I’m a Language Arts Teacher Too
This comment really got under my skin tonight while catching up on my RSS feeds…
27,000 Google Chromebooks headed to U.S. schools | Deep Tech – CNET News: “But I’m a language arts teacher. My goal is to have students publish their work–create and publish. The [Chromebook] is more alike to a laptop or a desktop in the ability to publish.”
But I’m a language arts teacher. My goal is to have students create, publish, peer review, curate and collaborate on their work.
Which is why I like iPads.
Speaking of curate, where did Shareist go?
Decided to switch back to WordPress since we’re experimenting with some things at school. Shareist is a mighty awesome platform that I’ll certainly be using though.
How does peer review work in a middle school classroom? I know the way it works in the middle school social realm can be quite ugly.
In peer review among adult professionals, individuals have chosen to do the work they are doing; they are, in general, suited to the work and to the requirements, if they exist, of defending their work and recognizing constructive and valid criticism. How often and completely do children not yet developed in either body or mind find themselves in similar circumstances?Adolescent children are not uniformly and/or consistently able to exercise respectful, fair-minded, and objective evaluation of a classmate’s work, and they are not all equal to the task of defending their own. How can the teacher reliably recognize when a child has submitted to an overpowering classmate in a collaboration?Can’t peer review among children can allow the outspoken or unkind students to dominate others? Can’t it squelch motivation, satisfaction, and well-being in the naturally reticent and uncertain students? It creates opportunities for settling scores and overcompensating for insecurities. This is true in the adult world, too, of course…but these children are not volunteers for the conflict. They are a captive audience. Are they given the choice to submit to peer review? Are they penalized if they do not?The small child is guided to virtue by a desire to please the parent. The young child is guided to academic success by a desire to please the teacher. We accept this because we trust the loving parent and the competent teacher. What are the credentials of the adolescent peer review group to guide our student to success? Don’t we view with regret the adolescent shift to a desire to impress and be accepted by the peer group? Why do you want to enhance that phenomenon? The peer review concept is safe only if all members of the peer group practice the virtues of fairness, honesty, respect, and compassion. It’s a great idea for Utopia Day School.This emphasis on peer review and collaboration in children’s school activities is, at the very least, problematic in some situations. Currently it has infected even the “counseling” at our school; the girls are thrown into dysfunctional group discussions on sex, social stratification, and stereotypes during which the interactions become disturbing for some due to the very different developmental stages, sexual maturity, and emotional sensitivity of the children involved—not to mention specific interpersonal conflicts. Any girl can comment on any of the thorny issues brought up for discussion. It is very poorly done.To sum up the obvious, I’m skeptical about the wisdom and the value of academic peer review in middle school. Perhaps meticulous management by a sensitive educator could temper the fear the idea inspires in me, but I am a parent first and foremost and so I am obliged to question.I would like to hear a thorough, resasoned defense of academic peer review as applied to middle school classes, i.e., to arbitrarily assembled groups of children induced to perform tasks they may or may not find interesting, enjoyable, or feasible and then to submit that work to the criticism of peers, some of whom actively dislike them.Joni
If students can’t flesh this out in the safety of a classroom with a teacher monitor than they will confined to working out those emotions in public through Facebook or Twitter where there isn’t an adult presence to guide them to an understanding (this is what we are dealing with right now).
Middle schoolers need a place to work out how to interact and engage with peers and work through emotions and hormones that they are experiencing since they will have to deal with this in any and every real world situation they will find themselves employeed.
It sounds like your child has a teacher that is willing to take on that responsibility of guiding your child (this is extremely hard to find). It will serve him/her well for the rest of his/her life.
I find your contention, as a defense of peer review of academic work in middle school, that without it students “will be confined” to Twitter and Facebook as the only alternatives to school for ”work(ing) out those emotions” odd in the extreme. The mere fact that the children spend so much time together, with and without teacher monitoring, forces them to “work through emotions and hormones” already, and there are many other venues other than school and social media where they interact with other children: family, friends, neighborhoods, scouts, summer camp, recreational sports, etc. It’s enough at this age. Can’t we let them have their school work private from the judgment of peers at least until high school?
Because I often drive around with middle schoolers in the back seat who seem to forget I’m there, I hear how they feel about teachers, events, etc. If I am worried about something, I make inquiries at school. It is striking how mistaken a teacher sometimes is about how a particular child or class feels about something. My daughter’s middle school is not a safe place for every child there–not emotionally.I do not support requiring peer review of academic work even with teacher monitoring in middle school and I strongly object to requiring attendance at open group discussions of sexual and social issues. Some teachers have a kind of hubris–or at least, a tendency to be overconfident with respect to how well they know what a child is feeling and thinking, and I have seen how they can be mistaken and insensitive. After all, teachers are human, too.
Let me back up and explain that I am literacy specialist and have a Master’s degree in Literacy development for students K-12.
I can give you books and articles that cite the critical need of peer collaboration for the students literary development, but I won’t.
Your school is following best practices according to all the leaders in the field of literacy development (again something that is unfortunately extremely hard to find these days). If you are unhappy with that, the beauty of the American school system is that you have the option to chose what’s best for your child.
If you move your child to a public school, you will find the private, standardized emphasis on literacy development that you believe is best for your child, but it sounds like your school is using its freedom as an independent school to implement research-based practice for the sake of your child’s literacy development.
If that’s not an appealing option, then you could home school your child and create your own curriculum that emphasizes what you think is most important for your child.
The choice is yours, but digitally criticizing your school and your child’s teacher is not helping your child’s literacy development.