Letting Go of Content

Blog #8: What aspects of the Structure phase do you feel most and least confident about?
Describe an "aha" moment you had this week, if any.
Rachel McGee will be coming to class this week to talk about St. Mary's University's eBrarian initiative. What questions do you have for her about their program of online IL tutorials and research help?

The second phase of Booth's USER model is the "structure" stage.  In this step, you define what it is you want students to accomplish, then you create a plan for the strategies that you will use in the lesson.  Whether you call them goals, objectives, or outcomes, knowing what exactly you want students to do should inform all of your teaching strategies.  This is something with which I currently feel comfortable, but it has taken time and experience to get there.  When I first started teaching high school English, I admit I planned my units around the texts we would read, not the outcomes of what I wanted students to do.  "During this semester, students will read classic works of American Literature such as The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and The Scarlet Letter," for example.  I think many teachers operated, and some still do operate, this way.  Content and coverage guide unit and lesson planning instead of skills and knowledge.  This can be particularly true of courses in which teachers use a textbook they feel they must "get through."  Rushing through to finish the texts, chronology, etc. can sacrifice critical thinking and deep exploration of topics.

Of course it is impossible for teachers to introduce students to every great piece of literature ever written, every country's history, every philosophical movement, etc.  We always have to make choices. But it can be really, really hard, I know, to let go of content.  What if students never read Hamlet?  What if they don't study the Mexican-American war?  What if they never read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech?"  We have to let it go and plan units around outcomes.  "During this semester, students will be able to compare and contrast the context, content, and style of a classic text with a modern text," or "Students will be able use critical lenses to explore gender, race, and social class in several texts from different countries," or "Using the archetypal lens, students will be able to analyze and evaluate story patterns in a variety of texts."  I now teach fewer texts, but we go deeper.  And I'm okay with that (but I still really want them to read Hamlet).

Now, as a new teacher of research instruction as a graduate assistant here at St. Kate's, I am definitely back to feeling I have to cover it ALL. But, there is simply no way to do this in an hour long session. Last Saturday in my Leadership class, librarians from MCTC came in to talk to us about their program. I was surprised that MCTC requires all students to take a semester long credit-bearing information literacy course that is taught by librarians.  In my opinion, this is the ideal.  A whole semester to teach these skills is appropriate and reasonable.  An hour long one shot session is not. However, that is all most of us have.  So, we have to prioritize and perform triage.  What skills and knowledge are most important for these particular students doing this particular assignment?  Of course, another blocking force is not knowing these particular students or even sometimes what the particular assignment is.  Building relationships and communicating with their teachers is paramount and yet I am realizing it often doesn't happen.  I am teaching a research session this afternoon, and though I have tried to reach out to the professor, I still have a limited understanding of what their assignment entails and where students are in the process.  It is not best practice, but I just have to do the best I can.