Contact+Zone--Relevance


 * Relevance **


 * __ The Issue __** : If each student that steps into your room has a different background, separate ways of understanding, thinking, learning, attentions, and interests, how can you as a teacher denote that each step is relevant to each unique child?


 * __ The Solution __** : Before understanding how to relate content to any person, it is first necessary to understand how one’s brain may go about processing given information.

(Rigor/Relevance) According to the staff at International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) it can be indicated that a student gathers and applies knowledge in four basic steps: • **A**: Acquisition- Students gather and store bits of knowledge and information. Here students are primarily expected to remember or understand this knowledge. • **B**: Application- Students use acquired knowledge to solve problems, design solutions, and complete work. The highest level of application is to apply knowledge to new and unpredictable situations. • **C**: Assimilation- Students extend and refine their acquired knowledge to be able to use that knowledge automatically and routinely to analyze and solve problems and create solutions. • **D**: Adaption- Students have the competence to think in complex ways and to apply their knowledge and skills. Even when confronted with perplexing unknowns, students are able to use extensive knowledge and skill to create solutions and take action that further develops their skills and knowledge. (Rigor/Relevance)
 * The Information. **

Each block represents a different level of this thinking and may be widespread throughout the whole process rather than in direct steps. ICLE also particularly places each block into a graph of how it corresponds to the overall outcome to help follow the course to get there.

The y-axis of the Rigor/Relevance model holds a continuum of the increasingly complex ways in which a student thinks: Awareness, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation**.** In the beginning stages, such as awareness, knowledge is acquired on an extremely surface level basis. Information can be accumulated then spit immediately back out without even touching on the idea of critical thinking or problem solving. This thought process can be related to the idea of how a computer can read through a word search of vocabulary words and find them all without understanding their meaning.
 * The Process. **

The final stage, including evaluation, is when students conduct much more than just locate information. In addition, they exercise their ability to take several portions of knowledge and piece them together in both logical and creative ways. At this level, students solve multi-step problems and create work that is both unique and holds great potential.

The x-axis holds a continuum developed by Dr. Willard R. Daggett that portrays the idea of putting the gathered knowledge to use: knowledge in one discipline, application in one discipline, application across disciplines, application to real-world predictable situations, and application to real-world unpredictable situations. The first steps of this model signify acquiring knowledge for the sole sake of obtaining it while the preceding steps involve taking action. Use of this knowledge given can be used to solve complex real-life problems as well as to create works applicable for real world situations.
 * The Application **.

The steps to the Rigor/Relevance framework are simple enough to follow and easy to mimic. It shows how the brain gathers information, processes its findings, and eventually ties it in with meaningful situations. The loop begins with a basic foundation and builds up to a final open ended result. Lessons and activities can be easily formed around this notion as well, building up their content in a similar series of steps. Each project or goal may build the same way as the thought process, enabling the two to have an even greater bond. Even though the steps have a specific succession in this model it does not limit the creator to stay within the given path.
 * Tying it together. **

In //Teaching as a Subversive Idea//, Postman and ** Weingartner stress the idea of how there is no one solution to every approach. An example in the article is given concerning a group new doctors who are first learning how to diagnose their patients. The one young prodigy prescribes penicillin to his sick patients even though they all are suffering from completely separate symptoms. As a result, the patients die with the wrong sort of treatment. His argument is that he knows penicillin works as a cure for most illnesses. The head doctor dismisses the tragedy and reassures him that the few lost are simply bad cases and that nothing can be done. Each and every classroom will be filled with students who are performing at completely different levels and come in seething with various ranges of “illnesses”. As a teacher, one antidote may not be handed out in hopes of gaining majority of control, but instead different stimulation must be offered in order for all to arrive at the same destination. **
 * Diverse Needs **.

“…The trouble with all these reasons is that they leave out the (patient) learner, which is really another way that they leave out reality” (Postman 42).

Also pointed out in Postman and Weingartner’s //Teaching as a Subversive Idea// is the realization that teachers are stimulated themselves. They must enjoy learning to some extent because they have chosen to submerge their lives in that atmosphere as a career. “There are thousands of teachers who teach [certain] subjects… because they are inclined to enjoy talking about matters. In fact, this is why they became teachers. It is also why their students fail to become competent learners” (Postman 42). As a teacher it is important to be passionate about your material and subject matter, but it is also your responsibility to find what interests your students because they’re the ones you are trying to teach.
 * Importance **.

“Whose schools are they, anyway, and whose interests should they be designed to serve?” (Postman 2).

// Teaching as a Subversive Activity // has many fantastic ideas for engaging students and the reasons why a teacher must be aware of them all. It is a sufficient guidebook and helps one to think in different ways besides the traditional feeding content and regurgitate it back to me. Ironically, this article was written in 1969 which means it is rather aged. However, it remains to be completely relevant to striving teachers’ lives similar in the way to how content that is as ancient as the standards can be applicable to students’ lives today. The key is getting to know your students and discovering a hook to bring them in with before dropping the huge bomb on all of the correlation together.
 * Relevant Relevancy **.


 * __ The Issue __** : As English teachers we have a special challenge in making our content relevant to students. State standards will always be necessary to follow even though much of the content is aged canonical literature and ideas. How can a teacher abide by the standards with teaching ways of ancient literature as well as relate the content to the modern lives of students?


 * __ The Solution __** : Themes found in English content reoccur and are intensely relevant to themes in modern daily life. Even though the men and women writing these works could be nearly hundreds of years old, they are still human and respond to the same emotional stimuli as men and women today. Themes are a never ending reoccurrence.

English is a subject that gratefully has several ties to human life and always will. There is so much involved in the works of writings that there is bound to be ties that can relate to children. One teacher writes about ways to help a fellow teacher who lacks “lessons [that] make sense, [are] fun and playful, and [are] necessary and clearly useful” (Lehmann). Lehmann responds that he does “…not read Hamlet because [he’s] really dying to know about what some writer thought about some prince 400 years ago. Hamlet is a fantastic text because it still lives and breathes and tells us something about our lives today.”
 * Making English Relevant **.

Start with a journal entry as a hook. It should include a theme from the given literature in which the students can relate to their own lives in writing. For example, to correspond to Hamlet’s quote, "To be or not to be..." ask the students the question: "Have you ever had a moment where you were so scared by the circumstances in your life that running away felt like an option? How did that feel? If not, how do you think that would feel?" (Lehmann).

Kids will respond; because it is a powerfully //human// way to feel, despite age. Next you can read the speech with the lens of your own lives and suddenly there becomes a purpose at looking for “…iambic pentameter and the politics of Denmark and all the other English-geek stuff that we love because looking at all those things have something to tell us about the way we live our lives today, because after all, if Shakespeare was writing about that feeling… maybe I’m not so strange for thinking that way, too… And maybe Hamlet is worth reading because he's a little like me. Or maybe… I don't want to end up like ANY of them, so maybe now we can talk about [that]” (Lehmann).

There are constant ties because we are all emotional human beings and can relate on many different factors. Sometimes we may not acclimate to anything, and that’s a form of relation, too. In the words of Lehmann, once you start with the words “A man…” you have a hold of them.

** Works Cited **

Lehmann, Chris. “Making the English Classroom Relevavnt.” //Practical Theory//. 25 Jan. 2006. [|Web.] Oct. 2011.

Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. //Teaching as a Subversive Activity//. New York: Delacorte, 1969. Print.

"Rigor/ Relevance Framework." //International Center for Leadership in Education//. 2011. [|Web.] 10 Oct. 2011.