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It is not easy to decide how to transform your instruction when you are given free rein on how that transformation is to take shape. If I were told, I must improve my instruction by making sure that I have a lesson plan completed for every hour of instruction and it needs to follow Madeline Hunter’s template, it would be easy to accommodate and no weighty decision would really need to be made on my part; however, the decision has been left to me and I have to decide on an a transformative approach based upon my own principles. I am initially drawn to the heritage model of teaching. I am somewhat of an “old, Western dinosaur” when it comes to my own values. I do believe that society’s moral compass is off because it is too busy trying to please everybody and in doing so has abandoned Truths, which require both a right and a wrong, for accommodation—I’m right, your right. I believe there are certain universal Truths that can be found in nearly all wisdom literature. This belief urges me to want to adopt an instructional model that would guide students into reading and evaluating these Truths. The problem with adopting such a position is that it is a dogmatic position and could anger some students and parents. While, I believe there are Truths it is not my place to instruct students in these views. I will not entirely abandon this principle. I believe that if students become avid readers they will come across much of these Truths on their own. Therefore the number one principle I would use to guide my instruction would be to create avid readers.
I also believe that students need to be prepared for the 21st Century work force, which means that they will need to be flexible, global, team thinkers. Therefore, the second guiding principle of my instruction will be to help create thinkers open to new ideas and cultures.
In order to create readers and thinkers a couple of instructional models will need to be used. I believe that Rosenblatt’s reader-response model is an effective starting point for creating readers; however, I believe that students will need to read with a purpose if they are going to become thinkers. Therefore, I will also utilize a student-centered approach. I am a fan of Vygotskey and believe that students can help each other become better learners and thinkers. I will utilize literature circles, collaborative learning, jigsaws, and other forms of group work as the basis for my instruction. I would prefer to pose cultural and social problems and let the students read and think together to come up with solutions.
I think that a study on utopias and dystopias is the perfect vehicle for answer the questions of cultural and social problems. I think that giving the students a chance to create their own society, at least in the classroom, and allowing them to compare their society to other societies, both historical and fictional should create a high level of engagement for the students. At the beginning of the course the students would be asked to write a paper on what they like or dislike about the society we live in and how can we make it even better. Student will use the paper as a basis for discussion and help create a working model for an in-class society. The students will be broken into literature circles to read books on different utopias and dystopias and asked to evaluate the societies, defining what worked, what didn’t. The groups would also be asked to create model the society in-class, where each group would create a lesson and a means to demonstrate how the society in their books worked and let the class live in that society for a week. Students would take on different roles during the week, they may be the governing body, they may be workers, students, etc… they would reflect on their experiences in that position, and if they are not happy with their lot in society, they will be asked to problem solve on how to fix it. This may mean writing letters, creating new laws, hiring someone to quell the uprisings, etc…
At the end of each week, the students will discuss and evaluate their experiences and compare it to their created society and ask if there is anything they would like to change in the class society that was created at the beginning of the program. The final project would be a class website where they would display their working model and the name of their society.
I believe that such a student-centered approach to the literature would engage the students on a high level. As in Rosenblatt’s model, the students would be able to read and share their transaction with the text and they would also have a common consensus to the text as they apply what they learned to creating or recreating their societies. The writing involved in it, will be both reflective and audience orientated, as they will be writing to government bodies or other entities that they identify in their reading. The literature circles also allow for different reading levels and abilities, while the group work allows students to situate themselves in roles that address their diverse abilities.
I also believe that since the students are going to assume different roles, it will require independent thought and flexibility. Students will not only have to think about how society works, but they will have to do so from different viewpoints. Problem solving from different viewpoints creates flexibility by necessity. Since the students will be asked on a weekly basis about changing their society, it will hopefully foster a sense of power and voice in the classroom and lead to students taking active roles in their learning. If the students are going to be given this power, then the real challenge will be with the teacher. What happens when students draw up new classroom rules such as, automatic A’s for everybody or some such law that jeopardizes school rules? Obviously grades and school rules need to be followed, it would be best to be prepared for a meta-discussion about how the teacher and the class must work within the confines of school and state rules.
Mr. Pippenger 