Illustrative Examples of Issues Raised in Preservice Teachers’ Narratives
Issue 1: Student Motivation
From one of 63 teaching cases mentioning this issue:
My professor has told us about the benefits of linking literacy lessons with the visual and communicative arts. She said that among other things, these types of lessons provide opportunities for increased teamwork, individualized instruction, tapping into multiple intelligences, and promoting democratic educational opportunities. She also mentioned that another positive outcome of multiple literacy lessons is increased student motivation. Students have opportunities to decide what forms of communication they’ll use to show what they know. Therefore, they are inclined to do their best work.
Naturally, when I started to offer lessons that linked literacy lessons with the arts and technology, I thought my sixth grade students would act like actively involved learners. WRONG!! This group of students seems bored with everything I plan and do. They hate to respond to me in their journals. They complain every minute about getting out of their seats to do things like an Advanced Organizer where they dance or do a drama enactment. They refuse to sing. “Miss Ellie, why can’t we just read our books?” they ask. “Can we sit down now?” They kind of lurch and slouch whenever we do anything exciting. The only thing I can think of that might cause their lack of motivation is that they never did any of these types of lessons before we came into their classroom. Maybe they’re shy or embarrassed. You would think that they would be thrilled to be involved in these activities.
Issue 2: Risk Taking
From one of 31 teaching cases mentioning this issue:
My fifth grade students and I recently completed a diorama based upon The Great Kapok Tree [by Lynn Cherry, 1990]. Most of the students seemed to enjoy figuring out how to make the diorama structure (i.e., the cardboard backdrop). Most of the students also did a great job of determining what would be included in our diorama...what type of trees, what type of human figures, what type of reptiles. The students also were very involved with the idea of including text from the book. They wondered, “Should we include ideas about ecology?” “Should we interview people and include their ideas about the Amazon Basin?” “Should we have the animals and reptiles ‘talk’?” “Should we play a tape recording of jungle sounds as people look at our diorama?”
I really thought things were going along perfectly until I noticed that Raphael was not doing much of anything. He just stood there and looked at the other students’ art work. He did not cause any behavior problems, like annoy the other students or laugh at their art work, but he was not participating in our project and our group rules specifically say that students will do their best work.
“What’s the trouble?” I asked Raphael. Then, I said, “Time to get busy.” Raphael continued to do nothing. I decided to take him aside for a little teacher/student chat. I thought maybe he wasn’t feeling well or perhaps he was annoyed at something.
Well, Raphael sure surprised me. I asked him, “What’s the problem? Why aren’t you working on our diorama?”
He replied, “Nothing’s the matter. I just don’t do art.”
“Why not?” I responded.
Raphael thought a minute. Then, he said, “Donald doesn’t do art either. We always mess up and the kids get mad.”
“Surely that can’t be true,” I said. “Everyone’s artistic ideas and work are always good.”
“Well, my art work isn’t good,” said Raphael. “I might make mistakes. I might make stuff look funny.”
I realized then that Raphael always tries to be perfect in everything he does. He gets top grades. Maybe he doesn’t understand that artistic endeavors are based upon individual ideas and feelings. Maybe he thinks there is only one way to complete an art project. He probably doesn’t “do art” because he is afraid of failure.
Issue 3: Group Management and Planning
From one of 37 teaching cases mentioning this issue:
When I first told my kindergarten students that we would be performing a play, they immediately became disruptive and started yelling out what play they wanted to perform and what parts they wanted to take. Well, I got really upset over their behavior, so I said, “the next time we meet, I will have our drama production typed and I will assign parts to everyone.”
At our next session, I announced, “We are going to do a play about Goldilocks and the three bears. Jonah, you are the Poppa Bear, Margie, you are the Momma Bear, and George, you are the Baby Bear. Salina is Goldilocks and Mercedes is the narrator.”
I thought my prior planning and concrete directions would solve everything, but I was wrong. Jonah said, “I want to be the narrator,” and Salina said, “I want to be a bear.” So mass confusion reigned once more until finally we got the parts straightened out.
Issue 4: Self-Doubt
One of 23 journal entries on this issue:
When the topic of drama came up in our first couple of class meetings and you told us we would need to connect literacy lessons with drama activities I was so taken aback. The thought of doing drama with students scared me. I am not a creative person. I can do crafts -- you know -- with patterns, but I hate to get up in front of an audience. I have never been in a dramatic production and I did not know where to begin with students.
Well, the time is drawing near -- one of my assignments is to offer a small, informal drama enactment with my students to our preservice teacher peers and their students. I will be prepared and I now know the idea is to have fun and enhance students’ oral language, communication skills, etc., and etc. But, God help me.
