Quotations of the Week for October 12-16
Welcome to the second edition of Quotations of the Week.
During our morning meeting one day, we made a pictograph responding to the question “How many people live in your house?” My row on the graph was the smallest with 2, and my para had 3 on her row (and so did the two kiddos without any siblings). Enter K.: I looped with him this year. His mom was pregnant last year, so he ceased being an only child in May. Babies have been on his mind for about the last 12 months.
Me: Okay, whose house has the fewest people?
Student: Yours!
Student 2: How come Mrs. Migler has only two people and Miss Lauren has three?
K: ‘Cause Miss Lauren has her daughter.
Me: Yup. Miss Lauren has a husband and a daughter. My house only has me and Mr. Jake.
K: You should get a kid. Like, you know, you can buy one.
Student: You mean adopt? Like J. was adopted from [another country].
K: Yeah, or that.
Yesterday, we had a community meeting with all the elementary students (13 students, 3 teachers, and 2 paras). Pragmatic language is a huge goal for all the students, and so we talked about compliments and being positive. Then we took turns around the circle and gave a compliment to the person sitting to our right. Most of the compliments were pretty generic–I like your hair; You have cool shoes; I like your smile. Enter J.: She’s been in the country for 10 months, but her ASL skills are outstanding because she had a strong first language when she arrived. But, she still has gaps in her background knowledge. When she doesn’t know a sign, she dances around what she’s trying to say until we figure it out. It’s fun 
J turns to the pre-school teacher: [signing] I like your…face paint [makes HUGE brush-strokes with her hands up and down her face for this sign]
It’s pretty clear that no one in J.’s life wears make-up (except for the pre-school teacher), because she had never seen the sign for it. And I know that one would have been funnier if you had a video of it. Maybe I’ll record myself signing it at post it so you can get the full effect of how ridiculously J described the teacher’s make-up, which, for the record, does not resemble face paint.
My Problem with “Scientific Researched-Based” Curriculum
I love scientific research. It has given us such things as penicillin, the microchip, and polyester. I loved taking chemistry in high school, and I found physics to be fascinating.
I also think that research in the field of education is important. I’m particularly intrigued by brain-based research and how it can inform instructional practices.
I do, however, have a problem with (much of) the “scientific research-based” curriculum trend.
In chemistry (and I hope my former-Chem-major pal Steve backs me up on this), every element has specific, predictable properties, and they behave in predictable ways. If you put hydrogen near an open flame, it goes BOOM. If you put sodium in water, it bursts into flames. If you put Cesium in water… well, you don’t want to put Cesium in water.
Chemistry is comprised of a lot of equations. I remember hours of homework involving balancing chemical equations. You can break it down into conditional terms—if X, then Y. Or, if X in condition Y, then Z.
In my experience, reading curriculums that tout themselves as “scientific research-based” treat teaching like Chemistry. Each segment of instruction is timed, and the teacher follows a specific script. If the teacher follows the manual exactly, the students will learn. OpenCourt Reading is one example with which reading teachers are quite familiar, although most pre-packaged curriculums are pretty similar (though not as strict as OC).
“If X, then Y” does not work. You can’t put children into a formula. But we do, and when it doesn’t yield the expected results, it’s because the teacher was not following the curriculum the way they were supposed to.
The problem is that students are not predictable elements, and each classroom is a unique heterogeneous grouping. No, wait, that’s not a problem—that’s nature. The problem is that curriculums treat kids like pieces of an equation. Reading curriculums in particular are written for one level, with minor variations for kids below or above level. Instruction needs to be tailored to individual needs. Kids come to school with emotional baggage, gaps in background knowledge, and, you know, personalities; as teachers, we must account for these variances. To expect a curriculum to reach all students with the same delivery is absurd. To expect a teacher to follow a pre-scripted curriculum “with fidelity,” rather than be creative and intuitive in using strategies that work for small groups or individual students, is an insult to the profession.
P.S. Most of the suggestions for adapting a lesson or unit for students with hearing loss are asinine. ”Allow the student to look at photographs and pictures of the content.” Good suggestion, but if that’s all you’re doing to adapt it, you may as well spit on the Sahara Desert.
Holidays at the Deaf school–Part 1
Today is Columbus Day, as it is generally recognized here in the States. In discussing this “holiday” with my para, she said, “I don’t even know why we celebrate it.” I told her that in South Dakota, the state in which I attended college, public schools do not recognize Columbus Day, but rather celebrate a replacement holiday honoring the Native Americans.
