Gatto and embedded literacy

I think that Gatto’s practice sounds similar to Carter’s practice for teaching from Ladson-Billings’ article. Both Gatto and Carter are structuring the teaching-learning process so that students can feel ownership over their products. They are also making sure to teach what is culturally relevant. They are making sure their students have hands-on opportunities to connect to subject material in a way that is meaningful to them.

Haneda says of literacy, “it is...important for teachers to reflect on what it means to help students to become literate and, on this basis, to create learning environments where students feel safe to express their ideas in a developmentally appropriate manner and to engage in critical discussion of substantive issues by using reading and writing as tools for thinking” (p. 343). I think Gatto’s instruction embodies what Haneda is describing here. Gatto’s students have many opportunities to “express their ideas,” they have ownership over almost everything they learn about, they constantly “engage in critical discussion,” and use “reading and writing as tools for thinking.” Not only do Gatto’s students have this type of experience with literacy instruction, but it permeates throughout all of the teaching-learning process in the classroom.

When we think about power, as we talked about in the neo-liberal, neo-conservative week and as mentioned in Lewis’ “Even Sweet, Gentle Larry?,” we realize that Gatto is giving her students the power to chose what they want to learn. She has students engaging in making charts about questions they have, and things they would like to know. She takes these questions and lets them drive what it is students will learn about during the unit. It is authentic, and students are gaining control over what they learn and how they learn it. Instead of the companies selling textbooks determining the outcome of student learning, the students and teachers collectively decide this.

I too plan to utilize this type of integrated and choice-driven approach in my classroom (and not just for literacy instruction). I believe that the teaching-learning process is not simply: the teacher gives the student information. I think it is more interchangeable, dynamic, and interaction driven than that. I believe that this interaction takes place between student-student, teacher-student, student-teacher, and even teacher-teacher. You would never tell a student that any one person has all the answers, would you?

In researching and implementing my action research project this past year, I came across an article by Karen Gallas titled “Art as Epistemology: Enabling Children to Know What They Know.” This article is largely about how different forms of art (which reminds me of Ken Robinson’s talk from last week) can enable students to demonstrate their learning. Ironically, she too did a unit on butterflies with her students that incorporated science, the arts, technology, reading, and writing. To give one example of using art to engage students in the teaching-learning process in her article is that of a Spanish-speaking student named Juan. He had a very hard time speaking English and so could not demonstrate to his teacher what he knew. Fortunately, Gallas understood and realized the potential his artistic ability and love had for him to explain his interest, learning, and knowledge. She would have him draw pictures to demonstrate these things, as well as to find a way to help him learn more English vocabulary. In another case, a student who had trouble sitting still and paying attention spontaneously reenacted, in an interpretive dance, the different life stages he had observed in the butterflies. I feel this type of teaching also lends itself to Gatto’s approach.

I want to give my students as many choices as I can to respond to, interact with, and internalize the knowledge they gain in the teaching-learning process. I believe Gatto has outlined a very effective way of doing this and I think art-integration can be very successfully tied to this type of integrative, imaginative, and empowering way to design curriculum.