Issue 5: Influences of the Media and Violence
From one of 35 teaching cases mentioning this issue:
It isn’t easy offering literacy-based arts activities to older students who have had few opportunities to engage in artistic pursuits. I teach sixth grade boys and most have never made books, pasted, sung in a school chorus, painted, created papier mache sculpture, or participated in drama productions. They love our literacy-based arts experiences, but they have no idea how to use their own self-expression and creativity. Instead, they fall back on what they see on TV and hear on their boom boxes.
“Dr. Love and Puff Daddy are COOOL,” David shouted when we were talking about putting on a play.
“Yeah,” Anthony responded. “Let’s do a play about Dr. Love and Puff Daddy and their wicked ways.”
“I don’t know who they are,” I answered. The idea of putting on a play about rap stars named Dr. Love and Puff Daddy were not on my teaching agenda.
The same thing happened when we painted. The students created terrible looking creatures that they had seen on TV. They also tried to paint really provocative looking women that looked like the Spice Girls, and they got frustrated when they couldn’t create animated cars, trains, and animals like they see in high tech films. Well, I finally had to make some rules. “No more TV and rap stuff in our work,” I announced. “We need to use our own imaginations and ideas.”
Issue 6: Time Management
One of 16 journal entries about this issue:
Before learning about this approach, I wondered how and if I would be allowed to implement many of my ideas in the classroom. I’d always envisioned playing beautiful classical music for my students and displaying works by Van Gogh and Monet. Encouraging pantomime and acting out scenes from books or plays are also activities I’ve believed to be beneficial to children. The exposure to this program gives me hope that I’ll be allowed to instruct in and create a learning environment for my students that will foster independent thinking and enable students to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills that will prove valuable to them as they become responsible for their own learning.
My biggest worry, though, is having enough time to pull all these ideas together. Many times this semester I’ve worked all weekend planning a lesson with visuals, music, scripts, etc., only to have the activity fail. These failures have led to valuable insight when reflected upon as to what went wrong and how could I have better met the needs of my students. It has made me realize that I can expect this to happen as I gain experience as a new teacher. I believe I now have a more realistic view of teaching. The time factor is a major issue. I’ve attempted to accept my failures in a positive way and use them to increase my efficiency as an educator.
Issue 7: Lack of Equipment
One of 15 teaching cases mentioning this issue:
In this state we keep reading in the newspaper about how all the classrooms are wired and how every student in the state will graduate from high school being computer literate. Well, those reporters better visit this school! Granted this is a middle school and the sixth grade students I work with still don’t have proficient keyboarding skills. Still, there is a bigger problem! Last week I planned my science lesson about the electromagnetic spectrum. I used my home computer to locate some great web sites that offered beautiful details about color and light. I was all set to go. First, we explored what we already knew about the topic of color and light. Then, we read a short text about color and light. We used many reading strategies. As a culminating activity, I planned to have my students use the computers in the Media Center to access the web sites I had discovered at home.
Guess what? We got to the Media Center and out of the four computers that ordinarily were there, two were missing. “Where are the other two computers?” I asked the librarian.
She replied, “One is broken and is out for repairs and the other one was needed in the office.”
Well, there went that lesson! I tried to use the two computers, but there were too many students so they could not see the screen. Chaos might be a good word to describe the scene. The students were bored and they got into trouble (of course). I am really disappointed in me as a teacher and in the lack of computers.
Issue 8: Low Computer Literacy
From one of 15 sets of field notes mentioning this issue:
C has taken her three middle school students to the computer lab. She wants them to compose their creative stories as they type. She was unprepared for how slow they are at keyboarding skills. As they hunt and peck for letters, she looks at the clock and tells me that she will have to rearrange her lesson and reconsider how she will integrate technology into the writing process. Her frustration appears to heighten when I remind her that the bus will be coming soon for the children.... All of the children had left their book bags and coats in the other classroom.... “I guess I didn’t think ahead about all of these details!”
Issue 9: Communicating to Parents
From one of 27 journal entries mentioning this issue:
In my preschool classroom, literacy experiences were in every section of the room. Students were writing menus and grocery lists in the home center. They were using multiple types of paper, pens, markers, and crayons in our writing center to write books, letters, and cards. While in the literacy corner, they were practicing book sharing routines, developing concepts about stories, and using books and drawing to gain the attention of others. In the puppet theater area they were developing concepts about stories and at the sensory table they were practicing writing letters while learning to recognize the alphabet as a special set of written signs. I only wish I could have explained this to my students’ parents as they stood wondering about what their child was learning while they were so engrossed in play.
From Gipe, J.P., Richards, J.C., & Moore, R.C. (2001, March). Integrating literacy lessons and the visual and communicative arts: Preservice teachers’ concerns and challenges. Reading Online, 4(8). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/gipe/index.html
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted March 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232