Hi everyone! I don't know that I have a specific question at this point...I need to revisit the data in light of all of your *wonderful* comments tonight. Thanks so much for all of your insight and please feel free to post any additional thoughts, questions, etc. that you may have (:
I really enjoyed the information that you shared with us last night. What a great topic to introduce/re-introduce to us!
After your presentation last night, I continued to think about the idea of unpacking Whiteness and/or privilege. Although I am making a huge assumption here, it seems as though there was a discomfort with the situation in many of the reflections. My assumption is that some of that discomfort comes from the way your students have positioned themselves in relation to the students that they worked with. All students seem to position themselves in relation to the students that they were going to be working with before they even met them. I think that it would be interesting to discuss Whiteness and/or privilege with your students. Although this would be interesting, do you think that it would change or impact the interactions and experiences that these students had?
This also ties into another theme that I found within the data - the expected vs. reality. How and why did your students construct their expectations to be so different from the reality? What kind of expectations do we have of different students prior to meeting them? Does this change with experience?
I know some of these questions do not directly tie into your ultimate goal for your project, but thought they were worth posting nonetheless ;)
Hi, all. I've continued to think about Beth's work, too. I was thinking about the use of service learning to help pre-service teachers make connections between their university coursework and the "reality" of secondary teaching. I had a phone conference on Friday for the dissertation defense of a student at Western Michigan University, and the topic came up of students going into teaching with romanticized views of the classroom and then being upset when reality doesn't live up to the ideal. Or a parallel problem might be when new teachers feel as if they must make a choice between their "university knowledge" and the "practical knowledge" of student teaching, when we would like to help them connect the two. Perhaps one method of connection might be service learning experiences prior to student teaching, in addition to more traditional field experiences. In this way, students could engage with teenagers in their real-life settings/contexts in deeper ways than "observing" or teaching a lesson or two, and maybe they would feel more prepared to enter the classroom as full time teachers after graduation. So service learning as a type of alternative field experience.
Beth gave an excellent presentation and provided additional information in the handouts.
Service-learning pedagogy is just what preservice teachers need as a part of their training: it bridges the gap from being a student to becoming a full-fledged teacher. In developing service-learning projects for the K-12 pupils, preservice teachers will gain experience and knowledge that will help to develop their self-esteem as teachers.
Everyone benefits through the service-learning curriculum. The students benefit because they will be able to relate what they learn in the classroom to practical application in the community projects; the preservice teachers can help them make that connection to relate what they learned in the classroom. The classroom teachers benefit from the initiative and resourcefulness of the preservice teachers who helped to realize the service-learning projects. The community benefits from everyone working together for the greater good. Thank you Sudha
Beth, thank you for a great presentation - I wish I could have stayed for more of the discussion!
I was thinking about something related to Shay's comment because I'm seeing it in my own student teachers' reflections. I agree with Shay that unpacking White privilege is important, but I think that speaks to a wider concern of the shallow quality of the reflections (both those of your students and my own). I hate to use that word because of the negative connotation associated with it, and I truly don't mean it in a negative way. But later that night, when I was responding to some journals, I found myself asking some of my STs over and over to elaborate, to go beyond the obvious recounting of events to a deeper analysis of the events. I recall that while we were reading and beginning to talk about your students' reflections, Shay also mentioned that they seemed very self-involved - that there was not much attempt to go beyond themselves to see things from another point of view.
Since you didn't ask a particular question, I'm not sure how helpful this is :-) I suppose I'm thinking that it might be helpful for you to work with the students before they go into the school not just on unpacking privilege, but on moving them outside their own self-involvement in general?? I hate the way I'm phrasing this because it sounds like I'm thinking horrible things about your students (I'm not!!!).
Beth, like everyone else, I really enjoyed your presentation last week. I think it gave us all a chance to really think about what we (as teachers) mean when we use the term service learning and what it might mean to/for our students. In the spirit of “what is service learning,” I want to share with all of you brief overview of a conversation I had today.
