow. One thing that, according to Hannah (2013), can be detrimental to a students learning is the teacher’s attitude towards the student/s (p.1). Lets look at how the teachers approached Tiffany in Finder’s book. Teachers that didn’t even have her in their class knew of her reputation as the “loud red-headed girl,” and another teacher was shocked to hear that Tiffany loved to read. Finders does give the teachers some credit because she thinks that Tiffany had worked hard to get the reputation she did, but I am not so sure (p.76).
In our Adolescent Psychology class we are learning that a good teacher looks at the student as a whole. That means looking at their background and their culture. Things like socioeconomic background and social circles amongst other things influence the students in the classroom just as much if not more than their learning styles like the multiple intelligences I mentioned earlier. For Tiffany, her social life influenced how she behaved in the class but her teachers didn’t take that into account and wrote her off as the “loud red-head.” I was written off as someone who didn’t study enough and didn’t care when in reality it was that I just didn’t learn well through lecture. Yero says in her article that, “Once a student has been “ranked,” once a student has been labeled “good” or “bad” in the mind of the teacher, the teacher’s beliefs and expectations for that student become a self-fulfilling prophecy (2016).”
Teachers have a profound effect on how/if students succeed and if they write a student off then it is my firm belief that the student will not learn in that class thus hindering that student’s literacy and the literacy of others because like in Tiffany’s case once she was written off as a trouble-maker she started doing things in class to get the attention from her peers and live up to the expectations of the title trouble-maker that her teachers bestowed upon her.
In conclusion, school affects student’s literacy but so does their background and culture. What I believe affects the student’s literacy the most is how a teacher approaches their students and how they take into account all the different influences that a student may have in their life.
References:
Finders, M. J. (1997). Just girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hannah, Ryan, “The Effect of Classroom Environment on Student Learning” (2013). Honors Theses. Paper 2375.
Moon, B., & Mayes, A. S. (1994). Teaching and learning in the secondary school. London: Routledge.
Yero, J. (2016). School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-How Teacher Thinking Shapes Education. Retrieved July 09, 2016, from http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/Transforming Education/Articles/How Teacher Thinking Shapes Education/
