Nakkula vs. Campoy

The beginning of the first chapter of Michael J. Nakkula’s “Understanding Youth” included several thought-provoking concepts and ideas that struck me as an interesting way to understand how adolescents learn.  Later in the chapter, I started getting a little frustrated with some of Nakkula’s ideas, but once I put them in the proper context, I began to understand where he was coming from, even though I didn’t quite agree with his reasoning.

I remember being bewildered in high school.  I was over-stimulated and didn’t know what was going on half the time.  The idea that adolescents learn through ‘theoretical thinking’, made sense to me. I still sometimes learn through the idea that “assumptions … are tested through real-world, trial and error experimentation” (2).  I’m a trial and error type person and I could understand where the author was coming from with this idea.

Tested knowledge was another concept that resonated with me.  Tested knowledge occurs when students are “constructing implicit theories about their classroom, the adults in their lives, their peers, and, by extension, forming theories about themselves” (3).  I liked how Nakkula noted how complicated students’ lives are in this period of their growth.  There isn’t one simple equation with students.  Each need carefully calibrated algorithms in order to help understand them.  This is one of the major challenges as a teacher, a concept that Nakkula attempts to build on later in the chapter.

I enjoyed reading Nakkula’s ideas on the construction of adolescence.  This idea includes students’ process of “creating themselves and the worlds they inhabit” (5).  I thought it was important in this part that Nakkula includes the point that this process is THEIRS and it’s THEIR world.  I think, as teachers, we sometimes forget that part about adolescents.  We’re merely another figure in their world.  I sometimes lose track of this idea and think that students should treat my classes as the most important part of their day.  That’s not reality. 

                Considering I’m (supposedly) a writer, I had already thought about Nakkula’s concept of making and co-creating narratives out of our lives.  However, Nakkula is able to eloquently translate this concept into an easily communicable idea:  “[t]he construction of one’s life…occurs through and gets held together by the evolving stories we tell ourselves and the ways in which these stories become internal guideposts for ongoing decision-making, everyday behavior, and self-understanding” (6).  I think Nakkula nails this concept here, something that English teachers can take advantage of, when necessary.

I started getting a little less gung ho about Nakkula’s ideas when he started writing about Vgotsky and the meeting of the minds.  The idea of interpyschological  development makes sense: “each individual mind develops within the context of other minds by which it can be influenced” (9).  This idea seems logical enough.  However, Nakkula and Vgotsky start to lose me with the ideas on ‘scaffolding’ and ‘zone of proximal development’.  How can we accomplish these concepts of ‘reading students’ minds’?  That seems like an incredibly idealistic goal.  When there are 20-25 students in the class, it seems hopeless to categorize or determine where students land.  Every student is so different, so dynamic, so complicated, that there just isn’t enough time in the world to analyze each one.This is a nice theory, yet it’s incredibly hard to gauge a whole class. 

I reread this part of the chapter again after writing this part of my post.  I think Nakkula and Vgotsky might be trying to write about practicing these concepts with individual students as opposed to the entire class.  If this is what they’re getting at, then I can understand their point of view. 

I always try to gauge the knowledge in my classes, through pretest activities and discussions.  However, there are always going to be students who don’t quite have the same background knowledge.  I think we need to expect these students to speak for themselves if they’re having trouble.  Self-advocacy is an important element to learning.  We aren’t mind readers.  We can read the room, read body language, and just use our instincts to get there.  But we have to be met half-way by our students.  I've found that exit slips are incredibly helpful to get inside my students' minds.  

Campoy’s first chapter from “Case Study Analysis in the Classroom” was less thought-provoking but I did have a few comments on a few of hisideas.  Campoy was discussing a troublesome student, and a teacher not successfully dealing with the student’s behavior.  The teacher discovered the student was having trouble at home and “it caused [the teacher] to wonder how children with horrendous home lives (several in that same classroom) ever learned anything at all” (4).  I’ve had students that fit this description and I’ve found that some of them flounder, while others find solace in school.  It’s a break from their tumultuous home lives.  They see their friends and aren’t at risk of being yelled at by their parents.  With the rise of cell phones, this distancing is much harder.  

Campoy crossed over with Nakkula in some parts.  Campoy discussed the idea that of constructing our own narratives: “[f]rom the earliest times, life stories have been important in understanding ourselves and relating the importance of what we do (MacIntyre, 1984)” (5).  These ideas certainly resonate with me, both on an educator level and on a student level.      

I believe strongly that the best way for new teachers to learn their craft is by doing it.  I think case studies can be a helpful tool in the classroom, yet nothing can replace good ol’ experience.  Campoy somewhat edges towards the idea that case studies will completely help new teachers become better.  I disagree – I think new teachers already have too much on their minds.  Reading this now is much more appropriate, since I actually have brain energy to process the ideas. 

The last quote from the Campoy chapter that resonated with me was his idea that “[t]his is just the beginning for you, because, as teachers such as Vivian Paley (1990) and Parker Palmer (1998) describe, the journey to becoming a teacher can also be a journey to discover your truest self as a human being” (9).  This reminded me of Ayers’ book and one of the overall themes that I’ve taken from this course so far.  As much as we want to think that it’s our students that control our fate, in the end it really is up to us and how we want to fashion our worlds, whether it’s our classroom or our real life.