The Mind at Work

Mike Rose aptly paints of a picture of the cognitive and physical skills demanded of American workers. He uses his interviews with his mother, who worked as a waitress for over thirty-five years. He examines the wide variety of complex and varied skills and intellectual prowess required to complete her jobs. Rose also skillfully uses context in this writing in two ways. First, Rose shows how waitresses' intellectual aptitude lies in an unappreciative social surrounding. Second, Rose enlightens us as to how much unrecognized intellectual skills lie in the job. Although, previous discussions of work in restaurants have admitted the physical and social skills required, Rose feels that the intellectual skills are not appreciated.

The impressive memory expected of waitresses include intense mnemonic skills, sequence strategies for orders, remembrance of spatial layouts and personalities. Rose travels with us from the physical skills and prowess of waitresses to the job's cognitive demands., you can't help but have an increased respect for the mental part of labor as a result. It's well worth contemplating in light of the economy's ongoing evolution and the changing roles of workers.


We, as teachers, should keep in mind the cognitive skills students bring from their outside experiences. Many of these experiences may be much like waitresses' skills, unrecognized as having any intellectual worth by society at large. We need to push ourselves to see beyond both our own, and society's reductive idea of intelligence in order to truly see the mind at work in a new light.

Tangerine Conclusion

In our last class discussion of Tangerine, we discussed two questions:
1) Discuss whether Tangerine is an accurate depiction of the ills of U.S. society
2) Paul wants to enter St. Anthony's as a kid with a reputation. What can you as a teacher/student, learn about teaching and learning from Paul?

I found our first question to be an imporatant consideration for both our class and the students at Freddie Thomas. Trying to grasp how much Edward Bloor drew an accurate picture of American social reality is an important consideration. Our class came to a consensus that, due to class disparity and the gap between rich and poor in our country, Tangerine was largely an accurate picture of the ills of U.S. society. The class expressed some doubts about how polarized and either/or Bloor made class seperation seem. Bloor uses the surreal Florida setting with the developments, muck fires, and Tangerine farms to paint a surreal picture of the two social settings. However, we should not forget that this story is about Paul's personal struggle with identity and family but also about class seperation and the inequity of American life.

The other question that came up in our discussion was how realistic Bloor made Erik and Arthur's characters. In a lot of ways, I hoped for more depth in Erik's character, but it wasn't part of Bloor's intention. Making Erik into a simple, absolute villian was, in some ways, easy for Bloor. Although the story was very powerful, I think it could have brought up even more controversy if Erik wasn't as absolute a villian and was presented as more human. A flawed human who makes terrible mistakes is harder to deal with as a reader than a monster who commits unspeakable evils.

Tangerine Post2

Part 2 of Tangerine became increasingly exciting to read. Bloor strengthened the story and my interest in the characters by emphasizing the class divisions between Paul's world and others in the story. On pg. 72 Paul, Paul's mother, and Joey are driving through the town of Tangerine. Paul sees several lime green houses and a packing plant. To see something other than an upper class, newly built development is a powerful experience for Paul. Bloor writes of Paul's reaction: "It was strange to see an old packing plant, to see an old anything. But it was also comforting to hear that something around here has a history. That something actually belongs here." This passage struck me and immediately grabbed my attention. Paul expresses an emotion that I can sympathize with when he longs for housing and community with authenticity and history to it. With the growth of new development communities across our country increasingly replacing older, historic neighborhoods, Paul's sentiments ring true.

