Blog 2: Liberal Pedagogy

“Because grades have come to represent so much, they are increasingly perceived by the general public as representing little if anything at all” (Landan 150).

I was pleased to find a reading on assessment because it was something I never really considered before. Grading is grading, or so I thought. The major significance in this reading, however, concerned the controversies of assessment. In past educational text books, we have learned that there are many different ways to assess students that go beyond paper and pencil testing. Different forms of assessment give every student the opportunity to earn good grades. This seemed to be the very definition of fairness in assessing students’ growth in the classroom, but Landan brings up something that educational idealists fail to mention: there is still bias in the classroom. So he says that grades represent so much; in other words, unfortunately grades mean more than a student’s progress or measure of educational skills. Grades feed into whether or not a teacher likes a student, good or bad behavior, popularity, and a number of things that have nothing to do with the actual academic intelligence of the student. Because grades have come to measure more than academic achievement, grades are hardly an accurate measurement of what a student has achieved. So why do we still have a grading system? Landan’s article demonstrates that the grading system, like most systems, are flawed, and the best thing we can do as teachers is to keep this bias in mind, and try to stray as far from it as possible.

“To the disinterested observer, an F is commonly understood to mean that a student has failed to understand the subject matter. Missing work is not the same thing as a failure to understand; it simply means that the student’s level of comprehension has yet to be determined” (Landan 155).

Landan brings up another really great point in grading: missing assignments. As liberal teachers, grading missing or incomplete work as an F is failing to take the students’ thoughts and concerns into consideration. Though the teacher has ultimate control of the classroom, the students should have some freedom. I believe that this would include flexibility with late or missing assignments. Giving an automatic F for missing work falls under the traditional theory of teaching, not liberal. A liberal teacher might work out a system that allows for a certain number of incompletes, as an incomplete is not a grade, and then students will have the ability to make up the assignments later. This way, students are not getting low grades, and eventually they will be assessed for the work they do complete. It sounds great, but the only problem I do have is being able to manage a system like this. High school teachers have a lot of students. If a teacher has five classes with over twenty students per class, that is over a hundred students. That is a lot of work to keep track of. It is almost easier to go the traditional route and mark a student down for not having the work in time, but again teachers must sacrifice to help their students. My only answer to keeping track of late work that teacher choose to accept is, stay organized. If our students can’t be organized, then we will have to be organized for them.

“All of us need to convey to our students and our colleagues every day that ‘you are important to me as a person’” (Wong 65).

Though this reading seems to be targeted for elementary school teachers, it provides information that teachers of all levels can heed from. This quote encompasses liberal pedagogy; we must treat our students as people. We are no more important than they are; we are there to provide a guided education. Though we are the ones with the degrees, I’m sure we can stand to learn plenty of things from our students. Also, if we treat our students like they matter (because they DO matter!) they will most likely give us a mutual respect and be willing to work with us and learn from us. Wong mentions being an inviting teacher versus a disinviting teacher. After reading a few examples, I didn’t realize how easy it was to be unintentionally disinviting, therefore forgetting to treat students as people. One disinviting comment is, “I was hired to teach history, not do these other things.” I’ll admit that I have said something along these lines before concerning my content area: I want to teach English. But I realize that other stuff has to come with that, and not every student is going to embrace English in the way that I have, so I must teach other things as well, such as appreciation or life skills that can be taken from literature.

“Learning has nothing to do with what the teacher covers. Learning has to do with what the student accomplishes” (Wong 210).

We hear this over and over again: covering the material. Covering the material is just another way to say that you got through the material, but “getting through” something implies that it was unpleasant and you’re happy that it’s in the past. Instead of getting through the curriculum, we want our students to REMEMBER the curriculum. Remembering information is the first step to truly learning what has been taught. I also equate covering material with traditional pedagogy, and learning the material as liberal pedagogy. As liberal teachers, we need to forget about going through the motions of teaching and actually point out and UNCOVER what needs to be taught. If teachers can simply point out what a student should learn from the material they are going to present, instead of just putting it out there for students, then so much more learning would be accomplished.

“The cruelty of No Child Left Behind puts childhood at grave risk, setting schools on a course that will produce very, very angry children who grow up to be adults whose values are very skewed and who are mad as hell to boot” (Ohanian 21).

Ohanian is angry, and I don’t blame her! Like the rest of us going into education, she wants everyone to stop looking at scoring data and focus on the students, mainly, whether or not the students are happy. In general, students say they don’t really like school, and No Child Left Behind is making it a lot easier for them to say that. Instead of having the opportunity to enjoy their education, students are getting more and more tests thrown at them, and all of the fun gets sucked out of them. It is emotionally draining on students to have testing without true learning. Basically, No Child Left Behind puts so much stress on children, it allows them to be anything but that—children—and why wouldn’t it make them angry? But No Child Left Behind is something that all of us will have to face, so now it will be our jobs to see our students as people, and try to be there to support and nurture them through rigorous testing. If students have someone there for them in their younger years, we might possibly be able to prevent those angry adults with skewed values.

“The books we choose to bring into our classroom say a lot about what we think is important, whose stories get told, whose voices are heard, whose are marginalized” (Christensen 3).

An aspect of traditional pedagogy is teaching to the text book. In liberal pedagogy, the text is more flexible, and the curriculum can be shaped through a collection of texts that the students have interest in. Though student interest is important, the teacher has control of the classroom and can choose what material to use. Christensen points out that it is important to pay attention to our students’ interests when choosing the material we bring into our classrooms. As a future English teacher, I would choose literature that reflects students’ interests and cultures. What we as teachers think is important should be the material that impacts our students.