The Art of Inference, A Curious Incident, Indeed

So, I’ve been helping my MT with a class of struggling readers for the past month and a half, now.  I’ve been borrowing very heavily on Kylene Beers’ (who was just recently elected NCTE’s Vice President) When Students Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do.  It’s, honestly, one of the most helpful books I have come across as far as providing realistic and useful strategies for teaching low-ability or low-interest readers.  Every English teacher should have this on their bookshelf.  Since I have just sung Ms. Beers’ praises, I may as well provide a link to some of her reading strategies and lesson plans. 

This past Monday I presented a slightly modified inferencing lesson that I snagged from Beers.  I created a PowerPoint that briefly defined inference (authors imply, readers infer) and contained two images to start using inference with.  The follow-up was having students make inferences with a very short text:

 

He put down $10.00 at the window.  The woman behind the window gave $4.00.  The person next to him gave him $3.00, but he gave it back to her.  So, when they went inside, she bought him a large popcorn.

 

My first two texts were pieces of art that I thought might serve the lesson well.  The first piece was Pablo Picasso’s La Vie.  While I was preparing the presentation, it didn’t even enter my mind that nudity would be an issue with my oh so mature bunch of ninth graders. But, when my MT clicks the slide, I hear:

Giggle, giggle.

“They’re naked! Ms. P., why you showing us naked people?”

“Alright, get it out.  They are naked.”

Then one of the students pipes up, “Gosh, haven’t ya’ll ever seen a naked person before?”

 

More giggles.  For about two minutes.

 

I wonder if I’m ever going to get through this lesson.

 

When I finally do get them to start playing the game and giving me some answers, they came up with some really good inferences.  It was going fairly well when I asked a student volunteer to take everyone’s inferences and try to create a story for the painting.

 

“Well the girl on the left is the woman with the baby’s daughter.  The old woman on the right went to the store.  When her Mama gone, the girl on the left invite her boyfriend over and they start doing their thing, ya know?  Ya know, Ms. P?  They doing their thing and t    he Mama come back and she was mad, that’s why she look so mean.  The boyfriend has his hand out ‘cause he’s trying to explain.  That’s what’s happening Ms. P.”

 

Giggles.

 

I just know that I have lost control.  But, hey, check out the inferences.  So, I motion for my MT to click over to my next slide.  Surely, I can gain back some control here.  The piece was Edvard Munch’s The Scream.  No nudity here.

 

So I repeat the process and ask a volunteer to create a story from the inferences we heard.

“So, like this boy gets lost.  He gets separated from his family and he’s all alone, ‘cause in the picture he’s all alone.  And, he starts screaming because he’s retarded, too.  That’s why he’s screaming, because retarded people scream and they look like that.  Yeah, that’s what they look like, right Ms. P?”

For twenty seconds, I swore that I would never let my kids speak in class again.  Thank god, I have a more than understanding MT.

Identity

I don’t know if every TC goes through this, but I have been seriously pondering whether or not teaching is what I want to do with my life.  For the first two months of my fall practicum, I read everything, I lived and breathed education.  I couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to dedicate their entire life to this.  I was overly excited to have escaped from the English Department and this was new and fun.  I guess you can’t go on like that forever, though.  It’s like being in a new relationship, you’re not going to be hyper-happy and in-love forever.  No one’s body and mind can take that.

So, I read an incredible book, The Time Traveller’s Wife, and I got sucked into that world for about two weeks.  I enjoyed the story, but I think what really came out in me during my reading of that novel was the fact that I have so many things I want to do with my life.  I want to write, I want to travel, I want to make art, I want to play music.  For a few days I didn’t know how teaching would fit into that, and I’m just now trying to find that balance between teaching which I know I want to do and all the other things I love and want to do as well.  I’ve come to a point where I don’t think one can exist without the other.

Coincidentally, my supervised field experience class had an assignment last Thursday in which we were to take pictures of ourselves and what we consider to be our identity in this transitional time.  This is my picture.

Student Kindness

As a very stressed out teacher candidate, I feel like I tend to sometimes focus on the negative aspects of the student teaching experience.  I know that I am not unique in this tendency as my entire cohort seems to agree.  Whenever we launch into class discussions about students, schools, parents and community, we usually speak about issues in terms of the negativity that we see going on.  For this reason, our field experience class has begun an encouragement forum in which we can share our positive experiences.  I haven’t shared anything yet, but I want to share something positive here.

Yesterday I handed back journals with feedback to my students (the first papers I’ve responded to/graded!), and one particularly tough male student in my MTs fourth period asked “Ms. N, did you grade these?”  She proceeded to point to me and this student smiled the biggest smile and said “Thanks Ms. P.”  I was so touched, but I tried not to let on how touched I was.  I did my little inverted frown that is really a smile thing.  I was very proud of him.  He had done a great job.

The second thing that happened in my MTs fourth block was a very quiet male student named R. offered me some kind of nut.  He asked me if I wanted it, and I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, so I politely responded with “No thank you.”  But he took it out two minutes later and presented it to me.  He told me it was for good luck and he wanted me to have it.  Apparently it is some sort of nut from a gum tree.  It’s the first thing that a student has ever actually given to me and I think it’s appropriate that it is a large seed.  I’m keeping it and treasuring it for the rest of my teaching career.

GACE Test

So one of the more pressing concerns on the minds of so many of my cohort members in the English Education department is the GACE test.  Georgia has recently switched their certification test from the Praxis II to the GACE (Georgia Assessments for the Certification of Educators).  I, along with many of my peers, will be among the first group to take this new test on November 16th.  There is, not surprisingly, a dearth of information available for this new test and many of us feel that we are at a disadvantage because of this.  For once, I almost envy the people who are taking the GRE within the next few months.  At least they have some idea of what it is they should expect and have the ability to locate preparatory materials, should they choose to do so.

The GACE website does provide a few sample questions for their multiple choice and constructed response sections, so I suppose it’s unfair of me to say that they’ve left us completely in the dark.  But, honestly, looking at some of these questions, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.  I honestly think that my little sister could take that test and pass it right now.  I just don’t know how they think that this test is going to be any kind of indicator as to how successful aspiring teachers are going to be in the classroom. 

Question 1:

 The term ’superhighway’ has similar meanings and applications in the fields of transportation and:

a. information technology

b. mathematics

c. political science

d. agriculture

Question 2:

The fiction of Amy Tan, Jamaica Kincaid and Bharati Mukherjee frequently examine which of the following themes?

a. the devastation of war and its aftermath

b. the expanding influence of science and technology

c. the hypocrisy and corruption of government

d. the nature of the experience of some recent immigrants

As, future educators ourselves, it seems as though the designers of the GACE should be fairly cognizant of the inherent problems of a test like this.  I think that the DOE really needs to take a second look at what the GACE purports to test and what it actually does test.  Ahh.. what a great model for sound assessment procedures.