This morning I was talking to a colleague about the new direction of English 108 – a service learning oriented approach. During this discussion we were throwing around ideas about what this might mean for the students and the program etc., but we also talked about how we might define and conceptualize a course centered on service learning. The way this colleague of mine initially talked about service learning was, as is often the case, in terms of volunteerism (helping at a nursing home etc.). Of course, given our conversation last week, I began to talk about different ways of thinking about and defining service learning. Though I am by no means and expert on the subject, some of the things I mentioned (in reference to our last class) got us throwing around different ideas about how it is more than just volunteerism. Thanks, Beth!
Other than the way we (as teachers) think about service learning, I wonder about how our students perceive it, and how they might come to a fuller understanding of SL. If we simply posed the question to students - what is service learning? - I wonder what kind of responses we would get.
One thing tied to SL that we talked about last week is reflection through journaling. In terms of journaling – as Courtney and Beth shared about their students – students often spend more time recounting than analyzing how SL (or any experience) impacts them and others in a given situation. What is a way we can present or approach SL that causes our students to shy away from the recount and move towards real analysis and understanding? I truly believe SL can be a great thing, but how do we get our students to “buy in” in a meaningful way?
I like how Janet and Courtney wrote that in terms of teacher preparation, we could have students do something like “engage with teenagers in their real-life settings/contexts in deeper ways than ‘observing’ or teaching a lesson or two” (Courtney). Something like this might help them not only learn about themselves, but could also give them some insight into the students and what they have to offer (not just what the college student can bring to them).
When I think of SL learning as a teacher and as a student, I always come back to the word community. In a community, everyone works together, learns from each other and with each other, etc. This may sound all “unicorns and rainbows,” but I do think that this is an important component of SL.
Heather, thanks for thinking so highly of me, but I think you attributed something Janet said to me :-)
Also, your post makes me think, what would you have to do on the "receiving end" of a service-learning experience to truly make it a "community" experience? I see a glimmer of hope in the fact that the teachers at the school Beth partnered with wanted to make sure that there would be a commitment there, but I wonder what the middle school students think when the college students come in. Wouldn't you want to do something that would also engage those middle school students in a different way of thinking about the relationship between them and the college students? It seems like the partnership and community atmosphere would have to begin with the middle school teachers and college teachers working together on a pre-SL curriculum to change the way both groups think.
Thank you for your presentation. It has helped me in regards to the youth leadership program I volunteer with and with my own research project. With HOBY, service is key a component and we try to instill a desire to work with the community. A struggle we face is presenting service as a reciprocal relationship and not as forced volunteerism. The handout you provided has inspired me to focus on better matching the curriculum to our Leadership for Service projects and emphasizing reflection. "[Reflection] can also be used to challenge students to connect their sense of self with that of others, ultimately reducing the likelihood of a superior/inferior service relationship" (Rhoads, 1997). I am not sure how we can create a service learning project that starts with collaboration between the students and the community given that the students come to Indianapolis from all over the state for just 4 days, but I think we can work on the reflection component and make the experience more meaningful.
Our class discussion mirrors the challenges I also see with our pre-service teachers. Most do not write insightful reflections. What can I do develop reflective practitioners? How can I approach the EDCI 285 curriculum so pre-service teachers are making connections between theory and practice. I think the service learning reflection activities "What? So What? Now What?" that you provided has application in the multiculturalism and education classroom. The content of the course challenges personal beliefs of many students so expecting a large percentage to reach the "Now What?" stage and take action may be a lofty goal for 15 class sessions and 7 classroom observations. There is definite potential for students to move beyond the "What" and begin to see the impact multicultural concepts have on themselves and the classroom.
Courtney, Thanks for pointing that out! I apologize to you and Janet. :)
Also, I like what you posted about creating a SL curriculum with the college and school teachers. I wonder what's already out there. I think that could definitely be one way to begin creating a community centered SL project. You could also include student input to make it even more meaningful and motivating for the students - just a thought!
Thank you so much for all of your comments. They are very helpful as I'm starting to work on putting this all together and especially helpful as I consider what this project can/will look like for my dissertation research. A couple of thoughts in response to you:
Janet, yes, I completely agree with you that this is a great bridge for pre-service teachers to connect their theory to practice. I agree too that this helps them to better understand students in a different and more personal way rather than from the teacher-like in-front-of-the-classroom approach. I think several of them learned more about individuals students and their needs rather than considering planning instruction for an entire class (which is often created without even knowing the students one works with...). Maybe this is why they were so critical of the teachers' assignments because they got to see them from the students' perspectives??
