Brain-Based Literacy

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Wendi Pillars writes in Education Week about "Teachers as Brain Changers."  The four pillars of brain change, according to her article, are Relevance, Pattern, Pleasure, and Thinking Critically (for and by oneself).  I am curious as to why Creating is not on this list, but I am not an interpreter of neuroscience.

I think about the role each of these plays in the development of literacy, and I sense that most ELA teachers today are embedding all four of them in instruction.  However, I think many teachers need to be reminded that these elements need to be in balance.  

On Pleasure: As I read through ELA forums, nings, tweets, blogs, and discussions, I am dismayed to find that Pleasure seems to be rising to the top of the list -  narrowly defined by the same definition implied by Pillars: "I'm finding more ways to bring laughter and pleasure into my classroom and creating playful ways to explore and learn." 

I don't believe into the notion that playful exploration is the brain-feeding pleasure essential to learning.  Instead, I believe in the pleasure that comes from connecting directly to a text at the exact time you are ripe for connection.  This is the pleasure described by author Nicholar Carr in his NY Times opinion piece "My First Page-Turner" and by Lisa Rowe Fraustino in her piece, "Here's to Pipi Longstocking."  I believe in the pleasure of understanding.  This is the pleasure discussed by The Tempered Radical in "Writing Student Friendly Learning Goals." I believe in the pleasure that comes after the hard work necessary to meet a writing or reading goal.  This is the pleasure that I discussed in my post about motivation.  I believe in the pleasure that comes from finding joy in someone else's text, a pleasure that puts those words into a permanent chink in the brain (and often, the heart).  All authors have written about this pleasure, and I remind you that our students are all authors.  Last, I believe in the pleasure found in "ah hah!" moments - those moments when patterns are discovered or invented or settle into place like puzzle pieces or leap fully formed into the brain - and the discovery leads to new questions and new patterns. This pleasure is found throughout science, mathematics, and engineering memoirs and histories.  It is what inspired me to write my Circus post. 

These are what I call Hard Pleasures. They are the Pleasures - not contrived games, "fun projects," digital machinations, celebratory events, hands-on and out-of-the-seat experiences - that connect to the learning of literacy.  I am not a Scrooge. I would not and never did forswear any of the easy pleasures just listed.  As a 1:1 teacher, I did these and more. There is no doubt that they make the classroom a happier place, like allowing everyone to sit with only whom he chooses, never giving HW, putting on a 10 minute performance to begin every class, and - hey - if students don't like to write they don't have to. But that is the necessary performance of education, not the stuff of it.  As Seymour Papert was fond of reminding us, learning is hard fun.

Frankly, it pains me to find teachers asking other teachers for pleasurable activities at the middle and high school levels. It is not that they ask, it is that I sense they are asking without a sound goal or identified reason. If you know your students, if you know their needs and interests, and if you like them, creating easy pleasures is almost automatic.  And the fact of the matter is that teachers can not create hard pleasures for their students.  They can only structure opportunities for them to be found.

This is where the other three elements of brain-based literacy come into play, for they are the elements that open the door for hard pleasure to be found.  Literacy instruction would go a lot further if ELA teachers went back to the drawing board and - UBD-style and Pink-style and game-theory-style - embedded Relevance, Pattern, Hard Pleasure, and Thinking Critically not into every unit, but into every class period.  Take out those old lesson plans and redraw them.  Put a checklist on your wall. Did you hit every brain-growth point this period?

On Relevance: Under-applied and over-applied. Related to but not the same as Differentiation.  Generally over-rated. Yes, lessons need to be relevant to the students in the class.  That is one way their brains listen to the message.  But every brain is different. A class of 22 will have at least 5 different relevance benchmarks, often more.  And the brain can be stretched through connection of new-to-known, meaning that relevance may not occur to a student until after texts and concepts have been explored.

