second grader pedagogy

I'm pretty sure I giggled and pointed a finger at Alexis Olson when I saw what she was up to that day.

I knew it wasn't the kindest reaction, but hey, I was a second grade girl, and that's what second grade girls do -- point and giggle. It's not a skill that's learned by instruction, but rather it's one we picked up through the unspoken, common culture of "second grade girldom."

So, what was Alexis doing that had me so amused that day? Well, much like Gee's "Jennie" (24), Alexis was performing a fake reading to a fake audience. There she sat, on our classroom reading rug, mimicking all the things Mrs. Thorvilson, our teacher, did during real reading time: her legs were crossed, her face was animated, and she licked the tip of her finger ever-so-lightly before turning each page. She was a mini Mrs. Thorvilson, and she was also the daughter of a school teacher. According to Gee, she was "learning and practicing non-vernacular forms of language associated with school and schooling" (23). Additionally, she was creating associations between school and home identities. She was making meaning about language in a natural, playful, non-traditional way. And I -- shame on me -- had the nerve to laugh at her, when I could've given her plenty of reasons to laugh at me (like, for example, by admitting my ardent belief that I had an otherworldly connection with monkeys, which was the inspiration for Muhlhauser's poem).

"Deep learning works better as a cultural process than it does as an instructed process" (13), which is exactly what Alexis, and "Jennie," were doing. They were practicing, experimenting, playing in a contextualized and relevant manner. They were not simply "doing school" or "getting the grade," but rather were making deeper discoveries of identity by exploring how it felt to be a reader, a teacher, and a storyteller in the very way they had seen modeled.

So, if Alexis had an advantage by coming from a middle-class home where "certain values, attitudes, motivations, ways of interacting, and perspectives" (28) encouraged such exploratory learning, how can teachers work with the language varieties that students from lower socioeconomic realities bring with them? To me, it feels like Gee scratches the surface of this question, but stops short of fully analyzing it. I want more. I want the how.

I'm also, or course, trying to apply Gee's chapters to my own teaching of 101, and I can't help but "out" myself for teaching a decontextualized, detached, skill-and-drill sort of lesson this week. You see, I was being observed (by someone in our class who will remain nameless), and I guess I had formed some preconceived notions about what my adviser would be looking for. I had it in my head that a formal, organized, content-based lesson would be appropriate, so that's precisely what I delivered. Of course, it absolutely bombed. It was dull, it wasn't in my natural style, nor was it the engaging, interactive kind of lesson students appreciate and respond to.

In hindsight, I should have asked, "'What experiences do I want the learners to have?'" (118) before creating the lesson rather than "cut[ting] up the world the way Aristotle did in terms of our traditional academic disciplines seen as bodies of facts and information" (118). I should have read Gee a few days earlier. I should have dropped the "should haves" and taken notes from Alexis and her playful second grader pedagogy. Not only would students have absorbed more of the lesson that day, but everyone would have also, I'm sure, had much more fun.