Standard 5, learning environment. A teacher must be able to use an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create learning environments that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.

This essay describes aspects of the literary life and academic motivations of Angie, a fifth grade Native American student who has been absent from school a lot and who is less and less interested in school work, according to her teacher.  The essay draws from my student observation and teaching journal.  In my time with Angie I discovered that she has an active mind and a great sense of humor.  She rediscovered herself as a reader. I did a systematic recording and wrote detailed notes right after working with Angie.  Her positive attributes jumped out at me, and I watched her motivation and engagement increase.  I had an additional goal as I wrote this paper: I wanted to think about how I could extend my work with Angie.  Thus, this paper also included how I planned to continue the work I started with this student. 

Upper Elementary Literacy and Motivation to Read

Child Study

October 25

As I prepared to work with Angie I read articles by Linda Gambrell about student engagement and motivation and learned that motivation is heavily influenced by a child’s expectation of accomplishment or failure, and the value they place on achievement.  A high motivation to read is related to positive self-esteem, and low motivation to read is connected to a poorer self-concept.  Angie has frequently said to me, “I’m no good at any of this.”  She is referring to school performance.  Notably, many of the Native American students that I work with struggle with issues related to alienation and some suffer from depression.  Among the Native American youngsters and their families, the legacy of Indian boarding schools consciously and unconsciously influences their feelings about school and makes them rightfully suspicious about white majority power and control, including teachers.  This under-current is ever-present as I interact with Native American students and families.  It helps to talk with kids and families about their good and bad experiences with school, which we do now and again as I have gotten to know them.    

‘Angie and I spent our time together discussing her feelings about school and her feelings of inferiority and boredom.  We agreed that she would take a reading survey that would gauge her level of interest and would “take her pulse” and assess her feelings.  She liked this idea of “taking her pulse,” and we laughed about using a medical term to find out if she was “alive” in terms of reading and academics.’

The important undercurrent in this interaction is Angie’s deep ambivalence about school.  In this first session with me Angie may have learned that she is of two minds about school: she’s good at some parts of it, and she also hates it.  For Angie it may be a good time to go further and make the unconscious conscious.  She has an inquiring mind, and she will probably welcome information about the deleterious effects boarding schools had on her people.  I will start this process by asking Angie if she would like to view an imovie documentary that I helped two Native American 8^th grade girls make several years ago for History Day.  Angie knows these girls.  The 8^th graders assembled old photographs and researched the history of Indian boarding schools and their effect on Native Americans.  The old photos were accompanied by the eighth graders’ narration and American Indian music.  Viewing the film may give Angie ideas for further cultural research she would like to do.  I will urge her to consider a creative project, possibly using electronic media that would entail images, music, and writing. 

October 26

‘We began by doing a reading survey.  The Motivation to Read Profile (Gambrel et al., 1996) measures a student’s self-concept as a reader and the value they attach to reading.  Angie took her time doing the survey and appeared to carefully consider each of her answers.’ 

After we completed this survey Angie rolled on the floor.  Did she learn anything from doing this survey?  Perhaps she learned that she is unsure how she feels about reading, and this made her anxious.  I think it would be worthwhile to do the survey again, or one like it, and see if she would be willing to talk to me about her ambivalence, apprehension, and strengths now that we know each other better.  I found an adapted version of McKenna et al.’s Elementary Reading Attitude Survey online that includes Garfield cartoon pictures that Angie would like.  I also found the journal article by McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth (1995) entitled, Children’s attitudes toward reading: A national survey that details the strong link between attitudes about reading and reading ability.  McKenna et al. suggest that early reading intervention could stem the negative decline in attitudes toward academic reading that they traced from grade 1-6.  Angie, a good reader, did not require intervention in the early grades.  She was not a frustrated reader.  Rather, as a fifth grader her interest has turned to other activities.  She is concerned with her social status in her tight-knit group of Native American girls.  Angie may view reading as a form of oppression on the part of her teachers, and she may see reading as a boring leisure activity compared to other social pursuits.  This is why it continues to seem worthwhile to explore the literature of her culture that appears to engage her interest.  Further reading in this area could open new doors for her.   

