Read time: approximately 14 minutes

This week

• Monday, 24 November – Tuesday, 25 November was in Götenborg, Sweden on a little weekend trip with Jeremy! I bought 2 ABBA records! In Sweden!
• Wednesday, 26 November workshop prep on campus
• Thursday, 27 November penultimate Norwegian class 😦 and traveled to Hamar, Norway for the Friday workshop. Walked around the town, which is on Norway’s largest lake, got some delicious Caribbean BBQ for Thanksgiving, and kicked Jeremy’s butt in 3 of 4 shuffleboard games at a Boston-themed bar (that had 2 Boston College pennants in it!). 
• Friday, 28 November teacher workshop for teachers’ professional learning day from Innlandet secondary schools at Hamar Katedralskole

When I was writing my profile for our Fulbright page, I was advised to not include the letters PhD after my name. I was told that teachers might be turned off by the degree and not book me because they might think that my stuff and approach and demeanor would be “too academic.”

The teacher educators at the university where I work in Norway don’t need to have taught in secondary settings to be a teacher educator for teachers-in-training who are going to teach secondary students. 

When I started pursuing my doctorate degree I committed myself to always making sure that I would present myself and my work in a way that “teacher me” would be inclined to listen to “researcher me.” 

I have been thinking a lot, especially this week, about knowledge, who holds it, how we tap into knowledge we have, and how we help others who have knowledge tap into their knowledge. 

Back in the States, I feel like I am constantly suggesting to preservice teachers that the goal of a teacher isn’t to prove to secondary students how smart they are, but rather to create environments where students can come into knowledge with their facilitation combined with what they know about the content, guiding the learner to learn more than what they came into the class session with. Many preservice teachers I teach are so used to my request to start with student knowledge that in a draft chapter they read and offered feedback on for a teacher prep book I’m writing, they wondered what would happen if the reader wasn’t used to my desire to always start with learner knowledge—would this be disorienting to a reader who perhaps would just want to be told what to do? How could I communicate to a reader who had never met me or was never in my class that I prefer to start with learner knowledge over any other way to conduct class? How could I communicate that in the classroom, we are always toggling between being teachers and learners? 

Starting with learner knowledge has been kind of challenging in Norway, because I realized that I didn’t initially plan my workshops so that we would have the time to start with student knowledge and then I could build with what I know. And with the secondary students, they mostly just want to hear me talk with my “American accent.” I’ve done a better job planning workshops so that the community building and timing work such that I can share my knowledge, students can share their knowledge, and we all come away learning with and from each other. But I still get requests, if I’m coming back to a school, that I talk more. This happens too back in the States. In a class I teach called English Language for Teaching, consistent feedback from students is that I lecture more during the technical linguistics part of the class. I have grand ideas for when I return and how I might do a better job drawing on their knowledge and sharing my own.

You see, teachers have specialized knowledge, what we call pedagogical content knowledge (pck), and only those who teach need this kind of knowledge. It’s actually three knowledges, in a triple Venn diagram, if you can picture it: knowledge of content, knowledge of students, knowledge of pedagogy. All three make teaching a very powerful activity. Knowledge of just two isn’t as strong. For example, if you just have content knowledge and knowledge of students, but have no pedagogical knowledge, it’s hard to know what will maximize student learning. If you have knowledge of students and pedagogy but are missing content knowledge, how do you ensure students are learning the content? And if you have knowledge of content and pedagogy, but no knowledge of students, you’re missing out on making connections and relationships with students. Teachers need all three kinds of knowledge, partly so that they can listen when students respond and then respond accordingly. 

Let me give you a math example. Say you ask a student what’s 2×3 and the student responds 5. Instead of just saying that’s the wrong answer, a teacher needs to work out why the student responded with the number 5. You might immediately assume that the student performed addition rather than multiplication, but that’s assuming what the student did. As a teacher, it’s actually more effective to find out why the student responded with a 5, and to help the learner make their thinking evident. So you need to hear their response, consider how to get at what they did, and then ask a pedagogical question to help understand their process. So that you can ask the next question to get them to the right answer. And you have to respond pretty quickly after they give you an answer. 

I’d ask, how’d you get 5? They can tell me they added 2 to 3, or they could tell me that 2×3 is 5. If they tell me they added, I can have them examine again the problem. If it’s written, I can say something like, oh, did the problem ask for addition? Or I can say, look at the equation again. If they say that 2×3 is 5, this is a different problem altogether, and I can have them show me their work. Or they can respond in a way I’m not thinking of now. Point is, as a teacher, our job isn’t just to convey or pour knowledge (Freire, 1968) into learners—they are not buckets to be filled and they don’t need us to just tell them if they’re right or wrong. As teachers, our job is to help them make better sense of the world, with our guidance. We need to draw on their knowledge and listen to their responses so that we might respond accordingly.

Another example: in my systems of oppression workshop, we define together “oppression.” Actually, they do in a think-pair-share, my favorite teaching move. Together I have them tell me what words are inside the word “oppression” (they have told me “opp,” and “press”); I have them tell me the Norwegian word for oppression (undertrykkelse); and I have them show me the motion of “pressing.” Then I have them take 1 minute to write down what they think the word might mean and/or examples. After time to write independently, they share with a partner. I walk around the room so I can get a sense of their definitions and examples and so I can ask a few students to share out when I ask. Then we share whole-class. I write their responses on the board and ask what can happen if a classmate said something they didn’t write down—they usually respond that they should write it down too. From their definitions, I know where to go next in the workshop. But I can’t get to the next part of the workshop without understanding first where they’re at. 