Shay, yes, great point about them unpacking their Whiteness. This is absolutely necessary when I do the project in the future. Good idea!
Sudha, I agree with you too that, if done well, service-learning can definitely benefit everyone involved, which makes me thing of Courtney's comment about the role that "those being served" play in this relationship. One thing we talked about in class that I would like to continue to figure out how to carry out is to have my students in the future work with the students to create some kind of literacy program (Shay mentioned a program they have where certain students are pulled out based on teacher recommendation) where the same college students could work with the same group of junior high students to create something together. I think the college students and I would have to do some initial planning but then we could ask the students for their input...maybe we could even help the students become the "experts" in literacy, kind of like the program Ryan mentioned where students help other students?? So many good ideas!
Heather, I love that you might be considered SL with 108 and would be happy to help with anything as you go through this process! I also think it's a great idea to ask students to conceptualize "service-learning." I agree that we should build that definition together as opposed to me being the authority on SL.
Courtney, Heather, and Marianne, you and others have mentioned reflections, again, yes, another area that needs developed. Ryan, I know you also mentioned this in class, and I think it might be a really cool idea to include in the article the theory you mentioned about how people reflect and "tell stories." I think that's invaluable in getting students to more thoughtfully reflect and would like to both share this knowledge with my students in the future and especially in the article I'm working on. Could you post or email the author/title of the work you mentioned in case others are also interested in it?? Thanks!
Beth, I loved your presentation also. I find service learning to be a student parallel to a teacher's research community...if that makes sense. Anyway, I just read an article that I think could be used in your study...if not, it made me think of you :)
"Field-based preservice teacher research: Facilitating reflective professional practice" by Paul T. Parkison (2008)
Hi everyone! I don't know that I have a specific question at this point...I need to revisit the data in light of all of your *wonderful* comments tonight. Thanks so much for all of your insight and please feel free to post any additional thoughts, questions, etc. that you may have (:
ReplyDeleteBeth,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the information that you shared with us last night. What a great topic to introduce/re-introduce to us!
After your presentation last night, I continued to think about the idea of unpacking Whiteness and/or privilege. Although I am making a huge assumption here, it seems as though there was a discomfort with the situation in many of the reflections. My assumption is that some of that discomfort comes from the way your students have positioned themselves in relation to the students that they worked with. All students seem to position themselves in relation to the students that they were going to be working with before they even met them. I think that it would be interesting to discuss Whiteness and/or privilege with your students. Although this would be interesting, do you think that it would change or impact the interactions and experiences that these students had?
This also ties into another theme that I found within the data - the expected vs. reality. How and why did your students construct their expectations to be so different from the reality? What kind of expectations do we have of different students prior to meeting them? Does this change with experience?
I know some of these questions do not directly tie into your ultimate goal for your project, but thought they were worth posting nonetheless ;)
Have a good week!
Hi, all. I've continued to think about Beth's work, too. I was thinking about the use of service learning to help pre-service teachers make connections between their university coursework and the "reality" of secondary teaching. I had a phone conference on Friday for the dissertation defense of a student at Western Michigan University, and the topic came up of students going into teaching with romanticized views of the classroom and then being upset when reality doesn't live up to the ideal. Or a parallel problem might be when new teachers feel as if they must make a choice between their "university knowledge" and the "practical knowledge" of student teaching, when we would like to help them connect the two. Perhaps one method of connection might be service learning experiences prior to student teaching, in addition to more traditional field experiences. In this way, students could engage with teenagers in their real-life settings/contexts in deeper ways than "observing" or teaching a lesson or two, and maybe they would feel more prepared to enter the classroom as full time teachers after graduation. So service learning as a type of alternative field experience.
ReplyDeleteFROM SUDHA:
ReplyDeleteBeth gave an excellent presentation and
provided additional information in the handouts.
