Wow! White collar and blue collar? (Alan, do you still doubt that the industrial model persists?)

1. Learning styles are important but the tip of an iceberg; context, meaning and relationship are more significant factors in and predictors of success than texts or teaching style.
2. Brain research hows that, unless there is a physical/neurological impediment, every human being has the capacity to become an Einstein or a Da Vinci;
3. We cannot create learners; human beings are already created as phenomenal learners and our job is to facilitate (rather than mutilate) what is already there;
4. I teach blue collar 'types'. They are exactly the same as white collar types once they have learned the language of formal/universal English.
5. The essential distinction is not between formative or creative-style teaching. The difference is between impositional and oppressive, 'engineering' education (reflected int he notion that we do something to our students), and human, non oppressive contextual, authentic and relational education (reflected in the notion that we do something along with out students. Personally, I regard it as helping to get them out of their own way so that they can be as amazing as they really are.)
6. I can verify the effectiveness of the latter from the results coming out of my classroom which are both holistically significant (in terms of levels of satisfaction, pleasure, self awareness, empowerment, and self expression), and academically significant (in terms of fluency and voice in good 'correct' formal English). Incidentally, I teach formal English entirely as the means to an end - the medium of communication in the endeavor to explore and communicate, through with and to, self, world and other. It is a matter of emphasis that is crucial in its effects.

I have two positive things to share. First, I had an amazing opportunity to  'spread some love' on Thursday at our first Spring semester in-service, where I'd been asked to give a presentation on the use of my audio immersion technique with my transitional writing (developmental) students. I showed a group of transitional writing instructors (an *awesome* bunch of human beings by the way), the 'progressions' of transitional students who were listening to formal English - some of which are breathtaking - and some of their written discussions at the 'oh-no!-now-i've-started-correcting-people-around-me' stage of this process. The delight and pleasure, laughter and excitement at who these students really are and what they are truly capable of (as opposed to what the story about them says they are capable of), was more than heartwarming; it was absolutely thrilling. Sharing love and delight with others: it was better than.. (I'll let you fill in the blank!)

Second, and especially for those who helped me to deal with my pain and hopelessness over the fate of our pre-transitional students (under-under prepared you might say)... something lovely has happened and I hope you will forgive me for sharing it despite the lack of proper modesty I may display by doing so. I mentioned a few moths ago the unlikelihood that, even if I were successful with this one class, we could get a grant, now that state funding has been withdrawn, to show that a different approach *could* change their prognosis - and the program outcome. Anyway, at his request, I sent our VP the final grades/outcomes for that class. Here's his reply of last week:

"I appreciate your willingness to share your success numbers with me.  They are outstanding.  I could tell during my visit that something important was taking place in your class; I wish you continued success with your courses this semester.  I'll spend some time looking for a grant and a will similar to yours.
Best..."

I'm half ecstatic and half 'holding my breath' about the grant. (And then I  have to outline a syllabus and show other instructors how to do what I did so that I can still go off - please God - and do my PhD in the Fall!) Thus I have gone from 'what am I doing this for, when there's no hope', a few months ago, to sitting myself down and giving myself a stern lesson on remembering that there is always hope and that everything we do matters even when it does not seem to...
love

Sara


________________________________________
From: Practitioner-Researcher [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan Markowitz [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 9:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation

Dear Aga,
The idea of classsifying students by learning style undermines the whole premise of the theory. First of all, our goal should be to create learners who can adapt to different styles of knowledge acquisition. Secondly, the concept of differentiation  of instruction requires us to present information in different formats throughout an instructional period so that all are exposed to working with other students with differing styles of learning.
Thank you for the stimulating topic.
Alan
Dr. Alan Markowitz
Program Chair- Graduate Teacher Education
College of St. Elizabeth
(973)290-4328
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>



On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 3:29 AM, aga yamin <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear Brendan
I am sure Je Kan will provide you with the better explanation of your concerns related to creativity and productivity especially in relation to SAT and social formation. Meanwhile, please find my point of view as follows:

1.       Perhaps I agree with your boss, the “right” creativity or more appropriately “Innovation”  can bring better SAT results. At present, we are differentiating students according to their results by assembling them into sets. Top set, bottom set etc. Perhaps this approach is not that effective as expected as evidenced by the results

2.       I think we should classify students according to their aptitude rather than results  and teach them accordingly

3.       For example, generally speaking, there are two types of people: one are “Blue Collar”, and others are “White Collar”

4.        Blue Collar learn through hand-on experience. The others can learn through conventional learning techniques. If you try to teach a blue collar student by using conventional techniques, you may find very challenging and difficult to induce concepts in them. It does not mean that they are not interested in learning. We are not applying the right approach to develop them

5.       First we need to classify students into blue collar and white collar

6.       Second we need to further identify their aptitude toward their learning.

7.       Third we need to identify their learning style

8.    It will give you the right parameters to develop your learner-focused teaching & learning strategies

8.       You may conduct a pilot study and assess the results. Depending on your learning & Teaching strategies, If your results are positive then it means you have influence educationally on your students and managed to gain social validation of your work and created a new social formation in terms of students learning
Regards
Aga


________________________________
From: BRENDAN CRONIN <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri, 7 January, 2011 13:00:43
Subject:

Dear All,
Thanks Jack and Je Kan.  Thanks Jack for those references and our thoughts on Wenger.  I find Je Kan your thoughts on the self interesting.  What is the relation of my self to others?  Is the idea of the self illusory?  But domination of one knowledge in the workplace is of course a strongly political thing, an essential part of the social formation and can act to oppress and dominate.  It can contrain individual action.  You are the boss, you tell me that the dichotomy between performativity and creativity is a false dichotomy, but I in my practice find this to be a falsehood.  The boss says get on.  I want to see you teaching in a creative way and getting first class SATs results.  Who suffers? The children. me and in the end the school because it is unachievable.

I only want to try to quantify influence on colleagues and them on me in order to develop some model of workplace learning, a model which would be deeply democratic, based on the needs of the learner and essentially anarchistic.  It will be a model of learning and a model of professional development.
Cheers,
Brendan