Collaboration Through Student-Centered PLCs

By: Shanna Towery, South Carolina ELA Teacher

Greeting a classroom full of students and then closing out the rest of the school world with a firmly shut door seems to be the norm for many classroom teachers today. The autonomy afforded to teachers has its benefits, but it can also be detrimental to the mental health of teachers as well as the overall culture of a school.

What’s Wrong with Collaboration?

It would be hard to pinpoint exactly what is to blame for the general ill-will often felt by educators towards collaboration or the dreaded PLC. Maybe it’s the sense of competition garnered from high-stakes testing or the half-hearted attempts at professional development where many teachers are sure to be found half-listening with a stack of ungraded papers. Whatever the cause, the real casualties when collaboration is not fostered, encouraged, and celebrated are the ones who need it the most–our students.

Collaboration: For the Students or For the Students?

Most teachers would agree that students are social creatures. As such, we can utilize their tendencies for communication through class discussion, turn-and-talk strategies, or collaborative groups as effective teaching tools. In this sense, educators are encouraged to use collaboration among students to foster learning in the classroom, but are teachers as willing to collaborate together to ensure every student truly learns? How often do teachers meet in your building to use real classroom data to authentically discuss student progress, successes, needs, for enrichment?

A tree, in a forest, with a question mark painted on it. — Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash

For too many schools, the answer to these inquiries would be disappointing to advocates for professional collaboration. Why is it that collaboration among students in the classroom is a non-negotiable, while the adults in the building do their best to cling to their autonomy? When did we outgrow communication as a means to deepen and build mutual understanding? How can we be so willing to participate in discussion forums, Facebook groups, book clubs, or Bible studies, but hesitate to collaborate with the colleagues in our buildings? And most importantly, what can we do to turn this around?

PLC: More Than Meets the Eye

Bulls-eye — Photo by Oliver Buchmann on Unsplash

Professional Learning Communities have gotten a bad rep thanks to half-hearted attempts done simply to check a proverbial box. In reality, PLCs have so much more potential and value when utilized correctly. While book studies and grade level/department level meetings are important and definitely have their place in a positive school climate, the kind of PLCs I have found success with are more about student achievement than they are teacher-centered. In this type of PLC, teachers would meet together prior to teaching to discuss learning goals and objectives. The teachers would not discuss activities or lesson plans so much as they would discuss what they truly wanted their students to gain from upcoming lessons. Only when the goals have been identified would teachers discuss how best to teach for the goals as well as how they would know whether or not the goals had been met (think: assessments). After teaching, the teachers would gather the data from the classroom assessments and meet again to compare notes and discuss patterns, ahas, or concerns. A step often missed here is what to do next–will re-teaching be necessary? Is there room for enrichment? And with true Professional Learning Communities, the cycle would then begin again!

Literacy coaches will recognize what I have described as student-centered coaching cycles (Sweeney, 2011), but as evidenced by a professional development session I was privileged to attend with select members of my district through Solution Tree, this type of PLC has various formats and can take place with or without a literacy coach. Ideally, proper school leadership would encourage this type of student-centered learning approach throughout the building, but all it takes is a few teachers willing to work through a few cycles for it to catch on. As a 6th grade ELA teacher, I was able to conduct a few cycles with a 7th grade social studies teacher last spring before school ended abruptly to offer some insight to her regarding disciplinary literacy. We put our individual expertise together to determine goals for “reading” primary documents and then analyzed data together to inform her teaching. I was able to help her create a rubric for assessment based on our goals and it became very clear through this process what students were understanding and what needed to be re-taught or further scaffolded. It was such a refreshing and rewarding experience to feel that we were collaborating in a way that would truly be useful to both teaching and student learning! Afterwards, I was able to carry the type of work we had done into my grade level ELA planning meetings.

A Call to Action

Brick wall with "Together we create" painted on it. — Photo by “My Life Through A Lens” on UnsplashBr

After years of thinking I knew all there was to know about PLCs and professional development, I found this reimagining of the student-centered PLC to be just the kind of collaboration I could get behind. My hope is that others will see how incredibly beneficial collaboration can be when professionals are willing to meet together on behalf of their students in a non-judgemental or threatening way. Our students deserve it!

Sweeney, D. (2011). Students-centered coaching: A guide for K-8 coaches and principals. Corwin

About the Author

Shanna Towery has sixteen years teaching experience across a total of four school districts in South Carolina. She is a recent M.Ed. graduate from Clemson University and is currently a 6th grade ELA teacher.

Student Collaboration in the Virtual Classroom

Blog, Collaboration

By: Victoria Young, a South Carolina Teacher

When I began teaching virtually this school year, I was excited to utilize all of the technological resources and techniques I learned in university that I hadn’t had the chance to try out. However, as most teachers know, it is almost impossible to effectively teach content in a meaningful way to kids when they are unable to connect with the content and one another. In the virtual classroom, students are unable to simply turn to their neighbor and discuss a problem or quickly whisper questions and comments to one another in class. Sure, no teacher will deny the fact that the mute button is a game changer for classroom management, but they will agree that it does damage the classroom community. The social barrier created by virtual learning seemed to put the important skill of collaboration on hold for this generation of students. So how do we as teachers reignite this connectivity in the virtual classroom?

Tip #1: Build confidence with anonymity

For me, it was a long process filled with patience. The first day of school is always awkward; but with technical difficulties and lack of participation, the first day shyness lasted the first two weeks. The way I approached a lack of classroom engagement was by treating virtual classes like a shy kid. You know the one – shoulders hunched, little eye contact, and always chooses to do the group assignment alone without asking. With tools such as Nearpod, Polleverywhere, and Google Forms, I did activities in and out of class that allowed students to express themselves and their thoughts and opinions with anonymity. As a class, we would see how we all think alike or learn new perspectives. I would ask for opinions on silly things like what I should eat for lunch for kids who are more outgoing to speak up without pressure of being ‘wrong’. When the more outgoing kids started to lead the way with the easy interactions, I saw that even the quieter students begin to speak up in the chat or even unmute! Eventually, through these distant interactions, I noticed more and more students interacting in class in day to day conversations and in content related discussions. They began to gain confidence once they saw that they are safe to share their ideas.

