Learning to Read Deeply Enough To Gain Expertise

In Mosaic of Thought, Keene and Zimmerman give an example of students doing a research project. While working with one girl, it was evident that she had so much information that she didn't know what was truly important to include. She was a novice in her topic and needed an expert's help. James Gee also discuses the idea of a novice learning from an expert with the idea of enculturation. The article by Lea & Street explains the academic literacies model as being literate in a particular genre of expertise. In order to promote literacy development, students need the opportunity to practice what they are learning with experts. All of these examples tie in with Wilhelm's chapter on using the Mantle of the Expert enactment activity. Activities in this enactment group motivate students to read at a deeper and different level in order for them to gain the same knowledge that experts have. They start to see the real purpose behind the reading, instead of simply a school assignment. The information becomes real knowledge for themselves instead of class work to quickly be forgotten. Wilhelm writes, "the point of all reading, and of all learning activity, is to change our understanding and, as a result, our ways of thinking and being in the world" (p.98). Through his enactment of mantle of expert, he expects students to "become 'novice experts' who 'take on' the language and strategies of the expert" (p.98). The phrase mantle of the expert means that students will step into another's shoes.

While working with my gifted students, we had many different activities that asked them to "become" experts in any area of interest and create activities to complete while in that expert role. Using Wilhelm's enactments would have helped my unit to have so much more clarity and motivation.

Students from Wilhelm's class have the following to say about mantle of expert enactments (p.100):

"It really made me understand...I just didn't get it when I [heard or read] about it"

- Christine

"School is about facts - mostly boring facts - drama is about making facts exciting because you add the feelings...Drama takes facts and asks how they might have been different or how the facts might affect you or someone else and how all that would feel. That's why I like drama."

 - Mike 

Learning With My Students: Show Me, Help Me, Let Me

When I entered my first classroom at Lincoln Middle School, I had no idea that my four years of teaching would eventually teach me so much. I was hired as the gifted seminar and drama teacher. Neither of these positions were ones that I applied for, but both ended up being the perfect job for me. I wasn't given much direction as to how either of the classes should be taught. There were very few guidelines other than to simply follow the state standards. Therefore, I set out as a novice in the field of gifted education and desired to learn as much as possible. Literacy is important to gifted education as we continue to challenge students to learn to be literate in new areas. Not just reading novels, but literacy specific to an area of specialization. Gifted students are at-risk because they tend to think they have already learned all there is. Literacy can help them to see that they are so many other ways to become literate; new things to always learn as a life long learner.

Over the four years, I attended seminars and took classes toward a Master’s degree in Special Education to learn how to better serve my students. I develop and two year series of curriculum units that were individualized for each student. Most importantly, I included what Wilhelm calls enactment strategies. While simultaneously teaching a drama class, my first year, I learned to use many of the same activities with my gifted students. In the gifted curriculum, the highlight of the 2 year series was mock trials. These real life reenactments of a court room, taught me and the students so much as the court system. Because I entered the gifted education world as a novice I was more apt to learn from the students. I honestly felt like I had nothing to teach them. In fact, I constantly asked them to show my how things worked. These students had been in the gifted education program for much of their lives. I saw my job as an opportunity to guide them to be the best people they could be with the gifts that they had.

Enactments are used in teaching to get kids involved in the learning. Teachers even learn better this way. When a teacher is taught how to do something they will understand it, but it makes so much more sense when it is "discovered in concert with teacher practice" (Wilhelm, 2002). This idea of learning while doing is very similar to Gee's theory of Discourse and the process of enculturation when learning a secondary Discourse. In all things, I believe one can learn in a classroom, but it is always more fun and easier to learn by doing. That is the idea behind using enactment strategies in the classroom. Enactments help the teacher to "explicitly guide [students] to do new things" (Wilhelm, p.20) instead of simply delivering information at them. Wilhelm continues to explain how good teachers learn along with their students; to "teach them in an area in which teacher and students can play, and build, and learn together" (p.20). Wilhelm uses Lev Vygotsky to base much of his theory for using enactments. Vygotsky bases his theory on the idea of a zone of proximal development in which students can do something with the proper assistance. The ZPD is very similar to a dominant Discourse that Gee explains in his Discourse theory.