Documenting the Process: The Vessel/Unity Learning Communities November 7, 2024
This big experiment on teaching disenfranchised readers...this thing with Tremaine Brown and The Vessel...we met last night to discuss and plan the first interaction with students. I want to write and let you know what's happening. To document the process. To seek your involvement and support.
As we work through building our response to learners, there are many components. Gee describes important theoretical foundations that serve as our framework. The book covers 36 principles of learning situated in 3 areas of current research. We are using these three areas of research to ground our decision making. Basically - we are asking ourselves: How do we USE these "central truths about the human mind and human learning" in our instructional design and approach to the learners we will serve? (Gee, p. 9).
Situated Cognition: Learning happens individually, "inside people's heads" (Gee, p. 9). But it also happens while that person experiences a "material, social, and cultural world" (Gee, p. 9). As we design, support, and respond to each other, we will need to think deeply about how that kid is seeing the world and thinking through how they are living and surviving it.
New Literacy Studies: Reading and writing are more than "mental achievements" that kids experience alone or in the way we experienced them (Gee, p. 9). And it's serious stuff. The mental achievements have consequences: "social and cultural practices with economic, historical, and political implications" (Gee, p. 9). Y'all. The people who have joined us believe in what we are doing with literacy as a moral imperative.
Connectionism: Honestly, this theory points out what I think causes the kids we are working with to struggle with reading and writing. It's the way we are teaching them. It's our system's fault. Hate me if you want - but we have to make some serious shifts in what we think it means to teach. Gee explains that people really aren't good with logical reasoning. You think? Sarcasm overt right there in case you didn't hear it in the font. Gee also explains that we really aren't good with "general abstract principles detached from experience" (Gee, pg. 9). Yet - isn't that exactly what we teach? General abstract principles. We tell kids what the principles are. We wade in abstraction and textual interpretations that begin with logical reasoning and never show how one actually comes to abstraction, principles, generalizations. We give instructions, telling kids what to do, but we never really tell them how to come up with their own ideas or thinking processes. Instead of instruction - actually teaching - we are bossing kids around as if they were some kind of cognitive automaton receiving our programming. Scary stuff. Read James Clavell's The Children's Story if you think that's not what we are doing.
The Learning Pit: A Common Language
To really teach, we must help students look at their experiences in the world, seek their own patterns, and come up with generalizations that govern the experiences as personal truths, cognitive idiosyncracies, and lives. J.E. Dennis described how we cause "epiphany" in our lesson design. I look forward to sharing his thoughts with you soon. James Nottingham describes the concept as "Eureka" in his video on The Learning Pit.
The Learning Pit concept will be a component of how we talk about learning with the readers and writers we serve. You see, a lot of kids think there is something wrong with them because they struggle. S. Carr wrote about an experience with a child she tested for GT and his response. I can't wait to share her writing with you. E. Madrano shared and experience with supporting a new teacher in the classroom management pit. You'll enjoy that one as well.
Turns out, the pit is a universal experience (Thanks Mouserat!)
Each Thought Partner (which is what we call those who directly support learners) will develop their own way of teaching the Learning Pit to their groups. Stay tuned for their approaches. Ultimately, teaching is an individual sport - the way the teacher puts the lesson together changes how students uptake and use the ideas. Thought Partners will share their approach at the next meeting on November 21st.
The First Challenge: Process over Content
After we discussed the theoretical underpinnings, we participated in the first challenge Thought Partners will lead with their groups of three learners. Throughout the experience, the Thought Partners were to consider four purposes and five principles to evaluate and refine the lesson.
It has been said by many that ELAR has no content. After learning phonics, a bit of grammar, and continued vocabulary studies...there's really only process. Video games are like that too - no content. Seems like a waste of time? Not really. Gee points out these important ideas on pages 37 and 38. I added the stuff in the parenthesis relative to our cause.
The Four Purposes
1. Learning to experience (see and act on) the world in a new way. (This is not to get a job or pass STAAR.)
2. Gaining the potential to join and collaborate with a new affinity group. (You belong where you didn't think you could. We are all here to help you do more.)
3. Developing resources for future learning and problem solving in the semiotic domains to which the game is related. (Learn how to play the literacy "game" with skills and processes that make sense to you now and later.)
4. Learning how to think about semiotic domains as design spaces that engage and manipulate people in certain ways and, in turn, help create certain relationships in society among people and groups of people , some of which have implications for social justice. (Learn about what is being done to you and for you and with you that makes yours and other lives better.)
The First Five Principles
Gee explains at the end of the chapter on Semiotic Domains that causing reflection is key to learning (p. 41-42). As such, these first five principles guide how we develop lessons that change the learner experience and impact. I added the stuff in ending parenthesis.
1. Active, Critical Learning Principle: All aspects of the learning environment (including ways in which the semiotic domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive learning. (All lessons must include listening, speaking, reading, writing, thinking, collaboration, arts, movement, trauma informed components.)
2. Design Principle: Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience. (I don't get this one yet. We are still thinking about what this means with the experiences we are designing for the learners.)
3. Semiotic Principle: Learning about and continuing to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the learning experience. (Connectionism/constructivism will be key components along with ZPD.)
4. Semiotic Domains Principle: Learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity groups connected to them. (We will be building a community and identity different than the one we all hold at school and in the community. And we will be learning about how literate folks navigate and participate in the world.)
5. Metalevel Thinking About Semiotic Domains Principle: Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains. (Nothing we are ever doing will be about a single text or content. We will be learning about systems that relate to all other systems and living a powerful life.) T. Simms discussed connections she saw through her background in Math and Science. I look forward to sharing her ideas as well.
Experiencing and Refining the Challenge
Together, we experienced the first challenge with a powerful text, audio performances, role-play, annotation, graffiti, symbols and anchor backgrounds. Throughout the experience, we modified, debriefed, and discussed experience, processes, design, revisions, etc.
We plan to employ the revisions and lessons with a target group of learners, filming the event, and refining the lesson more fully for final implementation when the project goes live next semester. It is our hope that through collaboration, we embody the same principles of design we seek to create in the relationships and experiences with the learners. These videos will provide training for participants not able to be present.
Documenting the Process
I'm keeping a researcher's notebook during the events. Afterward, I am using the notes to write up what happened and document changes. Using member checks, participants will have access to the summaries and opportunities to revise/comment on the process. Since the blog is public facing, community comment and input is also possible at each phase.
References:
Parlow, A. (2024). Video Games Could Save the World. Unpublished works.
Clavell. J. (1981). The Children's Story. Delacourte Press. Accessed from: https://www3.uwsp.edu/cnr-ap/UWEXLakes/Documents/programs/lakeleaders/crew7/greenlake_may_2008/the_childrens_story_becken_presentation.pdf
Gee, J. P. (2007). What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. St. Martin's Griffin.
Mouserat. (2021, June 2). Mouserat - The pit (Official lyric video) [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lhFFXNBh5c
Nottingham, J. (2025, November 23) The learning pit [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IMUAOhuO78
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