Tip #2: Use mainstream tools to your advantage

Photo of social media phone apps. — Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Once we broke the 10 layers of ice, I began to do more collaboration boards and Flipgrids without anonymity in order to encourage more discussion in class. In my very social classes, I have even gone on to do partner projects through remote learning. Middle and high school students are on every type of social media; so many of my students chatted via Snapchat, Instagram, and even Discord. Other students with less access to social media simply communicated via email. All that to say, students are collaborating all the time, we just have to use their methods to our advantage! (If you can’t beat them, join them!) I was never given any issues with participation despite how different this form of collaboration is and how it appears more arduous than simply sitting next to a partner in class. It is as if the ability to collaborate without a teacher facilitating every step was freeing; therefore, I began to see their personalities shine through their work.

Tip #3: Find common ground

Of course, not every class can achieve the same level of collaboration in the virtual world. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be achieved! One of my classes’ favorite activities is to play Among Us as review before an assessment. While talking about our weekend plans, I told my students I was going to play video games with some friends. This built a quick connection between me and my classes. Eureka! We finally had something in common besides being stuck in quarantine. On Gimkit.com, there is an activity that allows students to review material while playing in a similar format of the popular game Among Us. Students get very competitive and have to interrogate one another in order to win. There are also several other games that allow collaboration; but I always start with a solo game to help students get used to the mechanics. Nothing says virtual like video games and they are a great way to build community and collaborate in order to learn!

No matter the grade level or content you teach, collaboration is achievable in your classroom whether you are in person or online (or both!) this school year. Remember that at the end of the day, the goal of collaboration is to build relationships and problem solving skills. If you notice that your student collaboration is lacking in the qualitative results you want in your content, try to treat it more as a social skill. If you nurture your classroom’s environment first with collaboration, the learning will come along with it. Find a common interest, talk to a child or teen about what they like to do in their free time, and use those things to your advantage! Take away the fear of failure and show that you are all just as human as each other and soon your students will see that learning can be found all around us, not just in a school or textbook. And isn’t that the most powerful lesson that we can teach?

About the Author

Victoria Young, B.A. Secondary Education/Social Studies, is a geography and world history teacher at Greenville Technical Charter High School in South Carolina.

Misery Loves Company or Better Together?

Blog, Collaboration

By: Charlene Aldrich, retired South Carolina Literacy Instructor

In education, there are times when it’s a little bit of both. I like to believe that Better Together overcomes Misery so that Company discovers possibilities rather than ponders problems.

Too often educators, unknowingly, develop a silo mindset in their quest to accomplish everything that needs to be done to meet everyone’s needs – the state, the district, the administrators, the students, the parents, and the support staff members. It’s a gradual process and, unlike the business definition of a silo mindset, is a re-action rather than a pro-action. A silo mindset in business develops when co-workers refuse to work together as a team – hoarding resources and hiding ideas that benefit the whole. Personal recognition trumps the greater good. Fear of losing out overshadows building relationships.

In education, however, silo mindsets develop in response to overwhelming workloads, little downtime, and too much paperwork! It becomes easy to say, ‘I don’t have time to collaborate,’ and ‘I just want to get home.’ There’s not even time to contemplate the fact that ‘better together’ results in efficient and effective instruction as well as developing a support network. I’d like to suggest three ways to promote collaboration in a school: grade level, content area, and schoolwide.

Intradisciplinary Collaboration

Intradisciplinary collaboration within a school is big picture collaboration; it involves planning curriculum that has continuity, scope, and sequence from an intro course to the AP offering. Long-term planning such as this happens outside of the regular school year. The biology team or the Algebra team or the Honors ELA team meets at least two times a year: one to look back and one to look forward. Another model is a two-day retreat with the same idea – looking back and looking forward. Priorities include sequenced content area text resources, scaffolded instruction from course to course, and intentional development of disciplinary literacy practices. Collaboration between teachers who teach the same courses should focus on dissecting the course standards into individual lessons to develop content area knowledge necessary to meet them.

Grade Level Collaboration

Grade level collaboration, on the other hand, is an ongoing effort among colleagues to develop ways to build relationships between the content of each other’s courses. In an effort to provide real world connections and context for learning, teachers work together to plan content overlap that is mutually reinforcing. Literature pairs well with history; mathematics pairs well with business and economics. The arts curriculum overlaps with history as artists’ and musicians’ compositions reflect the culture in which they were created. Lyrics in music correlate to poetry in ELA. Sciences and math are mutually reinforcing; construction trades, culinary, and physical education include math calculations, conversions, and statistics. And every content area has significant people whose lives are told through biographies and autobiographies which are just one of the many categories of literature taught by ELA teachers.

Collaborating across a grade level doesn’t even have to be synchronous to be effective. Connected content introduced in one discipline becomes background knowledge in preparation for future content of another discipline; it also serves as a source for applying content knowledge to new learning situations. Long term retention is accomplished as connected content surfaces a variety of courses that review, connect, and extend content for deep understanding.

Synchronous School-wide Collaboration

Synchronous school-wide collaboration is possible several times a year in response to awkward calendar planning. For example, the day of Halloween and the day after Halloween are sometimes void of learning because excitement replaces focus. Thematic collaboration on these isolated days rescue students and teachers from wasted time and potential behavior management issues. Two days of hype and sugar-highs are replaced with inquiry and fact-finding: history, cultural celebrations, economic impact, spending statistics, chemistry, nutrition, poetry, drama, short stories, music, art, and even physical education! All it takes is a little creativity mixed with a lot of enthusiasm to connect content, include a course requirement, and engage students throughout the school around a common theme two or three times a year. I can personally recommend this NewsELA article as a place to begin:

https://newsela.com/read/halloween-spending/id/46288/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=web (It will ask you to make an account to read the article; the article as well as all of their ‘news’ articles are free. Other content needs a subscription. All of their free news articles make great themes for collaboration or connecting to specific lessons in your content area.)

What are the ‘down days’ at your school? There should never be a class day that a student can say, ‘It’s Halloween. The teachers never do anything important on Halloween. I can stay home.’ If you are reading this, then you may be the one who can make collaboration happen in your school! Find the First Follower in YOUR school and do it!

