I have to start by saying that reading this text was very enjoyable and engaging. It by no means felt like a regular textbook, it was more personal and combined the author's experiences with the content discussed. The first chapter started off with what is honestly my biggest fear about becoming a teacher, making AYP- Adequate Yearly Progress. Beers was honest about how sometimes there are students who according to AYP, do not "meet the mark" so to speak, and the actual progress they do make goes unnoticed. Beers tells the story of a high school student named Derek, who ends up in a remedial reading class because his scores were not high enough. Even though according to the system Derek had not made progress, it is stated that he had a large point difference in comparison to his previous scores on the TAKS test. I think this issue is extremely important to bring to light as it happens more often than not. Students not getting high enough scores and therefore the teacher is seen as ineffective. Like I said, this is my biggest fear about teaching. Especially in special education, students are expected to master grade level content even when they need to start with the basics. A student cannot be expected to read a passage with accuracy and fluency if they do not have letter identification skills. They cannot complete multiplication and division problems if they do not know how to add and subtract. My special education professor told me that even if students are expected to get from A to G, and all they do is get from A to D, then progress has still been made that teachers can show to their superiors. Progress is important, but like the student in the text questioned, "Who gets to decide what score you got to make to be adequate?"
Another section of the first chapter that struck me was the author's story of Collin, the student who by his teacher was seen as a sub-par student, actually had his own blog in which he devoted to discussing environmental issues. I think this goes to show us as future teachers that we do not always know our student's full potential. I liked the comment about creative thinking in regards to what students produce is what is important in this day and age. Collin produced his own blog where he expressed his thoughts and passions into writing. This creativity went unnoticed by the teacher when looking at his assigned papers that he did not seem to put as much effort into. I think this shows that as teachers we need to give students opportunities to use their literacy skills creatively and in ways that have meaning to them. Thinking back to my English classes in junior high and high school, the assignments that fostered creativity and expression were the ones I had the most success, and the most fun with. For example, after reading The Great Gatsby my junior year of high school, we were assigned a music video project in which we got to take a modern day song, rewrite the lyrics to fit the story of the novel, and then make our own music video for the song we wrote. This assignment involved collaboration with others, thinking creatively, and using music and video production to connect to the story all while giving us a memorable experience. I do not believe the same effect could have came from just writing a paper about the book.
While on the topic of thinking creatively, Chapter 10 discusses the new literacy skills that students will need in the working world along with the roles they will have to fulfill in order to be successful. We need to keep these in mind when planning our instructional activities in order to put our students at the highest advantage for using skills they will need post high school. We want what our students do to mean something, and like earlier stated in chapter 1, we want their high school diplomas to mean something. I am a big advocate for creating lessons that students can give meaning to. I thought the text provided a lot of great ways to help students learn to fulfill these roles such as collaborators, synthesizers, adapters, personalizers, etc.
After my reading I spent time thinking about the book's vision of what it would look like if the other gaps aside from the academic achievement gap would be mandated to be closed. What it would look like if students used their creative skills to produce work that they were proud of, and what it would look like if classrooms were designed to supply students with the skills they would need in order to have success in their future careers and lives.
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