What is it about Columbus Day? Some “Liberals” that I’ve met call it a euro-centric holiday that overlooks the atrocities experienced by the Natives after European contact. Some “Conservatives” that I’ve encountered accuse us of being “revisionist” when we try to look at history through a different lens or (*gasp*) acknowledge that our Eurocentric view of history is flawed at best, and oppressive at worst.
Looking back on my schooling, I remember celebrating Columbus Day. Then I remember getting into high school and college and learning more about it and wondering, “Why in the heck did they have us honor this guy? He was a creep!” As a teacher, it is my job to be reflective about why I teach what I teach. Do I continue a potentially flawed tradition? Or do I break ranks?
This issue has become stickier to me now that I’m at the deaf school. Kids with hearing loss miss out on A LOT of incidental knowledge. It’s a safe assumption that if it hasn’t been taught directly, they don’t know it. This includes knowledge of holidays, popular culture, and basic traditions. So it falls to me to fill in the gaps. In other words, I may be their only resource regarding Columbus Day. This begs the question:
- Do I teach about Columbus Day, knowing that I’m giving an incomplete picture, but acknowledging that my students need some kind of background knowledge of who he was, or
- Do I teach the whole story, knowing some of kids cannot grasp the concepts of genocide, racism, and oppression?
Neither feels right.
Quotations of the Week
Kids say the darndest things. Deaf kids seem funnier to me, probably because they often misunderstand conventions of English or overgeneralize idioms and other figures of speech. The breakdowns also occur on the receiving end of a message (that would be me, the teacher) because I misunderstand imprecise speech, confuse a sign-word, or simply because I can’t read minds and the context of a statement is buried somewhere in Johnny’s noggin.
My Friday feature will be the quotations of the week. Both of this week’s stars are hard-of-hearing boys who rely primarily on spoken English, but use sign language to support the message.
Student: All body think I’m hot.
Speech teacher: We say ‘everybody,’ not ‘all body.’
Student: Well, everybody think I’m hot. And D. and L., too. All body think they are hot too.
The next student is a champion of the hearing aid and gets a lot of incidental knowledge from watching and listening to TV. I can tell when he’s learned something auditorily or by speechreading because he doesn’t sign it, and because he’ll substitute consonants that are voiced/unvoiced (/p/ for /b/ or /f/ for /v/).
Student: Mrs. Migler, you need to come outside for recess.
Me: Well, I have to get some papers ready for Social Studies.
Student: But you need to come outside! You need fightin’ C.
Me: I need what?
Student: Fightin’ C.
Me: I need to see a fight?
Student: NO. Fightin’ C. Like, you know, C [makes C handshape]. From the sun. It’s healthy for your body.
Me: Vitamin D?
Student: (emphasizing the /v/) Vitin D?
Me: Yes.
Student: Yeah, that. That’s why you need to come to recess.
Happy Caterpillar Day
Today is the 40th Anniversary of the publishing of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We watched a YouTube video of ASL comedian Keith Wann’s interpretation of this story (http://ow.ly/tn0v). We added the year 1969 to the timeline that surrounds our classroom. We will be going to the library for another read-aloud and an art project. We talked about healthy vs. unhealthy foods. Our activities today at school have reawakened my consciousness to a very important aspect of instruction for students with hearing loss: redundancy.
For most people, redundant carries the connotation of boring, repetitive, and, well, boring. For my students, however, it is a critical piece of the learning process. All these activities for this book were for fourth- and fifth-graders, and it was still important. My students miss out on a lot of incidental information because they cannot overhear conversations around them. Some of them cannot even communicate effectively with their parents. Redundancy in instruction is a mechanism for overcoming the lack of schema, or background knowledge, and pervades the deaf classroom.
The book itself is redundant (how many times do we hear that the caterpillar was “still hungry”?), which provides me an opportunity to sign the same concept in different ways (STILL HUNGRY; NOT-YET SATISFIED; FULL? NOT-YET!). If you notice, the redundancy of our activities does not mean reading the book over and over and over. I need to plan activities that are repetitive in content, but not in delivery. Hence, the ASL story, the English print, art projects, timeline, and health conversation all for one children’s book.
So, on this Caterpillar Day, think about your content delivery. Do you hit the high points enough times for your students to actually “get it”?