About the Author

After 20 years of growing literacy in under-prepared college students, Charlene retired to focus on state-wide literacy initiatives such as LiD, 6-12 and her R2S approved literacy courses at College of Charleston. She lets her life speak by empowering teachers to have the confidence and competence to implement a literacy model of instruction in any content area and at every grade level. Her best Covid-19 memory is teaching her grandson Algebra 1 via phone calls, Zoom, text messaging, and FaceTime. It was online instruction at its best – synchronously and interactively.

Literacy Coaching During A Pandemic

Blog, Collaboration

By: Meagan Wagner, South Carolina Middle/High School Teacher

Coloring pages. That’s what it took, this week, to motivate my eighth grade boys’ book club to read their assigned pages in the novel. Donuts weren’t appealing and candy is lackluster after Halloween. Yes, I bribe students with goodies. Or, in educator-speak, I provide extrinsic motivation for my students. And if you thought coloring pages would be too elementary for teenagers, then you’d be wrong. I am their literacy coach – and they do not receive a grade from me, so creativity is required to engage and motivate. In fact, that last statement pretty much sums up what it is like to be a literacy coach during a pandemic.

In a normal, non-COVID-19 school year, being a literacy coach means fulfilling many duties. Organizer of novel sets. Assessor of reading fluency and comprehension. Analyzer of standardized testing data. Listener to teacher meltdowns. Bulletin board decorator. Book pusher. My daily role also consists of working within English language arts classrooms as a co-teacher of sorts, pulling struggling readers for reading strategy conferences, conducting walkthrough observations in classrooms, and designing/facilitating professional development opportunities for my faculty. This is not that sort of year.

COVID-19 presented unique parameters within my rural school district. First, the last time we saw our students was six months prior to when they returned to buildings on a new alternating-day hybrid schedule. Second, we were quickly distributing devices to students for the first time ever, because our schools were adamantly NOT one-to-one with computers. Third, many families chose our district-provided virtual option. In an English language arts (ELA) class that would normally consist of twenty-eight students, and would benefit from my co-teaching assistance, we might have eight students on a strong attendance day; most days are not strong attendance days. Fourth, my colleagues are balancing the workload like never before: creating in-class lessons that are not allowed to include group work, providing additional work for the students’ at-home days, providing quarantine packets for students sent home, all while learning new technology.

Making Collaborative Adjustments for COVID-19

I knew before walking into the building in August, that this was not the time to be a normal literacy coach. Co-teaching in a group of eight or less might not be the best use of my time. Conducting walkthroughs to identify instructional needs is NOT a good idea right now — this is not a normal instructional year. Professional development opportunities on incorporating literacy into the content areas is obviously not a priority. This does not mean that my role is not important or valuable for teachers during this time. Creativity is required to engage and motivate teachers AND students.

Coaching Priority #1 – Determine the Best way to support the teachers.

In the same way that we differentiate for students, we should differentiate for teachers. My sixth grade teachers wanted help with grammar: so weekly lessons from me are a go. My seventh and eighth grade teachers wanted to be able to reserve times with me instead of having an assigned visit per week because, too often, my assigned time in their class was filled with helping students who came back from quarantine, or organizing a messy student’s binder.

While these activities have their merit, it was not the best use of my time. Therefore, I created a Google Doc schedule and shared it with my department. This engaged and motivated my teachers to use me in new ways. They have booked me for stations and review lessons, re-teaching small groups, book clubs, and read alouds. As a department, we saw a need to help students learn how to pick out books that are good choices for them. A series of stations and book talks ensued. My high school teachers wanted help furthering independent reading interest for students they only see in person twice a week. I began booktalk videos and trailers that they could provide via technology.

Coaching Priority #2 – Be the voice of encouragement

Teachers, not just in English language arts, were reporting burnout and lack of encouragement. I began walkthrough snapshots — as a means to celebrate the amazing adjustments seen in classrooms. I visit the room, take photos with permission, and leave a note for the teacher that lists all the positives I saw happening. Feedback suggested that teachers want to show off the ways they are adjusting — and rightly so. They are doing amazing things with technology, social distancing, and keeping themselves safe all the while. I have since seen my snapshot celebration forms hanging above teacher desks.

Every stakeholder in education has made major changes to adjust to COVID-19. Administrators, parents, students, teachers, coaches, secretaries, media specialists, custodians, and so many more. The fact that we have managed to rise to the occasion is something to be celebrated and to unite us. We are all in this together and we will do whatever it takes — even if that means printing coloring pages.

About the Author:

Meagan Wagner, M.Ed., NBCT, is a literacy coach for middle and high school in South Carolina. She is also a doctoral candidate at the University of South Carolina, in Curriculum & Instruction.

DEVELOPING STUDENTS AS SELF-ASSESSORS

Blog, Research

BY: Laura Greenstein, ED.D.

When I was asked to problematize assessment, I was puzzled. Does that mean to turn something that is not a problem into one, or rather, quantifying students’ mistakes and pursuing accountability? Turning assessment into a problem implies that something has gone wrong when in truth, it has merely gone astray from its Latin root “Assidere,” which means to sit nearby and guide. Regrettably, assessment has been taken out of the hands of educationalists who accentuate improvement and have been replaced by periodic testing that quantifies learning and generates numerical comparisons. As of yet, scoring technologies cannot distinguish between a learner’s lack of knowledge and their misinterpretation of the question, nor can they provide advice on remediation. Below are 3 steps that can.

STEP 1: REVISIT FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS and PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

While some believe tests and assessments mean the same thing, the definitions below illuminate noteworthy differences in purpose and process.

TESTs are periodic procedures that establish the capacity or performance of someone or something (Merriam-Webster). They are explicit strategies to ascertain and verify a learner’s skills and knowledge (Wikipedia). Tests tend to be more standardized, analytical, and judgmental.

ASSESSMENTS are processes used throughout teaching and learning to check for understanding, monitor progress, identify lingering gaps, and guide improvement. They rely on varied practices to gauge learning such as rubrics, exit slips, fix the mistake, student reflections, and progress trackers. They are more adaptable and personalizable than tests (Assessment Network).

STEP 2: INCORPORATE STUDENT SELF-ASSESSMENT to DEEPEN, ENRICH, and develop OWNERSHIP of LEARNING

Classroom assessments generally offer more insights into learning than standardized tests. Student self-assessment further illuminates competencies and leads to higher-level thinking, problem-solving, and self-efficacy (Panadero, Jonsson, and Botella, 2017).