Relevance is not the same as "teaching only what they are interested in" or "not teaching what they don't know something about already."  For most k-12 students, Easy Relevance is like sitting down with a beloved relative every few weeks. When content sits at the comfort level, relevance comes easy. That is what pleasure reading in all of its forms is about.  But it is Hard Relevance that interests me.  This is tall mountains and bad dreams.  It's tough choices and unfamiliar territory.  It's the relevance necessary for the student to advance in skill and understanding.  That is a hard truth that many teachers and writers avoid.  Sorry - it is true.  Relevance does not come easy.

For one thing, it is necessary if Patterns are to be found.  Something as simple as an author study in elementary school will show students that prolific authors use patterns in language, illustration, subject matter, theme. Other patterns can be found by locating folk tale story patterns and then applying these to horror fiction, tracing patterns in fantasy or magical fiction, or tracing memoir patterns across several generations of writers.  Patterns of journey-writing can be traced from the Romans to Lewis and Clark to Kerouac to today's wanderers and explorers.

This is hard work.  Pulling opportunities together takes a teacher of imagination and wide reading - or one with the support of a community of wide readers.  Asking for this type of input is an excellent use of an ELA network. 

Last, experienced teachers know that every class is different.  What worked last year will probably not work this year.   A teacher can not be successful with someone else's success.  Adapt, adapt, adapt. 

And that covers Thinking Critically.  Teachers have to believe that their literacy and their successes are also brain-based.  If not the teacher, then how the students?

Found in the salad... a Literacy Metaphor

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Wendy's in Topsham [pronounced top - sum],  Maine.  His order was a Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad.   But after dressing and tossing, John perceived that his salad was something with apples - definitely not Caesar.  But the salad did contain a bread bag closure clip, bright yellow, covered with creamy Caesar dressing.  


John returned the meal to the counter, held the yellow clip up under the manager's nose, and stated: "I'm not going to sue - I didn't swallow it."


The manager didn't apologize or sympathize.  He just offered up a replacement salad. 

I dug into my own Spicy Chicken Caesar with some caution.  I mined.  I sorted, pushed, poked. Good thing, because I found a well-dressed strip of plastic that looked suspiciously like the wrapping material used for the silverware in the restaurant.  Yuck.  I put it aside and proceeded to eat - slowly.  The dog got the fries.

Interpretation:  What's the metaphorical link here to literacy education?  For those who use purchased or downloaded lessons and materials:

• Even though expensive canned and processed lessons are presented as globally edible, even though they are digital and therefore identical, even though they are highly rated and recommended, they should be eaten with caution. Embedded or slipped inexpertly into a question set, vocabulary list, or reading passage may be material that is not what you want your students to swallow.  Mine and poke and prod all materials that you did not design.
• If you, the teacher, don't like what you find, get a full and free substitution.
• Sort through, push and poke what you find online - free and not.
• Be prepared to throw out the inedible. Have your own Plan B.

Extended interpretation:
 
I go to Wendy's rarely and usually under the pressures of time or travel.  I make the same food, my way, at home, on a regular basis.  

I have always, as a teacher, been leery of packaged lessons and downloaded materials for the middle school classroom.  These range from pre-digital and post-digital anthologies, to vocabulary and grammar texts, to leveled readers and book collections, to entire grade level ELA curricula (with assessments).  Not using packaged materials, however, means that an ELA curriculum takes on the appearance of a tossed salad.

This what happened to a typical school's ELA program over the last 7 years:

