In the proposal for my fellowship, I stated my long-term goal as using the strategies, structure and humor of sketch comedy to teach my middle school 2e students basic writing skills. I would take an intensive sketch comedy class as my professional development and smoothly slip back into my classroom with all of the knowhow to teach sketch comedy writing; but the word “propose” is not finite. The reality was that know and how are two very different aspects of learning. British philosopher, Gilbert Ryle describes these two distinct elements of content mastery as “knowing that” and “knowing how.” I thought I had learned and understood the concepts of the curriculum, “knowing that,” but I could not appropriately produce this knowledge, “knowing how.” I was catapulted into the real world of my 2e learners when working in their areas of weakness. Somebody up there in 2e teacher heaven was laughing.
However, this trip into an area of weakness allowed me to explore the emotional, social and cognitive challenges that arise when a 2e student is unable to consistently meet instructional goals and comes face to face with an impasse. There are three separate forces working against successful task completion and I was not immune to their destruction. Even as an adult with matured self-advocacy skills, a solid identity in my areas of strength, the world, and supporting a fairly healthy ego, I, admittedly, wasn’t ecstatic about going into a classroom where I did not shine. My class participation began to diminish; I began as a strong contributor to class discussions and soon became anxious about reading my sketches aloud and hesitant in offering constructive criticism to my peers. If I couldn’t write a sketch myself, why would they trust my opinions about their sketches? Was I lacking the “know that” or the “know how?” Where did the breakdown happen, and what could the teacher have done to prevent or at least diminish the negative experience for me? Ah, new research questions, whose answers are vital in completing my original goal of using the sketch comedy model to teach basic writing skills to my 2e learners; a side road to my long-term goal that I never anticipated.
2e learners have high expectations of themselves and the disappointment in not being able to meet these expectations is reason enough to stop trying; but to fail publicly, in front of peers and teachers, puts 2e learners in a situation where their only means of personal and social survival is giving up and becoming silent and/or getting out of the classroom as often as possible. So, their confidence in task completion is being chipped away by their negative personal voice, their perceptions of their peers’ and teachers’ negative voices and either weak cognitive ability, or weak skill acquisition, the “know that” and the “know how.” How can 2e teachers help 2e learners shift away from their path toward disengagement and keep them invested in knowledge, and help nurture acceptance and patience with skill acquisition when working in their areas of weakness? How do we as teachers of these sensitive perfectionists convince them that following their fear is the only choice that will bring them closer to skill mastery?
such insightful and thought-provoking questions!
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