Learners engaged in their own assessment increase self-awareness. Prompts such as “I used to think__, but now I know__.” encourage insights into learning. As Anisha, a 6^th grader, says, “I used to think communication was just talking and writing, but now I know it also includes listening, looking, thinking, AND patience.”

Students rarely take tests once they exit the education system, but they continue to be evaluated on their proficiencies, initiative, productivity, and more. The ability to gauge, reflect, and modify thoughts and actions is indispensable at work and home, throughout the lifespan.

STEP 3: HELP STUDENTS “SOAR” AS SELF-ASSESSORS

Photo by Godwin Angeline Benjo on Unsplash

Have you ever said or heard something like this? “I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant” (Attributed to Allan Greenspan). Assessment can be like the Tower of Babel, where it is not easy to disentangle ever-changing and contradictory dialects. Mary Ann Burke and I have designed a straightforward and actionable acronym to support all learners as self-assessors. We call it S.O.A.R.

The SOAR model connotes Student Ownership and Agency leads to Results. It puts Students at the center of assessment by purposefully transferring Ownership to them and facilitating their Agency in ways that improve the Results and outcomes of learning. Here’s how it works:

Put STUDENTS at the center of assessment by helping them clarify and visualize what they will be learning, compare that to what they already know and can do, describe how they plan to learn, and ways they can use their learning. In Practice: Students complete an expanded KWL chart that includes: What I think we will learn, What I know now, What I want to know, How I will find out, How can I show/use my learning.
Offer opportunities for students to take OWNERSHIP of their learning purpose, process, and products. For example, let them decide how to organize, summarize, and display their learning using words, visuals, or performances. In Practice: Rely on coherent rubrics, sequenced through the taxonomy, that align with learning intentions. For example: Explain the main idea in your own words, elaborate on the significance of 3 key steps/events, draw conclusions or critique it, and design/produce original products and ideas.
When students become AGENTS of assessment, they take greater charge/responsibility of their path, become participants in the learning process, and strengthen self-reliance. As learners develop deeper understanding, they gain self-confidence and become resources for each other. In Practice: Learners explain or demonstrate their understanding of the main ideas, how the author captures the reader’s attention and extends learning for deeper meaning. They may also defend a position or suggest improvements.
The RESULTS of students being at the center of their own assessment become evident in learning outcomes. In Practice: As traditional measures evolve into student-owned assessment, they take increasing responsibility, seek to alleviate problems, and generate original ideas and solutions. Rather than relying solely on traditional test questions, learners can better reflect, investigate, analyze, and formulate ideas.

Using the SOAR sequence develops every students’ life-long self-assessment skills. In doing so, they become more accountable for their learning outcomes, analyze, can explain their misunderstandings, identify knowledge and skills in need of improvement, and self-correct their own learning. Indeed, these skills support all students in moving from academic distress to confident and successful learners.

References

Greenstein, L., and Burke, Mary Ann (2020) Rowman and Littlefield, “Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners”

Assessment Network: Toolbox and Blogs https://www.assessmentnetwork.net/blog/ and also https://www.assessmentnetwork.net/2017/02/5-assessment-myths/

Greenstein, L. (2018) MUSTs of Assessment: in Restorative Assessment, Corwin, 2017 https://us.corwin.com/en-us/nam/restorative-assessment/book258057

Panadero, E., Jonsson, A., & Botella, J. (2017). Effects of self-assessment on self-regulated learning and self-efficacy: Four meta-analyses. Education Research Review, 22, 74–98.

Boyer, M. (2019). Balancing Skepticism and Utility in Machine Scoring. https://www.NCIEA.org/blog/essa/balancing-skepticism-and-utility-machine-scoring

About the Author

Laura is a lifelong learner and educator who has taught and assessed from preschool to graduate school, across subject areas. Her passion for educational assessment began with her dissertation and is evident throughout her work as an author of 5 books on the topic, founder of and blogger at the Assessment Network, and mentor to many teachers and learners. Through her workshops, she brings fresh ideas on a range of assessment topics from standardized to classroom, including formative, authentic, multicultural, differentiated, brain-friendly, and balanced. (Sometimes, she even talks about standardized tests.)

The Advantages of Inquiry: Equity and the Economy

Blog, Research

By: Dr. Britnie Delinger Kane, Assistant Professor at the Citadel

In education, inquiry has long been considered foundational to all four major disciplines (e.g., Dewey, 1927)—English, social studies, science, and math—and it has been motivated and defended from a number of theoretical backdrops (i.e., critical literacy; social constructivist theories of learning; disciplinary literacy; engagement theory; and on and on). Others might choose a different conceptual framework from which to understand the place of inquiry in classrooms, but—for my money—I prefer to understand its utility from the standpoint of social constructivist theories of learning. This stance helps us to see connections between inquiry-oriented instruction, disciplinary literacy, and even more equitable forms of instruction.

Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on Unsplash

The term “constructivist” teaching is often bandied about, but it’s a deeply complex and potentially misleading term. If you have never read Marc Windschitl’s (2002) review of the research on “constructivist” or “student-centered” instruction, you should. It will change the way you think about every piece of educational research you happen across —not to mention every blog with ten tips for integrating into the classroom Chromebooks or SeeSaw or Lucy Calkins’s writing curricula. Windschitl’s main argument in that piece is that the field has been unfair to teachers in advocating for a nebulous idea of “constructivist” teaching. He then, in detailed and clear ways, distinguishes between two broad orientations to theories of learning, cognitive constructivism (think Piaget) and social constructivism (Vygotsky), which continue to inform thinking in the learning sciences.

So far, many of you may be nodding, straining to remember that Ed Psych class long ago where you kept getting the words assimilation and accommodation mixed up and someone asked you to make a poster about Vygotsky’s ZPD (only rarely have I been in a School of Ed that wasn’t plastered with posters of the ZPD). The point that Windschitl (2002) highlights is that humanity can file the articulation of coherent theories about human learning on its list of invaluable accomplishments of the last 100 years. However—and this is the clincher—theories of learning are NOT theories of teaching: Just because we know boatloads more about the ways that people learn does not necessarily mean that we can fill the same boats with our understanding of effective teaching. Windschitl proceeds to outline what—from a social constructivist standpoint—constitutes great teaching. He calls this ambitious instruction—or, how to teach in ways that will support what we understand, broadly, about the social nature of learning. The whole bullet-pointed list could sustain career-long consideration, but here’s my favorite line:

[When students are engaged in rich opportunities for conceptual learning, they are] routinely asked to apply knowledge in diverse and authentic contexts, to explain ideas, interpret texts, predict phenomena, and construct arguments based on evidence, rather than to focus exclusively on the acquisition of predetermined “right answers” (Windschitl, 2002, p. 137).

