LET’S TALK About Local

Hi! This is Katie and I want to share what I learned about creating a welcoming classroom community that supports students’ virtual schoolbag and fund of knowledge. To learn more about this, I read “Trusting the local: Opening up the script with response-able talk practices”.

Maureen P. Boyd and Elizabeth Tyann, Associate Professors of education at the University at Buffalo, and Lori Potteiger, a doctoral student of education at the University at Buffalo, conducted a study of an urban elementary classroom to learn about the effectiveness of going off script and instead teaching based on the local. They hoped to learn more about how to cultivate a welcoming classroom culture by fostering response-able talk and using dialogic instruction in the classroom. They wished to show how important it is for teachers to not teach just from a script, but to instead value and connect to the local–not just local resources and connections but also the in-the-moment contributions that the students have to offer on a daily basis.

Tyann, and Potteiger looked at a second grade classroom in an urban elementary school. The class has 25 students, one teaching assistant, and one teacher. They focus on one day they observed, Thursday, so that they could focus on Morning Meeting and other activities that value the local. They looked at the class handshake that the students help to build throughout the year, the morning sharing time where students can share about something that relates to what they are learning or that is important to them, and the writing activities that showcase topics the students care about. They found that teachers who practice dialogic instruction and foster response-able talk in their classroom help to cultivate a welcoming classroom community. This practice not only enables students to learn the content that they need but it also gives them the opportunity to make critical connections that reinforces what they are learning. 

One limitation of this study is that this paper is based on a one day study of one classroom in an urban elementary school and pulls from other studies. More research must be done in order to provide more thorough evidence that using the local instead of a script is more effective in creating a welcoming classroom culture. But, they did see the importance of nurturing the classroom community and cultivating the local, making sure the students have a voice and the teacher is tappinging into their funds of knowledge. They are not calling for teachers to throw out the script completely, but to instead use it as a guide instead of a script. Teachers need to have the ability to go off script and tailor their instruction to their students and all of their diverse needs.

Boyd, M. P., Tynan, E. A., & Potteiger, L. (2018). Trusting the local: Opening up the script with response-able talk practices. English Teaching, 17(1), 2-15. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-09-2017-0125