Week 3: Why Even Try?

This week's reading was a lot. And it made me wonder what the point of the class the readings were assigned for even was. I have this feeling a lot with my classes and it isn't one that is new either - I have had this feeling while going through schooling ever since I can remember. There have always been classes that I just look at the work needed for them and shake my head. What good is it doing me?

I doubt that I am alone in these ponderings. I am almost positive that it is an almost constant state of being in some shape or form for children in schooling everywhere. Much of our world spins around the concept of benefit maximization. Almost every decision we make in our daily lives has some aspect of weighing the pros and cons of any choice put before us. So, as a student in this class looking at these readings, I think, "I really just don't want to read these. There are so many pages and there probably won't be any super groundbreaking ideas in them that I won't be exposed to later, etc." However, I also think about the fact that my grade in the class that I am taking requires me to engage with the readings if I want to receive a grade good enough to pass so that I don't have to take the class again. (Spoiler alert: reading the articles normally wins out).

I say all this just to show that many (if not most, if not all) of our students will probably be thinking the same things when they are staring at the course work we have assigned. As a future teacher thinking about how my class will be set up, I don't want to discount the fact that for many students, my class and material won't be their favorite thing; they are going to have different interests. What am I supposed to do then? Why even try?

Further, if my students don't want to be engaged in the first place, and I obviously have a life and other things I can spend my time doing, why would I want to put all the effort into creating lessons that incorporate a whole bunch of disciplinary literacy skills when the students don't care to learn them; it would probably make more sense just to teach them the content that they are going to need to know for the upcoming standardized tests.

Except, here's my thought, if I don't care to try to push them to dig into the subject and explore it as if they were the most acclaimed professional in the field, why would they even want to try? I can tell you, they wouldn't. In the piece But What Does it Look Like? Illustrations of Disciplinary Literacy Teaching in Two Content Areas, Rainey et al provide some very in depth examples of how to incorporate disciplinary literacy skills into the curriculum used in the classroom. It looks time consuming to say the least. I think that might be a major turn-off for teachers. What I would like to posit though, is that it is a major time investment, not a major waste of time. By teaching the students how to think and act and analyze and communicate as if they were a professional in the field of study, you have given all of them the necessary skills they need to be critical of the information you are presenting more independently than if they were to be given solely the broad, basic skills and then told to analyze and make sense of the content.

Beyond making classroom tasks easier, there is a pride that comes from knowing that one is well versed and capable in a subject area, knowing that they possess the necessary skills to succeed at the tasks laid before them. Students should be taught the disciplinary skills that are going to help them succeed independently and deeper in the subject than what they would be able to do if they were dependent upon the teacher for the "expert" disciplinary skills.

Why do it? Why even try to make disciplinary literacy teaching something that occurs in the classroom? I think it is as simple as remembering that the students aren't always going to have you as their teacher and that as a teacher, you don't know everything. It is one thing to present your students with the content, not asking them to do any work because there is no way that they could possibly contribute anything that hasn't already been thought of by you or the other professionals in the field. The better thing to do though is to realize that if you provide your students with the disciplinary literacy skills necessary for them to be successful in your subject, you might just find that the apathy about the content that was once seen, disappeared, and you as a teacher might even learn something from your students.