November 19, 2012

‘Today Angie and 19 other Native American students from grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 went to the Minnesota History Center to view the exhibit, “The U.S.-Dakota War.”  After a stimulating introduction given by Native American historian Michael Wilson, all the children were given clip boards that contained a scavenger hunt hand-out that I wrote up.  Notably, Angie and other middle school students took their role as seekers seriously and quietly worked their way through the gallery, jotting down their own responses and direct quotes from the panels. 

‘Angie’s written responses:

‘What caused the U.S-Dakota War? Angie wrote: ‘Hunger. Crops were dead.’  From one of the panels she paraphrased, ‘Delayed treaty payments made the traders nervous, and many of them cut off credits to the Dakota.’   

‘Why were the Dakota increasingly dependent on government goods?  Why did the Dakota people need help from the white government?  ‘Cause they were hungry.  They needed help to survive.’     

‘What were poor, white immigrant families looking for?  ‘A fresh start in a new land.’

‘What were the consequences of the war?  What happened to the Dakota people?  ‘The Dakota people and settlers alike had seen their homes and families torn apart.’

‘Find the panel that says, “execution.”  Write down one word (or more) to describe your feelings.  Use adjectives.  ‘I feel very, very sad.’

‘Find the panel entitled, “Divided by War.”  Write down one or two sentences from the panel that you think are important.  ‘On July 5, 1862, Mdewakanton chief Wabasha told bishop Henry Whipple that they younger traditionalists were frustrated and demoralized by the growing coercion to acculturate.’

Angie was unstoppable as she moved through the gallery gathering information.  She continues to talk about the trip to see the U.S-Dakota War exhibit.  We have looked at her scavenger hunt answer sheet several times.  I told her that she was able to find the main kernels of information for each and every question posed on the scavenger hunt.  I reminded her that she read through longs panels of text to identify the most important part of the message.  The exhibit did not display artifacts but relied mostly on written commentary and pictures.  Angie was undaunted.  The topic was highly motivating and engaging for her.   

As I was presenting background information to Angie and the students on what caused the U.S.-Dakota War, I started to hear myself say words such as ‘starving,’ ‘displaced,’ and ‘exiled,’ and I could see the children sinking lower into their chairs.  But I had prepared for the moment.  Lewis’ resistant reading technique suggested to me that one should “… resist, at times, the pull of the story” (Lewis, 2001, p. 137).  I asked the children how they would describe people who could lived through such an ordeal.  Instantly but quietly Angie and middle school students put forward descriptive words such as ‘strong,’ ‘brave,’ ‘survivors,’ ‘NATIVE AMERICANS!’ many of them said forcefully. 

Scaling It Up

The portion that lends itself best to whole-class instruction is the U.S.-Dakota War lessons and museum visit.  I relied heavily on electronic media to present background information, and this method catches the interest of diverse students and motivates them to learn.  I used resources from the Minnesota History Center’s website and from the StarTribune’s excellent August, 2012 expose on the topic.  I got YouTube clearance from the Minneapolis Public Schools technology department and assembled PowerPoints and showed short videos that featured Native American elders talking about the legacy and history of the Dakota War.  In the future I would take excerpts from the StarTribune’s series so that students could do more in-depth reading on the topic and chart it’s chronology.   All 5^th grade students—not just Angie—would be interested in this topic because it happened in our own backyard, and because they are sensitive to the topic of injustice. 

Bibliography

Gambrell, L., Palmer, B., Codling, R., & Mazzoni, S. (1996). Assessing motivation to read. The Reading Teacher, 49:7, 518-533.

Lewis, C. (2001). Literacy practices as social acts: Power, status, and cultural norms in the classroom. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.

McKenna, M., Kear, D., & Ellsworth, R. (1995). Children’s attitudes toward reading: A national survey. Reading Research Quarterly, 30:4, 934-956.

Owocki, G., & Goodman, Y. (2002). Kidwatching: documenting children’s literacy development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.