"Untracking English"
Christensen Chapter #8

"Many students who come from remedial or regular classes are bright. But the abilities they bring to class often go unrecognized because they aren't the skills traditional education has prized: reading and writing" (171).
No truer words have been spoken. When I read this chapter I had to stop and say "WOW" when I read that, because I saw an example of this in real life just a couple weeks ago during my Pre Internship. I have been continusously blown away by this 6th grade boy in the English class. The topic of this quarter is "Loss", so the class was reading a short novel by Ralph Fletcher, dealing with loss. My mentor teacher asked the kids to take a piece of contrution paper and divide the back into three sections," National, local, and personal loss" then he had then list different kinds of loss. Then he had them flip over the paper and draw a picture representing loss. As I walked around the classroom peering over these kids shoulders I saw pictures of soldiers in Iraq, the tornado that hit Tennessee, and the school shooting at NWU. But, when I peered over this one boys shoulder I saw a beautiful displays of colors of mutliple designs within a circle, it was beautiful. I sat down next to him, and I asked, " what does this picture represent?" The boy looked at me and said, "This is how I felt when my brother died." I wanted to tear up right there, because I saw it. I saw the craziness of his mind when he found out, and every color had a different emotion that he felt. It was amazing!
If this boy had had a different teacher, and I am sure has had the traditional teacher and always will, I am not so positive that that drawing, that meant so much to him, would be accepted as a peice of literature. Or how many teachers would ask about it, rather than handing it back and scorned him for doodling instead of drawing the assignment. He is an amazing thinker and he is very intelligent becasue he thinks so abstractly, but how many schools, how many teachers notice or take the time to notice the potential of a non traditional form of intelligentce. My teacher and I had a great discussion about allowing students the oppurtunity to find thier own individual ways of learning and expression of learning. This had to be one of my favorite and most influencial moments as an intern and for a future teacher.