• print anthologies receded to storage, their contents maligned and ignored (many great stories, poems, plays, images and other texts disappeared from the curriculum, differentiation resulted from expansion of choice for students, but scope of reading was greatly reduced),
• vocabulary instruction was tiered, PD'd, and distributed to all subjects (confusion as to who teaches roots, affixes, etc., disagreement about importance of context clues, focus on tier 3 rather than tier 2),
• all-class reading was reduced or eliminated (depending on the need of the specific class) and replaced by a combination of Reading Workshop, Independent Reading and Literature Circles (fabulous new ideas for thematic circles - global literature - were supported with purchases, when groups and 1-1 conversations worked, students learned how to use text in discussion, but reluctant readers could stall out and advanced readers often were not pushed enough; poetry and drama disappeared unless the gap this created was noticed; online media gradually embedded in lessons; growth of visual and media literacy in curricula),
• grammar and usage instruction disappeared as a discrete unit and was embedded in individual writing growth plans and discussion, supported by online exercises, quizzes, etc. as well as paper materials (standards of correctness and quality began to be applied across all subject areas, opportunities for flipped instruction arose), 
• writing became Writing Workshop (creative writing began to disappear from most curricula, to be replaced by analysis and persuasion, confusion about which process to follow, increased writing in all subject areas),
• SSR was scheduled, eliminated, partially scheduled, scheduled again... (time was made in the school day for "pleasure reading" of choice may prevent some readicide, but the research on the value of SSR for ALL is unclear),
• Title I was reevaluated and the beginnings of a test-dependent RTI program put in place (targeted instruction in reading is wonderful if the teachers are highly trained to both teach and assess; in order for testing to be valuable, it must be done twice yearly at least and by the same trained person - a real time-consumer; student time for other remediation - math - was limited; students had a clear idea of "where they scored" on the tool used, with the hope that this would translate into better standardized reading scores due to better reading choices; for many, a wide range of interesting fiction became out of bounds - what a turn off!),
• there was a trend toward "non-written" and graphic assessments of understanding (posters and presentations predominated,  developing design, digital, decision-making and communication skills (how this affected higher order thinking and team-work skills is unclear because these are not yet assessed; students who find social learning and complex organizational tasks difficult were at a disadvantage),
• assessment migrated to rubrics within standards-based differentiated assignments (the grading and reporting system remained the same so grade inflation resulted, clouding communication of learning),
• the library lost staff and funds, in deference to a Literacy Specialist and testing/tutoring aides, bi-yearly reading assessments, and a Book Room (money transferred rather than increased, resulting in a huge loss for a school).

I see this, metaphorically, as the salad with the yellow plastic clip.  In reaction to the need for new and novel and talked-up, there has been a mix-up.  Labels have gotten confused, apples have appeared in place of Caesar. What is on the plate is not a bad salad, but it is in part or whole the wrong salad.  And hidden in it is some inedible plastic.  And, as a fabulous teacher recently reminded me, sometimes a teacher also gets bad ingredients.  [that is a different discussion]

A bad thing is that school leadership is often like the Wendy's manager - willing to quickly substitute but not willing to investigate why there is plastic in the salad so that this does not happen again.   Seasonal-have-to's replace tried-and-true. Retraining of staff is necessary, but often not completed.  Where there once was the reliable comfort of a consistent offering,  there now is a salad du jour, a remix of old ingredients and new, trendy ones. The quality becomes unreliable.  The result is that many teachers, students and parents are no longer satisfied customers. Not to mention colleges, community colleges and prospective employers. 

Some of the list above is a result of substitution.  Some is a result of faddism.  Some is a result of mandate.  Some is (alas) a result of teacher acquiescence or laziness. Some is a result of the pragmatic pressures, especially time.

And too little is a result of reasoned study and a deep philosophy of learning and education.

The good thing is that with tossing and dressing, poking and scrutinizing, weaknesses and mistakes can be revealed and corrected before any great harm is done to students. Schools need to do this internal evaluation of ELA pedagogy and curriculum, cross-referenced to standards and (if necessary) to assessment data, as an on-going process. How many are doing so?  It is so much easier to be a trend-follower. 

True story: At about 55, my father swallowed a plastic bread clip - he didn't know it, of course. Much later, no one knows how much later, he almost died from massive peritonitis.  He lost 3' of intestine. He never fully recovered his digestive functions and lived with stress and pain for the rest of his life.

As budget funds shrink and the trendy pressure to engage rather than challenge students mounts, do we really want to further compromise our most important educational offering - literacy?