As I read Lynn Astarita Gatto's chapter Success Guaranteed Literacy Programs: I Don't Buy It! I absolutely was inspired by her. I admire the fact that she uses open source learning with her fourth grade class. I also love that she starts and ends the school day with 20 minutes of silent sustained reading for both her students and herself (2007).
But these aren't the only things I took away. I found myself wishing that I knew more teachers like her, even just one to talk with and have as a guide or mentor. Her ideas and point of view are very similar to the way I would like to create my classroom. "My approach is to provide experiences and problems that engage students in expanding their existing literacy practices in order to construct and use new ones" (Gatto, 2007). I know that not every teacher, teachers the same way, but shouldn't we all want to give our students this kind of real life education?
That leads me to wonder, why are we giving up "over fifteen hours of instructional time each year"(Gatto, 2007)? That is basically two whole school days that teachers aren't in the classroom with their students because they have to attend mandated meetings to discuss student progress. Here we are pushing more "learning" and accountability with high stakes testing, and on top of that taking time away so that we can sit around and discuss whether it is working or not. The fact that Gatto questions this as well really presses the matter more for me. Gatto takes a lot of flack for her view on things. But when someone is a multi award winning teacher,whose students score as well if not better on the standardized tests as those of school and district norms (Gatto, 2007). Honestly don't fix something that isn't broken.
Gatto focuses her classroom activites on student questions that have arrisen throughout the twelve weeks the unit lasts. She points out that the literacy programs that districts buy don't provide that kind of motivation for students. They revolve around predetermined questions from the publishers, and guidelines that the publishers feel will teach the students what they need to know. In Gatto's classroom every student has a part in what happens with the unit. Her classroom is filled with their work, their journals are filled with their thoughts and ideas about the unit.
Her manner for dealing with the weekly spelling test interests me as well. "Does knowing how to spell all the words on a test once a week exemplify being a good speller? If a child consistently spells well throughout his/her daily writing, then I would consider that child a good speller" (Gatto, 2007). She doesn't use the weekly word lists, and though each student has a paperback-spelling book, each is different because the students will add words that they have struggled with and need to know.
Gatto's class is active and participates in critical and creative learning. The kind that will prepare them for higher education and positions in the job market.
Gatto points out that her students make it past the fourth-grade-drop-off problem, which Gee previously explains to be the time when students first begin to read to learn (2003). Because she knows that her method works she is going to continue to resist the trend of buying literacy.
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, poses similar ideas as Gatto. He explains that there is a relationship between teachers and students that is comparable to banking. And this banking concept "anethetizes and inhibits creative power"(Freire, 1997). This mirrors how Gatto feels about participating in the perscribed literacy programs, and solidifies her feelings that literacy cannot be bought.
Ken Robinson talks about how creativity is being hindered in and by schools...I liked it and thought I would share it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
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