Pedagogy of the Opressed

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed offers us a unique view of how some methods of teaching are not effective. In chapter two of the book, he explains how the banking concept is often used as a teaching methodology. The banking method encompasses the idea that the teacher should act as a depositor of information to their students who know nothing. This type of relationship leads to a problem in which the only way for students to learn is by taking in the information given to them and simply memorizing it and regurgitating it when the time is right. With this method, no real learning is accomplished. Students may remember the concepts and ideas that are needed to pass the class but they often can’t recall this information after it is no longer needed for a grade. For true learning to occur, students must be able to be confused and find their own ways of understanding. They must be able to negotiate this confusion on their own in order to find the most meaning. This is not to say that’s teachers should help their students learn, but they should not merely be depositors of information.

Another problem with the banking concept is that whatever the teacher says is fact. This is a major problem, especially when it comes to literature. If a teacher tells his students that the meanings behind a text can only be the things that he/she believes to be true, then that teacher has repressed a number of alternately correct interpretations of the text. I can give a text to thirty students and I would guess I would have at least fifteen different ideas from them about the meaning behind the words. That is what makes literature so powerful. Students need to be able to look for meaning on their own while the teacher helps them negotiate their confusions. A teacher acting as a depositor of information isn’t actually teaching at all, they’re only talking at their students.    

Assessing and Evaluating Learners.

I, like Heidi Murphy, had never really taken a traditional test on literature other than just chapter quizzes to show that we read the text. My assessment of literature was based on our ability to write essays on the themes and characters in the reading. While I still believe this to be the best way to assess understanding of literature, the chapter Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning had some interesting ideas that I hadn’t thought about. The first being that in order to decide how you should be assessing the students in your classroom about their understanding of literature, you have to decide what you value most about that literature. If you value the knowledge of factual information from the literature (characters, plot points, etc.) then traditional methods of assessment like testing and simple quizzes with “correct answers” can accomplish that. But if you value the ability for your students to critically analyze the themes of the text and create new ideas about the text, then more open-ended assessments such as essays in which students interpretive strategies and critical lenses to look at themes and the author’s purpose are more appropriate.

I am more aligned with the latter group of thinking but I also value reflection highly. I really liked the example from the text that talked about “exit memos”. Exit memos or slips give students the opportunity to reflect on what they’ve learned and how their thinking has changed. As a coach and future teacher, reflection is key to my success in helping my players and students learn. If I coach a football practice or teach a literature lesson, I need to be able to look at how that practice or lesson worked for my players or students. Did it accomplish what I wanted? Did they learn what I wanted them to learn? If not, I need to go back and change how I taught them. The same should be expected of my students. When they write, they should think about how well they got their ideas across on paper and if it really came out the way they wanted.  

Common Core State Standards

The most useful part of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is that they are made to build off of one another. They start in first grade with very basic expectations for young readers such as “Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details” and build throughout a child’s schooling to more complex ideas such as “Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed)”. This scaffolding really gives students the chance to make sure that they have mastered the skills needed to succeed as they move along in their school life.

Another great use of the CCSS is that it helps teachers get away from only teaching to a standard for a test. Old state standards would be so varied that they would have very specific standards such as teaching specific grammar and usage rules. This would lead to students only being taught those grammar rules and how to use them in order to pass the state exams. The CCSS promotes a deeper and masterful understanding of the required content though better instruction. While it may feel as if the CCSS are only there to govern what is being taught, the truth is they were created so that all students would be able to have an equal opportunity after school based upon the fact that they learned how to do the same things in school such as research, problem solving, and basic writing. The CCSS were created for students, not teachers, so that all students will get the same learning.  

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

          Discussion is a very important tool for learning especially when it comes to English/ Language Arts, specifically when teaching literature. Literature can be very influential in a student’s school life, but it can also be somewhat confusing. The source of this confusion often comes from the multiple interpretations that students can have about the text. If you take a text and give it to a class with thirty students, you could conceivably get thirty different interpretations of the same exact text. Because of this, classroom discussions about literature can be tricky situations. As teachers we should want all of our students to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the conversation, but how can we get all kids involved?

In Stephen Brookfield’s “Discussion as a Way of Teaching” there are lots of strategies mentioned. I think one of the most important aspects of discussion mentioned in the article is how to set ground rules. My practicum this quarter is in a seventh-grade classroom. If I was to ask my students about a text without setting any ground rules first, there would be chaos. Brookfield suggests that students should use reflection as a way to establish the framework for a set of rules that govern discussions in the classroom. Students should think about the best and worst group discussion that they’ve been a part of and what made them that way. From those experiences, they should begin to form some ideas about what makes for great or terrible discussion time. Having students reflect on these experiences allows them to move past the superficial ideas like “make sure to raise your hand if you wish to speak”. While this is an important rule to have to maintain order, I want them to think deeper. How did those discussions influence your learning in a positive or negative way? How can we incorporate those ideas into our classroom?

Brookfield also gives some alternative ways for students to go about having their discussions. My favorites are Newsprint Dialogues and Hatful of Quotes. Newsprint Dialogues give students the opportunity to share with their small group first then display their ideas to the whole class in a controlled environment. Then while students are looking at the other newsprints they have the opportunity to respond to their peer’s responses. We wants students to engage with others ideas and this gives them a much more non-confrontational way of doing so. Hatful of quotes is intriguing to me because I would have thought that it was an easy way for me to not really have to think hard when I was a high school student. All I would have had to do is wait for someone to talk about the quote that I have and then just reword what they said. While this is a strategy I expect to see from my students someday, it can also be beneficial if it leads to a new opinion of a quote that hasn’t been discussed. That’s how discussions grow and become relevant to the student’s learning.