First half of book...

In this reading there were some things I really agreed with and some that I did not. I did not like the idea of using assimilation to try and conform all of the students. They are different and each individuals who should not be expected to be the same as their surroundings and their classmates. I also did not like the idea of using humility as a punishment tool for students. Students will always make mistakes even if they are doing the best they can and it is not always about being right, but learning something along the way.
This book also reminds me of another one of you books that I read last semester, Getting Beyond “I Like the Book”. Since they are both based in critical literacy practices naturally it makes sense that their ideas do overlap. The practices of focusing teaching on the students overlaps and its really great to be able to read a second book to gain more insight into critical literacy.
Children not being restricted to their desks is a great practice, it gives them more space to explore their own ideas and learn at their own pace and follow their own ideas. But I do have doubts about how well this would work in an elementary school rather than a nursery school because so much is student started and motivation based that one unmotivated student could throw the balance of the classroom off. There is also an open connection with parents, which will probably be a good one but some negative parents could be against all of these innovative ideas of adventure and want a set curriculum for their children to follow, which goes against the whole theory of critical literacy in this classroom environment.
However, I really like the ideas of basing the classroom structure around the interests of the students because this is a great motivational strategy for the students and it inspires their creativity and the asking of questions. I also like how the book says that critical literacy programs cannot be taught and that they must be lived. There is so much that needs to be done through examples and practices and cannot be put onto paper. Children’s inquiries become the focus of the classroom and learning which is amazing, not having a set curriculum to follow and being able to explore is great, especially for young students. Having the children be able to make their own reflections and being able to post them is an inspiration to the other students because of all the ideas that it will spread between the students. As my final comment I just wanted to write about the audit trail. I think it is amazing that students have generated all of those wonderful ideas and been able to express themselves in ways like this where there is an open forum for discussion and nothing is deemed wrong because of the classroom structure. Everything is open for exploration and the chart in the book showing this trail just showed so much thought that went into the planning and implementation of it into the classroom environment.