Week 1: The 21st Century Conundrum

This week's readings spoke to how I feel about being a teacher in the 21st century.  I often find myself wanting so many different things in my classroom and struggle connecting them. I want my students to be fluent readers, writer, mathematicians, scientists, and so much more.  I also want them to be prepared for the 21st century.   My principal is famous for saying; we are currently preparing our youth for jobs that are yet to exist.  I often find myself wondering how we can mold together good teaching practices with a strong desire for my students to be 21st century ready for jobs that are yet to be created.  

In the article by Warschauer & Ware (2008), there is a lot of discussion about how to engage students beyond just what is valued in the four walls of a school.  "Rather educators must look for ways to acknowledge and even appropriate for themselves the creative and complex literacy practices that youth bring to schools" (pg. 234).  As educators it is our job to make sure we are connecting with students and helping the develop skills needed to be successful in their adult lives. I often feel like my students digital literacy skills are lacking.  Many of my students do not have access to a computer with internet at home.  Many of them do play video games, though.  I wonder if there is a way to bridge the gap I feel when trying to teach my students the standards required in 2nd grade.  

I really struggled to pick a motivational label when reading Hobbs & Moore (2013): Chapter 2.  I hope that at the end of this course I can have multiple motivations to teach digital literacy.  I would love to be the teacher that really connected my students with civic engagement.  I think currently, I most connected with the Motivator and Spirit Guide labels.  I have worked deeply on my ability to connect with students and see them as a whole child.  We have spent a lot of the year as a class working on social emotional regulation and how we can share and connect to one another.  These are things I value as not only a teacher but as a person.  I often find that my students are dealing with situations way beyond what we expect most 7 and 8 year olds to deal with.  By being a Spirit Guide I work to channel my students' experiences into their learning.  I would like to be able to take the work we have already done around using a growth mindset and using social and emotional regulation to connect it to digital literacy.  I would like to see my students express themselves in many different multimedia modes and share their learning with their peers and families.  

And now we are back to the 21st century conundrum.  In a time where is feels like we are only piling work onto teachers without critically analyzing its effectiveness and whether it replaces anything we already have, I feel slightly lost.  I know my students need to learn to read and write.  They also need to learn to think critically and be able to use technology fluently.  Most of my students do not come into my classroom being able to use a computer.  They need help logging into a computer, opening the internet and navigating to new information.  My students also come to me not being able to read grade level text or write multiple complete sentences on the same topic.  All of these skills are important and take extreme amount of time in order to make them fluent.  Often as a teacher I feel the need to pick and choose, the lower my readers are the more I feel like I don't focus on practicing computer literacy.  The more time I spend practicing computer literacy the less time my students have time to practice how to write using a pencil and paper.  Maybe I am stuck in the 20th century or interpreting the standards in a narrow way.  

In the article by Warschauer, M., & Ware, M. (2008) there is discussion about how school district focus too closely on what would be defined as traditional reading and writing (pg. 220).  This is what worries me as an educator.  I feel like we are often given new things to try in addition to the things we are already doing.  Instead of really critically analyzing the purpose of this.  As our students move to all high stake testing on the computer this question about how to best prepare our students becomes even more important.  If a student cannot type, they cannot write the required essays needed on PARCC.  If a student cannot write with a paper and pencil, can they type? This article discusses how some studies might say yes, with the note that students must be able to type.  

These readings perhaps left me with more questions than answers.  I want to motivate my students and connect with them.  I also want to send them into the world with the most skills possible.  I am hoping by the end of the course I will be able to take well-established effective teaching strategies and combine them with 21st century skills in order to meet all the needs of my students.  

Sources:

·       Warschauer, M., & Ware, M. (2008). Learning, change, and power: Competing discourses of technology and literacy. In J. Coiro, M., Knobel, C. Lankshear, & D. J. Leu (Eds.) Handbook of research on new literacies (pp. 215-240). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

·       Hobbs & Moore (2013): Chapter 2 

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