Windschitl calls such teaching ambitious, because it supports social constructivist forms of learning. Ultimately, Windschilt and other learning theorists seem to agree that ambitious instruction can support the rich forms of conceptual learning that students will need in order to succeed in our knowledge economy. Learning theorists have highlighted that such expertise involves not just memorization of important facts and procedures, but “a deep conceptual understanding of complex concepts and the ability to work with them creatively to generate new ideas, new theories, new products, and new knowledge” (Sawyer, 2014, p. 5). Indeed, it is a repeated finding of educational research that, by addressing complex, authentic, and relevant questions, students can learn to use their procedural and conceptual knowledge flexibly in order to solve novel problems while evaluating and communicating arguments clearly (Sawyer, 2014, p. 5).

In short, rich learning requires that students inquire into authentic and relevant problems, and so bringing inquiry into classrooms can be an important framework for teaching ambitiously. Of course, as a literacy person, I cannot think about discipline-specific forms of inquiry without also thinking about disciplinary literacy. Disciplinary literacy is about apprenticing students into the ways that experts use reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking in specific disciplines to inquire into questions of import to particular fields. At the heart of disciplinary literacy is the idea that students must learn both the content and processes through which knowledge is constructed in particular disciplines (Moje, 2007). As Moje (2007) emphasizes, understanding the processes through which knowledge is constructed is central to equitable forms of pedagogy—not only because understanding these processes helps students to reconstruct them and use them in their own lives, but because understanding those processes can support students, ultimately, in critiquing them. To my mind—understanding the processes through which knowledge is constructed in particular disciplines is about…well, inquiry. Spires and her colleagues (2016) agree. They have used inquiry as a means of supporting students’ disciplinary literacy, calling their framework for this work project-based inquiry (PBI). In their framework, PBI has five phases:

ask a compelling question,
gather and analyze sources,
creatively synthesize claims and evidences,
critically evaluate and revise, and
share, publish, and act

Early evidence suggests that, by focusing on disciplinary literacy within an inquiry paradigm, teachers and students are able to deepen their understanding of disciplinary literacy and engage in deeper, authentic, relevant, and engaging content-specific learning (Spires et al., 2016).

As research on disciplinary literacy centrally highlights, however, the processes through which disciplinarians construct knowledge—or, the modes of inquiry they use—are, of course, discipline specific (Dobbs, Ippolito & Charner-Laird, 2017; Moje, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008; Spires et al., 2016). A number of articles, including those cited here, have written about this in great depth, so I will limit myself to a single example. In the PBI framework that Spires and her colleagues suggest, inquiry across disciplines begins, of course, with a compelling question. Students then gather and analyze sources. However, the ways in which they analyze these sources are different: literary critics deconstruct literary and rhetorical devices, such as irony and metaphor; scientists attend to an author’s credential and authority within the field; and historians contextualize primary sources, paying attention to both the author, purpose, audience, and time period in which the piece was written or created; mathematicians analyze the logic of an argument without attending as closely to the context of the author (Spires et al., 2016, p. 153). Thus, all disciplines inquire, but they do so differently.

In short, inquiry is a powerful framework for ambitious teaching, and it can be an important vehicle for supporting disciplinary literacy and content-area learning. By bringing inquiry projects into the classroom, students have opportunities to participate in disciplinary work, which can support students’ development of disciplinary literacy, as well as the content and processes that disciplinarians use to build knowledge. There are two major advantages to this: (1) inquiry can support students to develop the kinds of rich, flexible conceptual knowledge they will need in order to find success in the knowledge economy (Sawyer, 2014); and (2) inquiry allows students to participate in approximations of processes of discipline-specific knowledge construction, which is foundational to equitable teaching (Moje, 2007; Behrman, 2006).

References

Behrman, E. H. (2006). Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 490-498.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2016). Research on teaching and teacher education and its influence on policy and practice. Educational Researcher, 45(2), p. 83-91.

Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Athens, OH: Shallow.

Dobbs, C., Ippolito, J. & Charner-Laird, M. (2017). Investigating disciplinary literacy: A framework for collaborative professional learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Moje, E.B. (2007). Developing socially just subject-matter in- struction: A review of the literature on disciplinary literacy teaching. Review of Research in Education, 31(1), 1–44. doi:10. 3102/0091732X07300046001

Sawyer, R. K. (2014). Introduction: The new science of learning. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pp. 1-18).

Shanahan, T. and Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content-area literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1), 40–59.

Spires, H. A., Kerkhoff, S. N., Graham, A. C. K. (2016). Disciplinary literacy and inquiry: Teaching for deeper content learning. Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, 60(2), p. 151-61. Windschitl, M. (2002). Framing constructivism in practice as the negotiation of dilemmas: An analysis of the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural, and political challenges facing teachers. Review of Educational Research, 72(2), 131–175.

About the Author

Britnie Delinger Kane is an assistant professor of literacy in the Zucker Family School of Education at The Citadel in Charleston, SC. Dr. Kane’s teaching and research focuses on how teachers learn to teach ambitiously. Her work has focused on a number of content areas, including mathematics, writing, and computer science. This focus has led to her interest in disciplinary literacy, to which she brings a learning science perspective. She has studied teachers’ professional learning across their careers, from preservice teachers’ involvement in simulations of professional work to in-service teachers’ participation in teacher workgroups to instructional coaching.

Truth Finding in Young Adult Literature

Blog, Teaching

By: Kim Ferrari, South Carolina English Teacher

If you were to look through my high school yearbooks, you would quickly notice one thing. Almost everyone was white. I grew up in a very white community in one of the whitest states in America and could probably count on my fingers the number of Black people I knew. As far as I knew, racism didn’t exist any more. The Civil Rights Movement and desegregation brought an end to it and everyone was treated equally now.

I moved to South Carolina in 2014 and learned very quickly that everything I thought I knew about racism and civil rights was wrong.

