California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

Because reading can be so unexpectedly complicated, the strategies put forward by this template will be very helpful to recall in a (hopefully successful) attempt to help students understand the substance of what they've read. One of the suggestions that most appeals to me is having each student write down the thing that was most confusing to them. Especially if the students know this question is coming and that the answer must be filled in, they will be constantly assessing the efficacy of their own reading consistently, checking in every few paragraphs so that they can identify a detail that is unclear. In my own high-school experience, I remember that one of my greatest faults was my inability to know when I was not grasping something. I succeeded rather well by assuming that anything I had not retained would be easily remedied later, and this was often the case. However, a few clear examples stand out of the times when some concept continuously eluded me and I couldn't understand why. Even a student who understands everything reasonably well, if he or she thinks about it, will find something that could be elaborated upon for added benefit.
Reflection about one's own writing is another crucial element for the student. This happens, in some small measure, when we go back and correct our spelling mistakes. Sadly, the otherwise good advent of automatic spellcheck technology has encouraged many students to neglect even the slightest moment of proofreading. But students who do read over what they've written can always find that the first draft of anything is not good enough. As we write and revise, our thinking becomes clearer. As we think about how to appeal to our audience, we may realize that they have a foreseeable counterpoint that we would find it difficult to answer. This kind of self-criticism is best-learned, I believe, by being paired with a healthy criticism of the readings we are given. The ability to ask pointed questions and argue with the text is extremely important in this day and age. Many people assume any eloquent writer is a trusted authority on the matter at hand, when this is often far from the case. Therefore it is extremely helpful to introduce students to the two readings strategy, one the "believing" reading and the other the "doubting" reading.
The template also included some helpful hints about teachers grading that will be very practically helpful. My mentor teacher has mentioned more than once that at the beginning of every year he tries to read journal entries carefully, but a few months in he can easily get through multiple entries in a single minute. A teacher will have to choose deliberately where the grading process can be optimized without losing credibility, otherwise there would be no time for the grading that must take place. Staggering the due dates of essays is also a great suggestion. However, sometimes the overload is somewhat unavoidable. At the end of a semester it will be expected that everything will be complete and a good teacher must be prepared to put in serious time and effort to give the students the grades that are merited.

Common Core State Standards

During my last meeting with my mentor teacher, we had some extra time during lunch and his prep period to discuss some logistical things about education. I asked him what he thought of the Common Core standards, and whether he thought they had made an impression on the education system for better or worse. Having spent a good amount of time with him and his class already, his answer did not surprise me, but I wonder if it would surprise some of the personnel in our university education program.
I should clarify that Mr. Archer at Shadle Park High is well-loved by his students and fellow-teachers. He has been teaching for 30 years, but still maintains a passion and excitement that I'm trying to imitate for my own benefit. And he's surprisingly harsh at times with his students, when they are not meeting his expectations after having been given every opportunity to do so. His balance of fun and business fits perfectly within the context of the classroom.
"First," he said to me, "I don't know if they're even going to be around for very much longer." I agreed, mentally noting the then-foundational WASL test of my own high-school experience, which was quickly replaced and re-replaced until it is now ancient history. "Also," he continued, "I have read them, and there's nothing wrong with them, but these are all just things that good teachers already base their teaching on naturally, so I don't know if it's going to impact them at all. Maybe some teachers do need these reminders, but the standards haven't changed much about my classroom."

Having worked with the standards in my previous education classes and read them over quite a bit, I have to agree. There is nothing groundbreaking about these new concepts, in my humble opinion, but they are the typical important things that I was surrounded by in my high-school years, with maybe a few different emphases.
In those early years of the new millennium, we constantly looked in our reading for contextual evidence to support our ideas (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1), both explicitly and through inference. Both of these aspects are important in the practice, however they are also things that students who read can do quite naturally. Again, perhaps for some teachers it will be useful to segment these and take it one-at-a-time, to have the students think about why something was said explicitly while something else was communicated through inference. However, many teenagers I've known, some who were my peers and some who are now my students, will be too easily bored by a belaboring of such a point, and have greater hope of being engaged through diving into the substance of the story, with all its inferences and explicit statements together.
The intentional manipulation of a timeline is a very important lesson to give students reading and writing narratives (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5), and, along with many other important elements, is something that cannot be taught in isolation, but is a bridge to be crossed at the best planned opportunity.
Some of these standards do focus on higher-level abilities, such as the treatment that an author gives to another source material (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9). This is, perhaps, one of the few things that was never a part of my high-school experience, and not because we couldn't handle it, but because it would require so much more reading. The teacher has to be realistic about what the student will accomplish, and in my mind it's important to condense the required reading so that it will be as useful as possible. If the student must read a long piece by Shakespeare and must also read a part of the bible that is referenced in Shakespeare, and I can promise quite confidently that those students will decide to cut corners and condense the reading for themselves. This does not mean that this standard should go by the wayside, but it will need to be addressed in a practical way. Whether it is addressed at all depends on whether the teacher decides that the students are prepared for that kind of analysis, which is an entirely different question. So much of this depends upon the current state of the classroom that, while the standards seem organized in a machine-like progression, a lot of real-life malfunctions will have a tendency to gum up the works.
The judging of validity of arguments is crucial for any student reading informational texts (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.8). This, again, is something that is acknowledged by effective teachers as important, and something that it will be difficult for any teacher to follow a standard on unless he or she understands preemptively its importance. However, situations may well arise where the teacher and student disagree on what constitutes validity, and this can be either an opportunity for good discussion or a danger of personal conflict. The balance to be struck is the effective teacher's real focus in these situations.