And an example for a workshop with teachers. A couple weeks ago I wrapped a three-session workshop with teachers at Halden VGS on offering feedback to student writers. The first session was just doing definitional work: what is feedback, who gives it, why do we give it, when has feedback been empowering, when has it been demoralizing. I really just needed to learn what they thought about feedback. Then I gave them a piece of writing I had requested from the teacher who organized the workshop and we looked at it together and they gave feedback in ways they would normally give feedback to student writers; I took notes while they talked. This entire process helped me understand their understanding of the role of feedback and how they do it. I designed the remaining two workshops based on how they thought about feedback and framed the workshops with how I think about feedback, grounded in research and teaching, and how we might bridge the way they do it with this new way so that they could try something in their classroom that pushed them, but wouldn’t be too far off that it would feel completely disorienting.

This week I was called on to fill in for a teacher at the Language Center I work out of to do a workshop on reading strategies for English Language Learners. I was told I would work with the teachers who teach the highest level of English, English 1 & 2, which is also an elective course. If you’re splitting reading and writing, reading strategies isn’t the one I would pick to teach. I feel much more comfortable working with teachers on writing strategies for students. But I start with learner knowledge anyway, right? So why can’t I just ask what they do and go from there? 

And here’s where I think my own knowledge comes into play. I have a high level of content knowledge about teaching because I have a terminal degree in this field (also in English). I have been told that saying this is “arrogant,” which a friend of mine said might just be a parallel version of being told I’m “uppity.” (Interesting question to explore! Another time.). Anyway, I know a lot about teaching. I draw on my experiences as a high school English teacher (13 years in Florida, Georgia, and New York!). I draw on studying teaching throughout that time, but really systematically studying teaching in pursuing my doctorate degree. I draw on my experiences teaching teachers since 2016. Most of my teacher educator friends (and maybe the students I learn with and from) know that while I like teaching English, I am obsessed, I am in love with, teaching teachers. I find it out-of-my-mind interesting to think about and study and read about and talk about and investigate how students learn, how we maximize their learning by understanding pedagogy and how pedagogical content knowledge works and how we leverage it. Building studies and collecting data and analyzing said data and writing and teaching help me understand more about the field and how teaching and learning work.

So, I have this knowledge about teaching and learning. I understand reading strategies, but not as well as I understand writing strategies. I understand how to teach writing strategies to secondary writers and teachers-in-training. It was time to consult colleagues: I got on a text thread I have with colleagues back home and asked them about how they teach reading strategies. One colleague said: backward design. And that unlocked the entire thing for me: start with learning goals, the text, how students might show they have achieved the learning goals (post-reading strategies), then plan pre-reading strategies and during-reading strategies to scaffold toward the learning goals. OMG, brilliant, I thought. In my own teacher preparation I had never been taught this way to teach reading. I hadn’t ever thought about how the process of teaching teachers reading strategies could use backward design, now that I was actually thinking about it, even though I use backward design to teach writing strategies. 

So now I recognized that my ideas about teaching reading strategies could be filtered through my knowledge about teaching and learning. But I also had the learner: these teachers from a variety of secondary schools across eastern Norway, who teach the elective sections of English, usually with students who are pretty proficient in English. That’s about all I knew about them. But I prefer to start with teacher knowledge, so that’s how I designed the workshop. We started with: pick 1-2 goals you have for student learning. I can’t write these goals for them because I have no idea who their students are or what they’re working on. They know the students best. I wrote 2 example learning objectives as mentor texts. Then they selected a text. I showed them the title of my sample text. Then I had them get together in small groups, which would be their group throughout the remainder of the workshop, to talk out their learning objectives and texts. I’ve realized that this is key for teacher workshops: facilitating spaces for them to talk to each other so that they can exchange teaching ideas; I wanted to be sure they had plenty of time for this. And then we worked through post-, pre-, and during-reading strategies. In the latter two, we tried out the ones I had designed with the text I had selected (“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, if you’re curious, just page 1 of that linked pdf). It was super fun to listen in on what the teachers had come up with for their strategies that matched their learning goals, texts, and students. By the time we were done, they had built a couple lessons for students, learned how to build reading strategies off their learning goals, exchanged teaching ideas with teachers from other schools in the area, and identified how these reading strategies were examples of “practical teaching,” a focus of the workshop. 

Sometimes I wear jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie to teach in. I use “y’all” and “word” in emails and in giving feedback to students on their writing. There are many ways to be a PhD, and it frustrates me that rather than pushing back against the stereotype that we are all stuffy academics who can’t communicate with teachers, I’m told to downplay my degree. It’s also frustrating that sometimes my knowledge is seen as a liability rather than an asset. In my own ways, I’m trying to push back. In my slide decks I write my name with those three fun/special letters. I tell secondary students and teachers alike why I went back to get my doctorate. And the students and teachers respond well! A few snapshots of teacher feedback: “I think you present very clearly and are very engaging to listen to. You have very good ideas that make me want to ‘shock myself’ into being more creative again.” and “This was very fun and engaging, thank you.” and “Your session was brilliant! I learnt so much and I feel I will be able to implement it into my teaching. You were also great at sharing your insights, reflections and experiences! Thank you! I wish you a pleasant stay in Norway.” and “I really enjoyed the mix of academia/theory and classroom/teacher training experiences.”

We are all sense-making beings and have so much knowledge to share with each other. One of my goals of living here was to learn with and from all those I encountered. The classroom is a formal space where we engage in such learning and teaching. And in that space I want to be able to draw on my knowledge while drawing on and out the knowledge of learners I have the privilege of getting to know.