I watched the news in shock, horror, and disgust as the truth became apparent: racism is very much alive today. This new reality became something that I had to grapple with. I realized that I needed to relearn my nation’s history. For the first time, I began to realize that what is written in our history books is not the absolute truth. There are many untold stories in our history, stories which paint a different picture. As an educator working at a school with predominantly students of color, I knew that I needed to do better and educate myself.

To better understand the new reality and the new culture that I was now surrounded by, I turned to books (as any English teacher would). One of the very first books I read on my journey of truth was The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin. I found myself on the verge of tears throughout the book, unable to believe that humans could be so cruel to one another. But then I turned on the news and saw the same types of things happening 60 years later.

Searching Inward

I continued reading books to help me process and understand what was happening around me, focusing on those books written by Black authors about Black youth. The first book that really made a difference was All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. One of the main characters, Rashad, a Black teen falsely accused of stealing a bag of chips from a convenience store, could have been one of my students. This was the first time that I saw not just a character in a book, but a student in my classroom. It caused me to question my personal biases. Did I treat my Black students differently? Was I unfair in my discipline? Did my students all feel valued and seen in my classroom? These were difficult questions to ask myself and I didn’t always like the answers I came up with, but I owed it to my students to ask myself them.

The more books I read by Black authors and about Black teens, the more I learned about the injustices they face. Each book with characters like my students helped me to realize that when one of them calls out “Yo, Miss,” before asking a question, they’re not being smart with me. When a student is more interested in the latest music release or shoe drop than my Shakespeare lesson, it doesn’t mean I’m a bad teacher. These are just some of the things that they grew up with as part of their culture. A culture that I never experienced, but a culture that I can learn about through books.

Making Connections

As police violence on Black people continues to happen, young adult novels like The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, Ghost by Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes, and How it Went Down by Kikla Magoon have helped me to see perspectives that I hadn’t before. I saw these events through the eyes of my Black students and while I will never truly understand what it is like to be Black in America, these books offer me a window into their world.

Most importantly, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi taught me everything I never learned in school about slavery, racism, and segregation. What I thought I knew was challenged and I grappled with these new truths. Months later, I’m still questioning much of what I thought I knew about our nation’s history. This new (to me) information has helped me look at current events in a different light and to see how everything that happens today is connected to an event or decision in history.

While there have been many books published in the last few years that center on the injustices faced by Black people and while it is important for everyone to read these stories, there is also importance in reading and amplifying stories of Black joy. Instead of focusing on how Black people have suffered, stories of Black joy celebrate being Black, being human, and living life. Books like The Crossover, As Brave as You, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Children of Blood and Bone are just a few of the amazing stories of Black joy published in the last few years. With each book that I’ve read, I’ve learned about the importance of music, how different hair styles represent a person’s identity, and how stories are passed down from generation to generation to continue the culture.

Moving Forward

All of these books have helped me to become a better person, educator, friend, and ally. My journey has been difficult at times but it is far from over; I recognize that I still have so much more to learn. Young adult literature will continue to be a powerful resource for me, allowing me to connect with my Black students and to see just some of the ways in which racism still exists in our country.

If you have never read a book that serves as a window into the life of a Black person in America, then I encourage you to read one. If you are White and have never read a book by a Black author, I challenge you to read one now.

About the Author

Kim Ferrari is an English Teacher at Manning High School in Manning, SC. She received her Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from the University of Maine at Farmington and is working on her Master’s in Literacy from Clemson University.

Safe Schools: More Than Locked Doors and Sanitizer

Blog, Collaboration

By: Dr. Jennifer Geddes Hall, Clemson University

Classrooms today are complex environments to navigate for teachers. There are standardized tests for almost every subject and grade level and teachers are expected to have every student, no matter the circumstances, pass these exams. They are expected to differentiate instruction based on the individual needs of each student all while being tasked with adhering to COVID health guidelines and participating in active shooter drills. Even more so today than in days of the past, teachers are responsible for addressing not only the academic needs of students but their social and emotional needs as well. Now that the racial unrest of our country, which has been around for decades, is more visible with violence against BIPOC and police brutality popping up on social media and news outlets, schools and teachers are charged with making their classrooms safe for all students.

Safety is not ensured by having a school resource officer, locked doors for visitors who wish to enter, temperature checks at the door, or sanitizing stations at every corner. Safety outside of this context must address the culture of the school and the emotional safety and well-being of students from various backgrounds. What do I mean by emotional safety? Emotional safety includes feeling a sense of belonging in the fabric of the school and its community. Feeling safe enough to be vulnerable and share struggles and victories without fear of consequences or backlash. Feelings of togetherness and not otherness. In short, safety is created through positive relationships and unconditional positive regard.

Microagressions and Macrogressions

Micro/macroaggressions can jeopardize this sense of safety and quickly create a negative school culture and harmful experiences for BIPOC students of all ages. Let’s first explore microaggressions. Microaggressions are commonly defined as subtle, degradations and putdowns -intentional or unintentional- disguised as jokes and/or compliments that are manifestations of racism and privilege which cause negative/harmful effects on the recipient. Some examples related to racial microaggressions include: Where are you from? You speak so clearly and eloquently! You don’t act Black. I’m colorblind. What are you? Can I touch your hair?

Although these may seem like “harmless” comments, they have great impact and BIPOC experience these types of interactions several times every day. Microaggressions such as these perpetuate the idea that BIPOC students are different, unusual, abnormal and can ultimately tear them down. Research has shown that the impacts of microaggressions can affect blood pressure, lower feelings of well-being and self-esteem, and increase stress, anger, frustration, anxiety, and depression. Outwardly it may appear that students are disengaged, verbally and physically aggressive towards peers and/or teachers, noncompliant, struggle academically, and/or drop out of school. Similarly, macroaggressions are obvious, larger scale or overt acts of aggression such as environmental macroaggressions and institutional/ideological macroaggressions (Compton-Lilly, 2020). Lack of BIPOC representation or items that convey racialized messages and areas within the school building or grounds that are racially insensitive such inadequate resources, inequitable policies/practices, and apathy in addressing impact of race or racial issues in the system are all examples of macroaggressions that may be occurring in our schools. These larger scale issues often lead to disproportionate levels of expulsion, suspension, and disciplinary actions against BIPOC students, increased negative attitudes and toxic school culture.

