Today at the Critical Literacy Conference at American University, Professor Harste read us a book entitled, "Once Upon an Ordinary Day" by Colin McNaughton and Satoshi Kitamura. This book, on the surface, was very uplifting. As some of the participant mentioned, the book does a great job at making creative teaching seem like a wonderful thing. The student in the book loves what this “Mr. G” does with the class, and as a reader, I did too. But we then began to discuss how this book must be read from a critical eye. I agree with the other participants that the students we teach would not have a home that looks like the students in the book. We have students that crave “ordinary” as one person stated. However this I have a problem with. We, as teachers, have a duty to our students to be consistent, but that should never force us to be ordinary. Mr. G’s extraordinary lesson sparks the student to think and ultimately enjoy one day at school. He goes home excited for the next day. Students should know what to expect in the day, and teachers should provide the stability that they crave, but we should always create extraordinary experiences as Mr. G does. The students should go home smiling as the little boy does in this story, and being ordinary is not the way to do this. We should never settle on an “Ordinary Day.”
4 comments:
I agree with your statement that "Students should know what to expect in the day, and teachers should provide the stability that they crave, but we should always create extraordinary experiences as Mr. G does."
I've learned that in dealing with teaching 9th graders last year that they really need consistency and to know what is to be expected of them and yet at the same time an outlet for their creative minds. It's essential for a teacher to create inspiring lessons that allow students to think extraordinarily.
-DOOM
The Ordinary Day was definately a little simplistic in it's lesson, but it does make a good point. Something I noted about the book, that we didn't really mention at the conference, was how the different students responded to the activity. It mentioned one student who "wrote what he/she thought the teacher wanted to hear" one "thought it was a worthless task" (or something to that effect) and there were several others the majority of whom did not respond in the positive way the protagonist did. This for me is the most reveletory part. Learners respond to different methods, so maybe using music works some of the time, but maybe building models or other methods work with other learners. Teachers sometimes take risks to make things extraordinary, sometimes it works, sometimes not. Even if it does, it doesn't mean that others will respect it.
One of my mentors, Andy Manning, when talking about curriculum, used to say that teachers need to "keep a conversational ball in the air". What he meant by this is that as teachers we need to find ways to keep the curriculum, alive, relevant, enjoyable, pleasurable...and so forth. I like MF's statement regarding creating opportunties for students "to think extraordinarily". This really goes along with the notion of putting on offer lots of different ways to learn and think about lots of different things.
vivian
It was interesting to hear the interpretations of what people got out of this book. I too felt it was an uplifting tale, especially from the point of view as a teacher. But I also wondered about what Harste said, "that children need to be able to see themselves in literacy."
Erin raises a good point about the unanswered voices that were mentioned in the book. I think from a critical literacy perspective this would be a good opportunity to ask the class such questions as "who is the audience?"
or "do you see yourself in this book?" It would be interesting to hear what others think an extraordinary day would be.
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