Reframing the Narrative of Learning Loss Cultivating Genius by Resisting Deficit Language in the Wake of the 2020-2021 School Year by Hannah Lewis

    As the 2020-2021 school year comes to a close, I feel as eager as my students to reach summer and put this year behind me. My district, like many others, has already begun to shift our focus to summer programming and to the next school year. I am sure many administrators are eager to provide families with opportunities to mitigate learning loss experienced during the hectic 2020-2021 school year.

    I am confident that most of the leaders, families, and teachers concerned with learning loss are coming from places of genuine concern for students’ futures. However, after reading Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy for WPCTE this year, I’m trying to reframe my thinking slightly to instead consider how to leverage students’ diverse experiences of this past school year to cultivate genius in 2021-2022.

    If you did not yet get the chance to read Cultivating Genius, I highly recommend it. I found it provoked really thoughtful reflection on my own classroom practices. In particular, Dr. Muhammad’s discussion of deficit language left me feeling a bit “called out”--not in a bad way, but in a way that challenged and empowered me to do better.

    Dr. Muhammad describes deficit language as “language such as at risk, defiant and disadvantaged,” but goes on to explain how initiatives that label students--such as Response to Intervention--also feed into understandings of students as “deficient.” She reminds us that “Many times, youth may struggle with skills like decoding or reading fluency, but they can read social contexts and environments exceptionally well...This type of reading shouldn’t go unacknowledged” (41-42). She continues:

The problems leading to the need for culturally relevant education have been inadequately addressed by many policies and initiatives in education. These become fresh coats of paint on structures that are debilitating.

While the look of these new approaches may seem different and innovative, they are not. They are just masking the same systemic ways of being and thinking about learning. These approaches continue to marginalize those who are already underserved in and out of schools (42).

    By no means do I consider myself an especially guilty offender. I do not refer to my students as “disadvantaged” or “deficient.” I have always prided myself on my ability to highlight students’ strengths and encourage all students to achieve their own personal best. However, I have found myself--this year in particular--wondering from time to time about students’ motivation, prior learning, and effort. I have participated in discussions about “tier 3 students,” applying the language of RtI as a label when, in fact, they are not “tier 3 students,” but are students receiving tier 3 services in a particular set of skills--those that we often value in schools at the expense, Dr. Muhammad points out, of other skills students may bring to the table.

    After reading Cultivating Genius, I began to actively notice when I thought or spoke in this way and make a concerted effort to change or re-frame my thinking. At that point, I began to notice even more how commonplace such language is, even from well-intentioned educators and administrators.

    We care about our students, and we want them to be reading what we consider appropriately complex texts; we want them to be writing with a certain degree of eloquence and conventional expertise; we want them to have all the skills that we are so certain will lead to success. And many of them have not been reading regularly this year--at least not the kinds of texts we would like them to be reading. Many of them have not been practicing writing skills this year--at least not the kinds of writing and composition we value. But the fallacy arises when we believe that they have been doing nothing of value when they haven’t been doing what we most value.

    I don’t mean to suggest we shouldn’t hold our students to high standards next year--nor would Dr. Muhammad, who also emphasizes the importance of a curriculum steeped in intellectualism and criticality for all students. Rather, I’m suggesting we begin the year with an inventory of what students have learned. I’m not talking about diagnostic or benchmark assessments, although I’m sure those will be a part of back-to-school for many of us. What I’m talking about are the skills that we don’t see on those tests. What have students learned about innovative ways to use technology to build communities with their friends and family members? What have they learned about how to grieve together--or how to grieve alone? What can they teach us about what it means to be there for others at a difficult time? Or how they have learned to deal with high degrees of stress, despair, boredom, loneliness, frustration?

    I’m talking about social-emotional learning, but not only that. This wasn’t just a year of “pandemic learning.” Many of our students were actively engaged in current events. Many watched news unfold during the events of January 6th, the Derek Chauvin trial, and other monumental events. We should find out what students think about what they’ve experienced, what they know, and what they want to know more about.

    In practice, this might take many forms, including freewrites, class discussions, or expanding conventional “book talk” activities to “text talks,” letting students promote nontraditional texts and analyzing them in meaningful ways. WPCTE members can think back to Leslye Roessing’s Talking Texts, our book club book from October. I’m reminded of something I learned at the PCTELA annual conference in 2019. There, 2015 National Teacher Shanna Peeples described a pedagogical practice she has used: letting students ask questions, and then facilitating students’ journeys to answer them. She described handing out note cards early in the school year on which students wrote about something they wished they knew or understood, and those questions provided fodder for extensive learning through reading, writing, and socratic seminars. Since I teach online, I haven't yet figured out a way to make student inquiry the center of my teaching like Peeples did, but Cultivating Genius has inspired me to look for more ways to do so.

    I am sure that many of us need a bit of a break before we begin actively thinking about and planning for the next school year. I would urge you to take your break, but when you are ready, think about what new knowledge, experience, and curiosity students will bring with them into the Fall rather than focusing on what they failed to learn this year. Doing so, we may just make way for richer learning opportunities than we have seen in years past.

WPCTE John Manear's Commemoration of Richard Robinson, the CEO of Scholastic Publications

I learned today of the death of Richard Robinson, the CEO of Scholastic Publications.  

During my early years teaching, I became involved with NCTE which had always had Scholastic as one of its major promoters.   I was invited to serve as a consultant for one of Scholastic magazine’s publications, Literary Cavalcade.  Once a year, consultants would meet together at the company headquarters in New York.  In 1977, I met Maurice Robinson (known as Robbie) for the first time, as well as his son Richard.  