As a person who is eager to disagree where disagreement is feasible, there is hardly anything in the standards that I can object to, which I imagine was the goal of their writers. However, the ability for teachers to think outside the box they've been given has been a freedom that many of my teachers enjoyed who were the best teachers I've known. While, of course, other teachers suffered from an extreme lack of accountability. Whether these standards, should they continue in their current form, solve the problem without hindering the benefit, is something I will have to wait to see.

Brookfield's "Discussion as a Way of Teaching"

As a person who has become, through practice, more-than-moderately critical of what I read and listen to, this topic of discussion interests me perhaps more than any other element of education. I consider it one of the greatest shortcomings of my own generation, as well as the rising one, that we seem to have no tolerance for diversity of thought, and no desire to understand the logic of dissenting voices. I marvel at the respectful and substantive conversations held forth in the 70's by Milton Friedman and his political opponents. That kind of discussion is not the norm any longer... but it should be. Our current national dialogue is reeling into chaos from the unrestrained force of emotion, which is claimed by many to be of equal or even greater significance than reason. As this has gone unchecked (for nobody ever can truthfully declare a monopoly on feelings, though some try), one sentiment has inadvertently risen above all others, coloring all of our political words and acts in the current age: Revenge!

And it is my great desire to roll this destructive force back.

Much of what Brookfield advocates here answers to that purpose. The one strategy that struck me more than any other was section 19: Critical Debate Instructions. However, it is a bit underhanded. What I may try, if I'm going to employ this method, is beginning the lesson with an activity related to whether or not it can be morally acceptable to lie to a person for their own good. Then, when I have students volunteer to defend or oppose a certain perspective on a contentious issue, they will blithely believe that we have simply switched gears. Finally, when I announce that those who wanted to defend will now oppose, and those who wanted to oppose will now defend, the connection will, at least, make it a more memorable day.
What concerns me, however, about most of these strategies, is their practicality in the real-world classroom. I've been blessed to have been placed in a rather typical class, a good microcosm of high-school students, where there are no outstanding behavioral problems, but also not an apparent burning desire for learning. Their willingness to engage is rather outmatched by their fondness for whispering.
Yet, even with this class, my lessons and the advice from my mentor teacher have taught me that the greatest struggle will be devising very pointed and meaningful questions for the discussion to progress. Brookfield's methods may be perfect for a highschool AP class or a college classroom (even then, it may be hit-or-miss), but there are few of these students who have any interest in anything here other than the grade they'll receive. Some would rather be doing anything in the world other than reading. For the students who are willing to engage, I need to give them ample opportunity to do some heavy-thinking, but the rest of them need involvement that is meticulously structured so that they won't immediately stray onto an after-school topic the moment discussion begins, and so that they won't always dread my coming around to see them on-task. 
Some of Brookfield's more structured methods, however, would be doable. The activities that involve roles may help the students to stay focused, but I would hesitate to put even the most trustworthy of students in an umpire role. Maybe this is unfair of me; perhaps an umpire role would allow a student to take the activity more seriously and respect the duties expected. It would be a risk to keep an eye on, but it may be a worthwhile risk.

My final concern is that there tends to be a strong divide on any controversial subjects, with a vast majority opinion and a naturally defensive minority opinion. This is far more significant, I think, than the superficial minority identifiers that Brookfield seems obsessed with. Ideas are far more substantive than skin-color or socioeconomic status. I intend on judging my students by the content of their characters alone. The culture surrounding the school will determine which opinion is majority, and how disparate the divide is. We should be prepared to deal with situations where virtually all of the class believes one thing and two or three students only dissent. Perhaps the majority of the class is climate-science-skeptical while just a few want to make the case for the serious dangers of climate-change. Perhaps the opposite is true. In these situations, the teacher must see to it that both sides are furnished with reason-based arguments without appearing to firmly stand on one side or the other. It will be a difficult balance to strike, but I believe I am up to the task, being one who frequently, on this very campus, has been obliged to dissent from the vast majority in meaningful discussion.