Service-learning pedagogy is just what
preservice teachers need as a part of
their training:
it bridges the gap from being a student to
becoming a full-fledged teacher.
In developing service-learning projects for
the K-12 pupils, preservice teachers will gain
experience and knowledge that will help to
develop their self-esteem as teachers.
Everyone benefits through the
service-learning curriculum.
The students benefit because they will
be able to relate what they learn in the
classroom to practical application in the
community projects; the preservice teachers
can help them make that connection to relate
what they learned in the classroom.
The classroom teachers benefit from the initiative
and resourcefulness of the preservice teachers who
helped to realize the service-learning projects.
The community benefits from everyone working together
for the greater good.
Thank you
Sudha
Beth, thank you for a great presentation - I wish I could have stayed for more of the discussion!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about something related to Shay's comment because I'm seeing it in my own student teachers' reflections. I agree with Shay that unpacking White privilege is important, but I think that speaks to a wider concern of the shallow quality of the reflections (both those of your students and my own). I hate to use that word because of the negative connotation associated with it, and I truly don't mean it in a negative way. But later that night, when I was responding to some journals, I found myself asking some of my STs over and over to elaborate, to go beyond the obvious recounting of events to a deeper analysis of the events. I recall that while we were reading and beginning to talk about your students' reflections, Shay also mentioned that they seemed very self-involved - that there was not much attempt to go beyond themselves to see things from another point of view.
Since you didn't ask a particular question, I'm not sure how helpful this is :-) I suppose I'm thinking that it might be helpful for you to work with the students before they go into the school not just on unpacking privilege, but on moving them outside their own self-involvement in general?? I hate the way I'm phrasing this because it sounds like I'm thinking horrible things about your students (I'm not!!!).
Beth, like everyone else, I really enjoyed your presentation last week. I think it gave us all a chance to really think about what we (as teachers) mean when we use the term service learning and what it might mean to/for our students. In the spirit of “what is service learning,” I want to share with all of you brief overview of a conversation I had today.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I was talking to a colleague about the new direction of English 108 – a service learning oriented approach. During this discussion we were throwing around ideas about what this might mean for the students and the program etc., but we also talked about how we might define and conceptualize a course centered on service learning. The way this colleague of mine initially talked about service learning was, as is often the case, in terms of volunteerism (helping at a nursing home etc.). Of course, given our conversation last week, I began to talk about different ways of thinking about and defining service learning. Though I am by no means and expert on the subject, some of the things I mentioned (in reference to our last class) got us throwing around different ideas about how it is more than just volunteerism. Thanks, Beth!
Other than the way we (as teachers) think about service learning, I wonder about how our students perceive it, and how they might come to a fuller understanding of SL. If we simply posed the question to students - what is service learning? - I wonder what kind of responses we would get.
One thing tied to SL that we talked about last week is reflection through journaling. In terms of journaling – as Courtney and Beth shared about their students – students often spend more time recounting than analyzing how SL (or any experience) impacts them and others in a given situation. What is a way we can present or approach SL that causes our students to shy away from the recount and move towards real analysis and understanding? I truly believe SL can be a great thing, but how do we get our students to “buy in” in a meaningful way?
I like how Janet and Courtney wrote that in terms of teacher preparation, we could have students do something like “engage with teenagers in their real-life settings/contexts in deeper ways than ‘observing’ or teaching a lesson or two” (Courtney). Something like this might help them not only learn about themselves, but could also give them some insight into the students and what they have to offer (not just what the college student can bring to them).
When I think of SL learning as a teacher and as a student, I always come back to the word community. In a community, everyone works together, learns from each other and with each other, etc. This may sound all “unicorns and rainbows,” but I do think that this is an important component of SL.
Heather, thanks for thinking so highly of me, but I think you attributed something Janet said to me :-)
ReplyDeleteAlso, your post makes me think, what would you have to do on the "receiving end" of a service-learning experience to truly make it a "community" experience? I see a glimmer of hope in the fact that the teachers at the school Beth partnered with wanted to make sure that there would be a commitment there, but I wonder what the middle school students think when the college students come in. Wouldn't you want to do something that would also engage those middle school students in a different way of thinking about the relationship between them and the college students? It seems like the partnership and community atmosphere would have to begin with the middle school teachers and college teachers working together on a pre-SL curriculum to change the way both groups think.