Creating Safe Spaces for Black, Indigenous and People of Color

So how do teachers create safe spaces and help to positively impact change against micro/macroaggressions in their classrooms and schools? First off, teachers need to be open to examining and addressing their own implicit biases and areas of privilege. When we open our eyes to the messages about BIPOC that our society and environments have placed upon us, we can be more intentional about removing them from our way of being and interactions with students and others. We also need to be proactive in building relationships with all of our students and outwardly express our support for BIPOC. When we take time to connect, understand, and empathize rather than dismiss student experiences, we build relationships and trust. Research has demonstrated that when there is at least one caring, responsive, attuned person in a student’s life, it can impact the resilience and success of that student. Including representation of BIPOC and diversity in academic content and in classroom environments also conveys support. Representation is powerful.

When teachers hear others using or perpetuating microaggressions we need to intervene and stop them. This will demonstrate care and concern for our students, provide a model for others, and will help to decrease negative interactions that BIPOC students might experience during the school day. Instances of repeated or intentional microaggressions by students should be treated as bullying and addressed through the school’s bullying policy. Unfortunately, there are also instances of teachers and other adults in the schools who use microaggressions. These instances should also be addressed immediately and brought to the attention of administration for repercussions. Microaggressions of any kind are harmful but those initiated by adults in the school building have more impact due to differences in power, control, and privilege.

A Collaborative Solution

Finally, to address micro and macroaggressions teachers should communicate and collaborate with their school counselors in an effort to develop positive change in the school culture. School counselors are uniquely trained to address the mental health and emotional needs of students as well as advocate and implement data-based interventions for systemic change. School counselors have a larger view of issues in the school, access to data which can support needed efforts, ability to collaborate across many domains, and a seat at the leadership table by working closely with administrators. They have relationships with students, parents, and with adults in the school and community. Together, teachers and school counselors can work to focus on changes that need to be made in the classroom, such as bias that may be influencing grading practices or classroom lessons or group counseling interventions that may be necessary to build student skills related to cultural empathy. School counselors may also need to partner with teachers in providing cultural competency training to adults in the school and presenting school data on cultural climate to the school board/administration in an effort to improve conditions and policies/practices to ensure equity. I ask you to think about and consider what you will do in your classroom to take these steps forward? What actions will you take to make sure your school is a safe space for all? Change is not a choice, it is imperative.

For more resources on how to make classrooms more equitable and inclusive visit https://www.tolerance.org/

About the Author

Dr. Jennifer Geddes Hall is an assistant clinical professor at Clemson University, teaching in the Counselor Education program and serving on the College of Education’s Community and Diversity committee and taskforce for Inclusive Excellence. She is a licensed professional counselor and certified school counselor with over 17 years of combined experience as a child/teen therapist and school counselor. Dr. Hall has worked in community and school settings in diverse, urban communities as well as rural areas. She has a focus on multicultural issues as well as developing cultural competency in her past publications as well as local, state, and national conference presentations. Dr. Hall currently serves on the board for the Association of Child and Adolescent Counseling (ACAC), a division of the American Counseling Association (ACA)

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Data over Assumptions: Determining How Our Schools Engage in Family-School Partnerships

Blog, Collaboration

By: Dr. Jennifer D. Morrison

In 2016, the University of South Carolina Language & Literacy faculty members decided to overhaul the Masters in Education degree requirements. The then current program was outdated and focused on very narrow conceptions of literacy, who owned it, and how it was to be taught. Because we all hailed from strong critical theory backgrounds, we knew a social justice thread was imperative. Through this lens, as we examined individual courses as well as the program as a whole, we began to ask questions such as: who owns literacy? How do we want to present this? What about funds of knowledge and out-of-school literacies? This line of questioning led us to realize that nowhere in our program did we account for parental and community involvement in students’ literacy learning. This, to us, was a huge gap that needed to be filled. We decided to redesign a course entitled “Guiding the Reading Program,” changing it from a third assessment course to one on literacy leadership with a focus on developing skills that would assist teachers in employing community and family resources in school and district literacy practices and policies. I was the initial instructor for this course and looked to my experiences, as an instructional coach and administrative intern, to help me build the curriculum and key assessment experiences.

Tough Conversations and Deep Reflection

When discussing family involvement, it is not uncommon to hear educators talk about how many parents attend PTSA meetings, come to Open House/Curriculum Nights, or support the band/athletic boosters. However, it becomes important to really consider which parents are involved and what percentage of the school they represent. It is often eye-opening to realize large swaths of families are un- or under-represented at school events. For example, as the instructional specialist at a middle school in Maryland, I was part of a school leadership team who specifically sought to broaden our parent involvement, not only in how they were involved but also in who was involved. We had a very active and invested community; so, when we collected data about who was coming into our school for social and academic activities and who was not, it was surprising to see we had almost no members of our Latino families represented. This required us to conduct deep reflection and address cultural divides. We thought we were providing appropriate communication with our families by sending home notices in backpacks and posting on our school’s social media and websites. However, when we asked members of the Latino community why we had limited attendance, they indicated to us more personal means of communication were needed. When we started picking up the phone and personally calling families, we found they were significantly more responsive; we had to bridge a cultural divide we did not realize we had built, to ensure all families felt welcome. This is not an uncommon experience that emerges once school leadership teams and teachers delve mindfully, deeply, and honestly into the degree to which families and community members are truly involved in schools.

The Work

In my class, one of the early activities I ask teachers to complete is a pair of inventories regarding parental involvement practices. The first is Salinas, Epstein, and Sanders’s (2012) An Inventory of Present Practices of School, Family, and Community Partnerships. It identifies six ways parents can be involved in schools (called “types” in this instrument) including: parenting, communicating, volunteering, home-learning, decision-making/leadership, and community collaboration. School members are asked to consider the degree to which statements listed under each type are true and in what grade levels. These responses help illuminate both traditional and nontraditional means of involvement and also show if there are patterns or trends in participation. I then pair this inventory with a second evaluation instrument from Beyond the Bake Sale (Henderson, Mapp, Johnson & Davies, 2007). This instrument uses five domains (building relationships, linking to learning, addressing differences, supporting advocacy, and sharing power) to help educators identify which of four versions of family-school partnerships best describes their school (partnership, open-door, come-if-we-call, or fortress). To help them to see patterns, I ask students to identify which version of partnerships their schools represent for each domain and place a sticky note in the appropriate location (see Figure 1). While most people would say they have a partnership school, especially at the elementary level, many individuals are surprised with the results of this survey. There are areas suggested, such as including parents in curricular decisions, many of my students have not ever considered.