Robbie had founded Scholastic in Wilkinsburg (Pittsburgh) in 1920 and began publication of the Western Pennsylvania Scholastic magazine.  Shortly after his son Richard was born, the family and the business moved to New York where it continued to develop into the huge enterprise it has become.  Robbie continued his leadership until his retirement when Richard assumed the role of CEO and President of the Board.  During my half dozen years as a consultant, writing the teaching  guides for Literary Cavalcade, I got to know both Robbie and his son quite well.  We always had an opportunity to get together at the annual NCTE convention where Scholastic sponsored a dinner to which all in attendance were invited.  I have attended the convention yearly since 1970.  When WPCTE sponsored the convention here in Pittsburgh in 1993 and again in 2005, Richard joined us when I hosted a reception at my home.

The Scholastic “empire” expanded beyond all expectation when they became the American publisher for Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, Goosebumps, Baby Sitters Club, and Clifford, the Big Red Dog, to name just a few.

Richard was always a committed philanthropist, committing huge resources to various literacy initiatives.  Richard was always one of those friends that I would see only once or twice a year, but for many years.  Friends like that you never forget.

A Teacher’s Plight: A Reading Emergency - Students’ Barriers to Life by Antoinette DeLorenze

A Teacher’s Plight: A Reading Emergency - Students’ Barriers to Life

Teaching English to Special Education students affords the opportunity to enrich a generation through assisting students to become independent life-long learners.  There are barriers that teachers of English encounter when they are establishing and reinforcing their students’ skills.  English continues to be a struggle for students with disabilities because of the specific nature of the language. As teachers, our ultimate goal is to promote a desire for our students to become life-long learners. Special Education teachers need a variety of tools in their toolbox such as using diagnostic prescription, teaching code switching, and implementing trauma-informed activities.

 When dealing with student writing concerns, Special Education teachers must think diagnostically to achieve educational goals. Many special education students require prescriptive teaching in self-regulation, positive racial identity, and academic enrichment.  These concepts are intertwined as one impacts the other in significant ways. My first step in teaching English to students with disabilities requires a skill set that is similar to a diagnostician with the goal of developing a specific prescription and methods to help remediate deficits. Any Special Education teacher knows that the learning cycle is to test, identify, modify, teach, and re-teach. When lesson planning, it is important to create learning opportunities in the following three areas: reading (fluency, comprehension activities), vocabulary (working with ideas and enrichment), and writing (using various models and state rubrics) to help facilitate an approach that is developed in all three areas. In addition, it is important that students read narrative pieces that promote critical thinking that will develop arguments through fact and opinion exercises.  

English Literature exposes students to past situations through narrative articles, books and writings that not only express the attitudes of the time but expose students to various perspectives. It is important to note that reading for information and reading for fun are vastly different. Oftentimes, the reading materials for students are simply related to text messages and emails.  As mentioned previously, this notion has shown to be detrimental to student outcomes as students primarily use this language in their speaking and writing. Students often utilize text messages to express ideas in a shortened, modified version that is markedly different from the original word. It is the English teachers’ thought that although this code switch is something that is part of life, it is important to teach standard English language to foster success in other areas to not negatively impact their budding professional life. We must begin to understand who our students are and the barriers they face as students with diagnosed disabilities. Without this information, we are grasping at straws with no real direction, but there are different strategies that make teaching much more effective, especially when students have additional concerns such as dealing with trauma.

As an emotional support teacher, one such strategy that can be used to assist my professional work is the knowledge of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). When people experience trauma through ACEs, they tend to cope through their trauma negatively. English teachers can educate students on ACEs by using Trauma-Informed Teaching. Teachers can help students make connections between informational articles and the text to help understand ACEs and healthy ways to cope through trauma. The reading material practices the necessary skills that educators are trying to address, but in a fashion that is more appropriate for the needs of students with emotional disturbance as well as any student who has experienced trauma in the past. 

Teachers need a tool box of activities that is based on trauma-informed thinking and planning. It is important that they are aware of the different types of trauma and the effects these situations have on the students’ ability to engage within the classroom.  When selecting materials for a class, it is important to think didactically. It is important to consider state standard alignments and trauma-informed teaching as a unit where materials are chosen to reinforce both agendas. ACE teaching is broken into several categories with known methodologies that help teachers to better understand the learner.  The first category is abuse which contains physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The next category is neglect which includes both physical and emotional. Finally, the household dysfunction category includes mental illness, incarcerated relative, mother treated violently, substance abuse, and divorce. 

Adolescent victims of trauma stemmed from ACEs may not be receiving information in safe spaces about how to cope with their experiences. It’s so important for students to be educated about ACEs and how to cope with trauma because ACEs can have lifelong repercussions. By incorporating ACEs education into the curriculum, students who may be experiencing trauma will not have their experiences silenced. Students need to be given the tools in a safe space to cope with their lived trauma in healthy ways while practicing the necessary skills to become better learners and English students. 

In conclusion, it is a responsibility for teaching professionals to continue to teach real life coping skills within the subject of English.  ACE is one way we can begin to address the trauma that affects many of our students with emotional disabilities. Our oath is to close gaps and enrich lives, and as teachers we have the ability to challenge a student to become his or her best. We must be mindful in how we are offering assistance to students with disabilities. It is our duty to contribute everything we can to enrich our students’ lives and provide them opportunities to experience success in our classrooms and within their personal lives. This will, in turn, enable them to become life-long learners. The opportunities teachers provide students need to be closely monitored and adjusted when necessary, but most importantly their successes are celebrated! 

Antoinette DeLorenze is an 11th and 12th grade Special Education and English Teacher at Oliver Citywide Academy in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.