Beth,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your presentation. It has helped me in regards to the youth leadership program I volunteer with and with my own research project. With HOBY, service is key a component and we try to instill a desire to work with the community. A struggle we face is presenting service as a reciprocal relationship and not as forced volunteerism. The handout you provided has inspired me to focus on better matching the curriculum to our Leadership for Service projects and emphasizing reflection. "[Reflection] can also be used to challenge students to connect their sense of self with that of others, ultimately reducing the likelihood of a superior/inferior service relationship" (Rhoads, 1997). I am not sure how we can create a service learning project that starts with collaboration between the students and the community given that the students come to Indianapolis from all over the state for just 4 days, but I think we can work on the reflection component and make the experience more meaningful.
Our class discussion mirrors the challenges I also see with our pre-service teachers. Most do not write insightful reflections. What can I do develop reflective practitioners? How can I approach the EDCI 285 curriculum so pre-service teachers are making connections between theory and practice. I think the service learning reflection activities "What? So What? Now What?" that you provided has application in the multiculturalism and education classroom. The content of the course challenges personal beliefs of many students so expecting a large percentage to reach the "Now What?" stage and take action may be a lofty goal for 15 class sessions and 7 classroom observations. There is definite potential for students to move beyond the "What" and begin to see the impact multicultural concepts have on themselves and the classroom.
Courtney,
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing that out! I apologize to you and Janet. :)
Also, I like what you posted about creating a SL curriculum with the college and school teachers. I wonder what's already out there. I think that could definitely be one way to begin creating a community centered SL project. You could also include student input to make it even more meaningful and motivating for the students - just a thought!
Thank you so much for all of your comments. They are very helpful as I'm starting to work on putting this all together and especially helpful as I consider what this project can/will look like for my dissertation research. A couple of thoughts in response to you:
ReplyDeleteJanet, yes, I completely agree with you that this is a great bridge for pre-service teachers to connect their theory to practice. I agree too that this helps them to better understand students in a different and more personal way rather than from the teacher-like in-front-of-the-classroom approach. I think several of them learned more about individuals students and their needs rather than considering planning instruction for an entire class (which is often created without even knowing the students one works with...). Maybe this is why they were so critical of the teachers' assignments because they got to see them from the students' perspectives??
Shay, yes, great point about them unpacking their Whiteness. This is absolutely necessary when I do the project in the future. Good idea!
Sudha, I agree with you too that, if done well, service-learning can definitely benefit everyone involved, which makes me thing of Courtney's comment about the role that "those being served" play in this relationship. One thing we talked about in class that I would like to continue to figure out how to carry out is to have my students in the future work with the students to create some kind of literacy program (Shay mentioned a program they have where certain students are pulled out based on teacher recommendation) where the same college students could work with the same group of junior high students to create something together. I think the college students and I would have to do some initial planning but then we could ask the students for their input...maybe we could even help the students become the "experts" in literacy, kind of like the program Ryan mentioned where students help other students?? So many good ideas!
Heather, I love that you might be considered SL with 108 and would be happy to help with anything as you go through this process! I also think it's a great idea to ask students to conceptualize "service-learning." I agree that we should build that definition together as opposed to me being the authority on SL.
Courtney, Heather, and Marianne, you and others have mentioned reflections, again, yes, another area that needs developed. Ryan, I know you also mentioned this in class, and I think it might be a really cool idea to include in the article the theory you mentioned about how people reflect and "tell stories." I think that's invaluable in getting students to more thoughtfully reflect and would like to both share this knowledge with my students in the future and especially in the article I'm working on. Could you post or email the author/title of the work you mentioned in case others are also interested in it?? Thanks!
Beth, I loved your presentation also. I find service learning to be a student parallel to a teacher's research community...if that makes sense. Anyway, I just read an article that I think could be used in your study...if not, it made me think of you :)
ReplyDelete"Field-based preservice teacher research: Facilitating reflective professional practice" by Paul T. Parkison (2008)