(Analytic Essay: Fall)
It was quite a shock to go from the Parent Infant Center where students were given the freedom to make any and all decisions surrounding their education, to my second placement in the fall at Powel Elementary School with first grade students. My classroom mentor was the opposite of Krista from PIC. In fact, during our first two weeks of school, my classroom mentor actually asked me if I thought she was "acting too much like a drill sergeant" one morning after we had dropped the kids off at music.
"Pseudochoice": Fall Placement
However, I learned that it is harder than you think. In my case, I often found myself giving students choices unintentionally because of the way that I spoke to them. Instead of telling them what to do, I sometimes framed my request as a question. For example, I caught myself saying things like, "Can you go back to your seat?" or "Can you raise your hand?" as opposed to giving a firm directive such as "Return to your seat." or "Raise your hand." The language that I used suggested that I was giving the students a choice when really I was asking them to do as I said.
My classroom mentor on the other hand often intentionally asked the students questions, but then disregarded or discredited their response. One of the things that Teacher Amy did that I really liked was that she would hold class meetings if she sensed that there were problems in the classroom. My personal reflection to my Penn Mentor (Artifact 3), explains what happened during one of these meetings.
Artifact 3: Personal Reflection, October 22, 2014
To me, this was yet another example illustrating a situation where the teacher poses a question, but does not genuinely want an answer. As Nel Noddings has written, “We cannot enter into dialogue with children when we know what our decision is already made” (Kohn, 1993, p. 17). I often think back to that occasion in our class meeting. I feel like there was so much potential there, but by forcing her goal onto a student who was robbed of the opportunity to make the choice for himself, the whole situation ended up being, in my mind, more detrimental than beneficial.
In addition to asking students to questions and then giving them the answers that the teacher wanted, my classroom mentor would occasionally keep some students in during recess or lunch and pose it as something that the students chose to do. This is similar to what Kohn (1993) has identified as "pseudochoice" which he defines in the following way:
While well-meaning educators may offer very different prescriptions regarding the nature and scope of students’ participation in decision making, I believe that certain ways of limiting participation are basically deceptive and best described as “pseudochoice”. It is disturbing to find these tactics recommended not only be proponents of blatantly controlling classroom management programs, such as Assertive Discipline, but also by critics of such programs who purport to offer an enlightened alternative. |
Trying to Provide real choice
Having seen how the students in my class weren't given many genuine opportunities of choice, I decided that I wanted to design my Term III lessons so that my students would be able to make decisions for themselves. The idea behind my Term III Literacy Lesson was that I wanted students to be able to select a method for telling a story about their personal lives. They were given the options of writer, storyteller, or illustrator. I selected my small group of students intentionally. I wanted to give these students an opportunity, if they wanted, to use the strengths that I had observed all semester. I noticed that some of the students were entertaining and quite hilarious storytellers. Other members of the small group that I selected drew beautiful doodles and drawings on anything they could find. What you can see in the rubric that I created for that lesson (Artifact 4), is that, with the exception of one student, I largely guessed which role they would take on incorrectly.
Artifact 4: Anticipated student role vs. actual role in Term III Literacy Lesson
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Although there could have been a number of reasons why the students selected the role that they did, I reflected on the lesson and came up with a few things that I planned on doing differently the next time (Artifact 5).
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Artifact 5: Fieldnote Reflection on my Term III Literacy Lesson
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Overall, I was happy with the level of work that my students produced for this lesson, but I had a bunch of ideas of ways that I would introduce choice to students during my next lessons.