Dual Coding Theory, Old Schoolbooks, and Flan (An Interview)
Mystery revealed! His favorite paste flavor is…
Because this blog started in media res and I struggle with “About Me” sections, I decided to answer basic questions in an interview style post. This will be added to “Start Here” posts.
1. Tell me about yourself.
Well, I'm a second generation teacher who's been in the classroom since 2011. I've worked across middle school, high school, and college admissions, but not in that order. I taught high school for three and middle school for the past seven. Outside of teaching, I’ve started presenting at conferences and I love collecting old school books—nineteenth century primers, spellers, and readers.
What's your favorite flavor of paste? That is, after all, your blog's title.
Are you serious? I don't eat paste. It's just a gimmick. (After a pause.) Grape with sparkling glitter.
2. Did you always want to teach?
Oh, teaching was never on my radar. My mom teaches and made me promise growing up never to follow her footsteps. That was easy enough: I hated (and still hate) bulletin boards. So in college I was free to follow my curiously, which explains my degree in Philosophy with a minor in Religion.
Why did you pursue teaching, then?
Am I allowed to say that teaching found me? That sounds so corny. I substitute taught that first year out of college as I applied to graduate programs. Had to pay my loans somehow. But it all clicked when explaining a middle school science problem on the board. I remember looking out from the board, seeing it click with students, and I knew teaching was it.
If teaching is a calling, how did college admissions factor in?
I actually quit after three years. First school wasn't a good fit. Having just renewed my license, I got a job at the Catholic college across town. I wanted to see what kids really needed for college. So I traveled across the Midwest, wrote some 61,000 words into a novel, and just cleared my head. Then the college abruptly closed ten months later. After a long summer and spring of unemployment, I fell into my present job.
Why have you stayed in middle school? Would you ever return to high school?
I love middle school! You can take them from incoherent paragraphs to three-page MLA essays within a semester if you want. It's so much fun! Of course I'd love to teach high school, but when you can teach fundamental skills so young, why jump downstream and teach them again?
3. Rapid fire favorites: What is your favorite Pizza?
Plain cheese. Thin crust.
Would you accept corporate sponsorship from Folgers?
I would humbly accept their generous sponsorship and promise never to humble brag about subscribers.
How do you drink your coffee?
Black as sin.
What artists have you seen the most in concert?
I've been to seven Red concerts, I think, followed by four or five Bob Dylan concerts.
Pretend you're a cartoon character. What's your outfit?
I'd wear cargo shorts and tye-die shirts year round.
Favorite desert?
Custards. All the way. In my thirties, it’s all about sugar cream pies and flan.
Favorite books?
Moby Dick, by far! I read Journey to the Center of the Earth and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass at least once a year. Sometimes more.
4. Earlier you mentioned you collect old school books. Can you talk about that?
I started antiquing after getting married. I found a nineteenth century schoolbook and just gazed at the illustrations and archaic typefaces. It was art! Then I started studying the general approach, and the scholarly side just happened. Learning naturally follows love and curiosity. As of now, I repurposed an old DVD bookcase (Is that the right word?) to hold my little treasures.
Clifton Johnson's Old-Time Schools and School Books is the most beautiful book about teaching that I've ever read! Published in 1904, Johnson provides numerous pictures documenting the genre. He describes the earliest history of education in the colonies along with their books. As I study primers, it’s astonishing that their overall format remained consistent from the 1690s to the 1930s. At least by my reckoning. The New England Primer Collection, 1690-1843 contains pristine reprints as a reference.
If you want an academic history, Charles C. Butterworth explains how primers evolved with the printing press and Protestant Revolution. (His book The English Primers 1529-1545 offers microscopic detail, but his essay "Early primers for the use of children" is more accessible.) While the hornbook predates the primer (See Andrew Tuer's History of the Hornbook), Butterworth pins the ABC genre—and therefore phonics—to 1534. The former New England Primer Collection features a reprint of the 1538 The ABC Both in Latin and in English in the appendix.
What are your views on the Science of Reading (SoR)?
If you love primers, you love phonics. SoR says the right things, but the politics keep me wary. Hornbooks and primers provide literally a half millennia of precedent. Yet SoR shies from the historical case. It doesn't interest them. Not one bit. Empirical evidence is good. But when it complements history and you refuse to connect those dots? You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
What else have you learned from studying old books?
History is inevitable. Past becomes prologue. Two things jump out—the history of English as a subject (the rhetoric of invention) and forgotten conventions (familiar conversation).
