Reaching the Summit

Yesterday I attended the Academic Literacy Conference Summit here at UC Davis.

It was a great experience.
I posted about the event on twitter, which was a fun way to engage in the event. 

Here I want to focus on the table of people with whom I shared lunch.

That was an odd experience.

People who had led breakout sessions were each assigned a table. The idea was that people would have follow-up conversations about what happened in the session. I had missed the first session because I had to teach, but when I arrived for lunch I saw Aaron, Jenae, and Mary all at one table. So I sat down with them at the "Bill Macauley" table.

Bill Macauley is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. He'd led a session on audiences for student writing. Very sharp man with some great ideas on writing instruction.

It promised to be an interesting table.

We didn't talk much about writing centers, however, or even writing instruction in general. Efforts to dig deep into what it means to facilitate writing instruction were repeatedly stymied by a pair of attendees from a regional college that I'll call Wassamatta U.

The pair took issue with almost any question posed or subject brought up for discussion. Their contention seemed to be that all constructive talk was useless because their students aren't capable of carrying out even the most basic of educational tasks.

Example 1: the pair reflected on the morning's keynote presentation by Jose Rivas. Rivas had demonstrated an entertaining and engaging science lesson on Newton's Second Law. According to my lunch companions, Rivas would not have engaged the students of Wassamatta U. because those students would not participate in activities or respond to problem solving prompts. [laughter]

Example 2: When Luciana C. de Oliveira showed the Common Core expectations for kindergarten level narrative texts, I was told that students at Wassamatta U. were not able to compose at that level. [laughter]

Example 3: When Bill Macauley suggested finding entertaining and culturally relevant sources for developing grammar skills, we learned that the students at Wassamatta U. don't watch television or share any common cultural mores. [laughter]

The easy thing for me to have done would be to dismiss the pair as burntout or bitter. I tried to do as much, but I couldn't shake this question: If things were so hopeless for these two, why were they attending the summit?

Even if Wassamatta U. was paying for the day (which I don't think is the case), no one at the conference was taking role. The pair could have picked up name tags and hightailed it to a day spa. Something didn't fit.

So I turned to one of them and asked about teaching at Wassamatta U.
Here's what I learned:
There's no money. The students arrive with a lot of baggage and few skills. The college and the larger institution to which it belongs offer no real support to instructors. There are colleagues and supervisors who are incompetent.
And then I heard this: "Have you ever used the Yoda Sentences? Students can build all sorts of sentences after just a few minutes with that exercise."

What? Wait...

The person who said that was clearly excited about a student's learning.
That's not the excitement of a burntout teacher. 

And then it hit me. This pair was fighting on the front lines. They worked where most of education's casualties fall. Even if the pair at my table go to work on Monday and work as hard as they can using the best practices available, many of their students are going to fail. A morbid sense of humor is pretty valuable in a place like that.


And that shed a new light onto the rest of the conference.

The Common Core asserts that academically literate students need to reflect on learning experiences and think critically. It sets high standards for students and asks teachers to find a path to reach those goals.

This was emphasized in the afternoon breakout session, which demonstrated ways to help students critically engage what the Common Core has deemed a 9th grade text, "A Quilt of a Country." The methods described are powerful classroom tools. I'm glad I attended. But the text had me thinking about Wassamatta U. The reading refers to novels by Phillip Roth, Francie Nolan, and John Cheever, as well as a "Calvinist undercurrent in the American psyche."

Those kinds of references would have sailed way over my head in 9th grade. I am thrilled that we have set such challenging standards, and I think talented teachers working with motivated students will achieve some wonderful results. But I'm left questioning the meaning of the word 'common' in the Common Core. I don't think the resources required to reach these goals are commonly available in every community.


If we really are interested in such a high level of academic literacy, then summits like the ALS need not only to assess what is at the core of literacy, they also need to describe the tools and techniques communities require to attain academic literacy. Then there's the task of showing schools how to take an inventory of their own learning environments to identify where they need to make changes. It's a tall order. The ripple effect from the ALS has to be very powerful.

I hope attendees feel the weight of that, because it was an impressive group to spend the day with, and I think we could have an impact.