Annotated Conversation In The Classroom

Today’s public education is tide to federal and state funding who determine how much money schools obtain every year depending on preferable national test scores. This act is placing tremendous amount of pressure on teachers and school administrators. The idea was sold under the pretense to hold teachers “accountable” for student’s learning. There is a sense of loss of autonomy among teachers due to the restrictions on what, when and how they can teach. Teachers are limited in the practices used to teach due to regulated curriculum directives that must be followed. The standardized curriculums are developed in the hopes to improve national test scores. William Pinar (2009) suggest the practice of “complicated conversation” to be utilized

Teachers should be encouraged to have dialogues with their students regarding the subject matter being instructed. The dialogue among teacher and student does not end there. Students must also be taught and encourage to continue to have such conversations among themselves and within the ‘self’. They need to be comforted in acknowledging that critical questioning within one’s mind and self-talk is a normal, fundamental way of learning. Learning goes beyond lectures and assignments. Students must be able to connect with the material in multiple

They may not say what they think for obvious reasons that as adults we should be able to understand. Most of us were children once, right. In order to discuss social, political and ethical issues having a classroom setting that allows students to speak their minds without ridicule or judgement is crucial. Alfie Kohn’s (2006) Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community, indicates that by having such a classroom environment permits students to “reclaim some of the autonomy that has been denied to them” (p.7). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, Jean Anyon (1980) observes how teachers teach the way they were taught. Teacher’s techniques varies depending on what social economic stratification they were raised in. Concluding that those raised in working, lower to middle class communities have a tendency to reproduce the next generation of working class citizens while those who teach in more affluent and executive elite neighborhoods are encourage to” utilize knowledge and skills that promote symbolic capital that is necessary to control production systems” (Anyon, 1980, p. 89). Anyon (1980) concludes