First, studying organizational patterns led to rhetorical mode, the rhetoric of invention, and histories of English textbooks. Rhetorician Sharon Crowley argues our textbooks have remain unchanged for nearly two centuries. Ever since Samual Newman's 1827 Practical System of Rhetoric, among others, textbooks have become endless echo chambers, separated from their own history. Crowley's deconstruction of current-traditional rhetoric was eye opening! Question it, and teachers sneer. I wish future teachers had a history of the subject.
Second, while on a sentence diagramming kick, I found Graded Lessons in English in a rare book store. While I was shocked to see diagramming in the nineteenth century, I was surprised that dialogues prevailed over dense text. Goodness! What a revelation! How efficient and effective! I knew catechistic exchanges were centuries old, but this was another level. I've researched the convention and found only one essay: Michele Cohen's "The pedagogy of conversation in the home: 'familiar conversation' as a pedagogical tool in eighteenth and nineteenth-century England." Apparently dialogues in texts was considered passé by many by the 1850s?
But like everything else in education, if it works, break it.
5. What contemporary topics do you study?
Do you have two hours? (Laughs.) I love following citations from evidence-based teaching books. Books like How Learning Works, sites like Retrieval Practice, and The Science of Reading Podcast have introduced so many new ideas. I've been digesting footnotes from Jane Oakhill’s Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension for two years now!
One, text structures are like Mandelbrot sets to me. Derek Cabrera’s Thinking at Every Desk argues some thought patterns are fractals. Well, an Oakhill citation led to Bonnie Meyer from Penn State, whose essay "Effects of discourse type on recall" argued text structures help reading comprehension. And I thought they only applied to composition! Her chapter in the Handbook of Reading Research summarized the field handily. Recently I found Joanna P. Williams "Text structure instruction: the research is moving forward," which suggested more concrete interventions. As I've written elsewhere, writing is mostly organization.
Two, text structures lead to dual coding theory (DCT), but I have more questions than answers here. I’ve studied three books relentlessly over this past school year, and I’d like to reinvent my teaching style from the ground up. Allan Paivio’s Imagery and Text, Oliver Caviglioli’s Dual Coding With Teachers and Organise Ideas have forced me to reconsider practically everything. And an interview blurb may not be the best place to sort out my tangled thinking, but I’ll rattle off a few things.
DCT suggests the brain processes information as both words (logogens) and pictures (imagens). As a writer, I’ve long drawn ideas before arranging them linearly. Before writing that first word, I see mental pictures like objects. I thought that was just me. I had no clue there was research behind it! And while learning styles has long been debunked, there’s something to be said about pictures aiding learning. According to DCT, they help process information non-verbally.
What would you change about your teaching style?
This is ongoing, but I have a wish list. To start, synthesizing research across text structures and DCT, I’d teach them together within the first week or so. Students would become familiar with three or four key graphic organizers, matching both text structure and prompts, and we would explore most ideas several different ways. Caviglioli’s Organise Ideas provides suggestions for using PowerPoint to create organizers and infographics, so I’d like to experiment there. This connects with some Matt Miller suggestions.
Imagery and Text explained that DCT helps both for decoding and comprehension. If kids can decode but not comprehend, working mental imagery may be a viable intervention. Paivio mentions several studies which worked building mental imagery, and reading scores boomed. The Visualizing and Verbalizing method by Lindamood Bell does this, but heavens! Try affording that curriculum!
6. Last question: Plans for summer vacation?
You know, when I was on parental leave this year, I remember drinking coffee and doing word searches while my son slept. So I’d love to veg out that way. As my son and I hang out, I’m sure I’ll read him a lot of books and take him on a lot of walks.
Also, I’m speaking at some teaching conferences soon, so as I revamp my teaching style, I’d love to revamp materials. The Paste Eaters Blog will serve as a landing spot, and potentially digital hub for topics and materials.
Recommendations. If you enjoyed this post, check out some of my other favorites:
Teachers Are Like Markers. This initial roundup summarizes my posts so far.
Ten Things in my Desk (Folgers, Sponsor Me!) This post describes ten things in my desk… and begs for Folgers generous corporate sponsorship.
Fast Food Workers of the Mind. Public schools push standards for quality control, but in the end tests limit learning and render everyone interchangeable.
Schools Should Teach Letter Writing. This two-parter argues schools should teach more than academic writing. I also explore how mental models for writing differ whether you started with letters… or text messages.
Stop Grading Essays with Amnesia. Many teachers burn out and waste time giving student feedback. Check out other perspectives and time saving tips!
