Ch. 18 Olson (2008) “Modern schools are mass institutions, instruments of a mass industrial society modeled on the factory and the military. The class, not the individual, becomes the primary unit of instruction “ (p. 285).
Before I read this chapter, I was reading the chapter by Ball & Ellis which focused on the Identity and Writing of Diverse Students. So much of the conclusions they discussed has to do with allowing diverse students to interweave their cultural and home identities into their writing identities into schooling so for a healthy identity to grow. I continually hear that high school and middle school teachers must differentiate instruction to meet the diverse needs in their classrooms.
These two quotes seem to equal a difficult paradox to overcome. How do I tell my English teachers, who may instruct up to 150 students on a daily basis, to differentiate their instruction in meaningful ways? School itself, according to Olson (2008) wasn’t even created to accommodate such a mandate. The military and/or factory don’t do this. How can this gulf of intention and need be overcome?
This same problem can be applied to our conversation about writing assessments and the weaknesses of rubrics. How can a teacher, realistically, grade massive amounts of writing without some type of standardized instrument? (Is this question showing that I have structuralist tendencies, or just that I've been working in the district curriculum department for too long??)
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I know I must sound like a broken record, but I think you would love Carol (for some reason I want to call her Susan) Booth Olson's The Reading/ Writing Connection. It is one of the best books I have read for high school English teachers. It tackles the paper load, assessment and even (to some extent) differentiation. I lament the fact that standardized testing is an excuse to cop out of good teaching. I think if we teach well, our students will test well. I'm reading Cris Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It again - maybe because I can relate as I read the Nystrand article? No really, I'm reading it to revisit how she discusses teaching inference and how teaching students to generate questions (thereby creating a classroom dedicated to inquiry) is a necessary precursor to making inferences. Now, may I ask, does Study Island do this? I think not. My heart goes out to the kids who struggle the most: to get them to pass the test, we subject them to mindless workbooks and test prep. We prepare these kids for the low bar of the test, but not for life.
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