Tangerine Post

Going into this reading, I expected a mundane coming-of-age story about a youngster forced to adapt to a new town. I was pleased to find that Bloor quickly proved my expectations false once I read the story. The first thing I noticed was how Bloor (1997) used such powerful imagery to paint a picture of the scenery in Florida. When first describing the fields of Tangerines on the trip to Florida, Bloor writes, "They were perfect. Thousands upon thousands of trees in the red glow of the sundown, perfectly shaped and perfectly aligned, vertically and horizontally, like squares in a million-square grid" (Bloor, p. 8). For someone who has very little outside experience in Florida, I was impressed with Bloor's use of words.
The other aspect of Bloor's writing I found well done was his use of characterization. He did a great job breaking down who each character was. Everything from Paul's mother's enthusiastic expectations about what her family's life would be like in an expensive development to Paul's sympathy for Wayne the fireman and defense of the citrus trees he sees burning on the drive to Tangerine County allow us to see who they are as people.
One aspect of reading we have discussed in our class here at St. John Fisher is how reading can connect to our lives. When we can draw on prior knowledge, connect what we are reading to other texts, and when we create our own questions about the text that we read, we become stronger reading.
I could connect emotionally to the subjects in the text even though I have never been anywhere near any housing developments in Florida, surrounded by Citrus fruit trees and muck fires. When Paul is describing the pressures he feels are being placed on his family in their new surrounding, he says, "Dad calls this a 'booming area,' but it's no Houston. It's not even a Huntsville. It's like we're major leaguers who've been sent down to a minor-league city for a while. We're expected to do great things here and then move back up to the big leagues" (Bloor, p. 22). I immediately identified with the Paul's feelings in this paragraph. Having family in New York and having lived both there and here, I can feel the whole small-town complex that is all too easy to develop living in a city like Rochester. I will be interested to hear how others reacted to these passages.

Appropriate Reading?

I have also come to the realization, like many of my classmates, that the process of becoming a reader has more avenues than solely through novels. Two teenage sisters I teach came to an after school tutoring session with their leisure reading. Their leisure reading contained several urban teenage books written by Wahida Clark. I first I was surprised by how the books were so explicit. Afterall, they were titled, "Every Thug Needs a Lady", "Payback is a Mutha", and "A Hustler's Wife." I gave my normal didatic input on how thugs shouldn't be glorified and how teen pregnancy is a serious issue. The girls said how they were well aware but just found the reading exciting and real. I began to think of how Richardson supports read-aloud passages that make the reading "come alive" and how Tovani supports giving students opportunities to read provocative text. While I probably won't be pulling Wahida Clark out for a Civics or Government and Politics class, it was a strong reminder of what often appeals and excites young readers. I hope to adapt my curriculum by providing text sets with modern applications and connections for students but for the content itself to become as exciting as the books students choose to read on their own.

Primary Vs Secondary Sources

Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman (2004) argue that teachers should assess several important aspects of reading material in their 4th Chapter, "Toward a Balanced Diet of Reading" in their work Subjects Matter. In their consideration of the authors and sources in a textbook, they assert that

...any textbook is the author's subjectivity. There is no such thing as 'just the facts.' Consciously or not, willfully or not, no matter how hard they try to be 'unbiased,' secondary-source authors always infuse the books they create with their own attitudes, views and cultural stance. (p. 61)

A persuasive, postmodern stance from two professional educators. I do agree wholeheartedly agree with their outlook on how subjectivity is present everywhere in our texts. However, they reserve this judgement solely for secondary sources content that have "...been gathered from other materials (sometimes other than textbooks), and then combined, reshaped, interpreted, and presented by the authors" (Daniels and Zemelman, 2004, p. 61).

My issue is that they seem to imply that primary sources, as raw materials, somehow rise above the issue of subjectivity. Just because a source is primary does not necessarily divorce a source from its subjectivity. This may or may not have been exactly what Daniels and Zemelman were saying, but I think its important to bring this up when discussing content literacy.

textbooks

As Daniels and Zemelman expressed concern for the central role textbooks play in classrooms, I grew curious. Although Daniels and Zemelman show great concern for the shortcomings of sole use of textbooks in a classroom, they also advocate critical examination of the textbooks that we do use in classrooms.What are some worthwhile groups that review various textbooks? If anyone knows of such groups and educational research groups, please respond.