Between these two instruments, my students begin to get a clearer, and more accurate, picture of their schools’ strengths and needs with regard to parent and community partnerships. They are then asked to develop a family and community partnership grounded in the data they have collected from these two sources. I encourage them to think about how they can move their school to a higher version within one domain of the Beyond the Bake Sale rubric while also using some of the descriptors from the Epstein inventory to help frame goals and action steps. The projects that have emerged from this project have been organic, deeply-embedded in individual school needs, centered on literacy, and overall impactful. One resulting project was discussed in this blog by Hannah Kottraba in June when she wrote about her family heritage project. Other examples have included virtual science activities where parents and students engage in disciplinary literacy to solve scientific problems; pre-k students engaging in pen pal writing and subsequently building a garden with members of an assisted care facility (see Figure 2); online interactive math resources (focused on literacy needed for word problems); workshops that coach family members how to support reading with all ages of students; family culture exhibits; writers’ gallery celebrations; and international student shadowing days where high school students serve as hosts for international graduate students learning about America’s education system. Many of these projects addressed family and community populations who are often underrepresented in schools, and several have become multi-year or ongoing events.

It is important to remember that such projects are many times singletons, snapshots that occur once as a result of a course; the impetus being the need to complete a class assignment. I am not so naïve as to think these class assignments have suddenly made every school my students teach at a Partnership School. What is important is the paradigm shift that occurs as teachers undergo this process. They begin to seek out ways to better meet the criteria established by these two inventories; they become more attuned to cultural differences that may be acting as a barrier to some families and making them feel unwelcome with the school space; and they become more appreciative of the funds of knowledge parents and family members bring with them.

About the Author

Dr. Jennifer D. Morrison is an instructor at the University of South Carolina. Her experiences include being a middle and high school English teacher, gifted education resource teacher, and instructional coach. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Nevada, Reno, in Language, Literacy, and Culture. She is a National Board Certified Teacher (AYA/ELA), an alumnus of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger Theater in Washington, D.C., and has won multiple awards for teaching and writing including NCTE’s Paul and Kate Farmer English Journal Award and AERA’s Dissertation Award in Research on Teacher Induction. Currently, her research focuses on adolescent, digital, multimodal, and disciplinary literacies as well as narrative and qualitative methodologies.

Strengthening the Generations Through Agricultural Literacy

Blog, Collaboration

By: Alonzo McDonald, South Carolina High School Agriculture Teacher

Everybody knows the song, “Old McDonald had a farm.” Well, that song is about my dad. He’s the McDonald that had the farm…and the cows, and the peacocks, the ducks, the hogs and the mules. I’m the McDonald that took my passion for agriculture, which developed at a young age, and turned it into a career as an agricultural education teacher. Often, people believe teachers of elective courses are not concerned with literacy; however that is not the case. When teaching an elective course, you have to come up with creative ways to motivate students to engage in content literacy. I have found that I can foster student literacy through the community engagement of my students.

One of the cornerstones of agricultural education programs is the desire to create productive citizens who serve their community. Through the Agricultural Education Program and Future Farmers of America (FFA) at Manning High School, students are molded into being model citizens that willingly give back to their community through various events and community partnerships that continue throughout the year. The motto of FFA reads “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve.” The last line, “living to serve” is one that I think the students grasp without even realizing it, because it becomes so embedded in our work in and out of the classroom. When you connect the last line of the motto with the first line, “learning to do,” students are equipped with the tools needed to successfully give back to the community that made them.

Through various in class activities, articles from agriculture magazines, and hands-on experiences students gain content knowledge they can put to use and pass on to younger students, in one of our strongest community partnerships, at Manning Early Childhood Center (MECC). Students within the agriculture program are able to explain the content that they have learned throughout the semester in a way the younger students are able to understand and use as they work on the raised bed garden at MECC. My students are able to teach these younger students how to transfer this knowledge into a useful skill (i.e. seed depth and spacing, watering needs, pollination, importance of fertilizer, plant parts, etc.) that can be used in the school garden. When my students are explaining to four and five year olds the needs of plants, and seeing that the younger kids are actually understanding it, brings me joy. As a teacher, being able to see the products of our toil is always rewarding.

Having good role models for students to emulate is important. Through a consistent partnership with the Clarendon County Master Gardeners, my agriculture students have learned ways to pass on agriculture knowledge to others. The master gardeners model the ways in which experiential knowledge can be transferred through shared gardening experiences. My students then use what they have learned in their interactions with the master gardeners, with the students at MECC. The master gardener volunteers are able to bring in their real-world knowledge and experiences to help enhance the students understanding of not only the task-at-hand, but meaningful life experiences. Through this partnership, students are able to experience what it feels like to have someone giving back to the community and investing in the students at our school. As a result, students are more willing and eager to gain a better understanding of agriculture so that they can pay it forward.

Several students have gained a new appreciation for different aspects of agriculture because of these partnerships and have taken additional steps to further enhance their knowledge through research. Students are more willing to engage in learning, because they want to be able to share their knowledge with younger students and understand the information they learn from the master gardeners. As a result of community partnerships, students learn to use the agriculture content vocabulary, which supports their learning in my class and future agricultural classes they may take in the future.

Agriculture is an important part of today’s society that is sometimes overlooked. As the global population increases, we need to make sure that our appreciation for what agriculture provides continues to increase, so that we have future generations who are interested in agriculture and want to contribute to the field of agriculture. There are many initiatives and programs that are in place to encourage the younger generations to be more interested in agriculture. Through partnerships with different agricultural organizations, the youth are being exposed to the many different aspects of agriculture. My challenge to you is expose your students to some of the many different avenues that lead to the wonderful world of agriculture.

About the Author

Alonzo McDonald is an Agricultural Education Teacher at Manning High School, in Manning, South Carolina. Alonzo earned his Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Education from Clemson University. He also holds a Masters of Education in STEM Leadership from American College of Education.