Our Mission
Genre Practice is a progressive approach to instruction that transforms familiar classroom routines into opportunities for students to develop agency and responsibility so that they can meet high learning standards. Genre Practice offers children freedom to read and write texts of their choosing; to collaborate with peers of their choice; to hold themselves accountable to high learning standards; to size up their strengths and needs, and to make commitments to things they need to improve upon. Because Genre Practiceputs children in control of learning what’s expected, the curriculum is highly engaging and motivating.
Founded on the belief that children are naturally inclined to learn and grow, and that learning is supported by social experience, Genre Practice builds on the liberal progressive educational philosophies of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner. It is only when individuals are afforded opportunities and accorded the dignity and rights envisioned in these philosophies that society truly advances. In losing sight of liberal progressive educational ideals, and in neglecting to meet the individual needs of children, education has failed to meet its potential as a democratizing force. The Genre Practice approach seeks to remedy these failures by focusing on the needs of the individual student in a ways that foster communities of learners bound by shared commitments and purposes.
The Genrepractice.org community is committed to substantive curriculum reform and school change. We are working to challenge and reverse recent trends in education policies that have neglected the ideals of democratic education and instead aimed to regulate teaching and learning practices through a system of controls, primarily high-stakes tests and prescriptive curricula, under the misguided notion that external mandates, rewards and punishments can promote learning. Though an emerging body of theory in fields of motivation and learning have discredited these practices, they remain sanctioned by education policy and like a stubborn virus, mutate throughout the memes of schooling practices. The values of obedience, compliance, mastery, memorization, accuracy and competition continue to persist at the expense of instilling more generative dispositions in children.
While these values may have served a purpose in agrarian and industrial societies, they now threaten the viability of contemporary democratic civilization and no longer meet the needs of today’s children. Schools must now equip children to participate in a rapidly-changing, globalized world where independence trumps obedience. Responsibility and purpose trump compliance. Empathy and collaboration trump competitiveness. Creativity and flexibility trump mastery. Flexibility and open-mindedness trump certainty. It is only through its system of education that society can achieve these potentials.
Genre Practice is a movement that re-infuses liberal progressive ideals into day-to-day classroom routines—providing ways for children to acquire an unwavering belief in themselves, to find clarity of purpose in education, to assume a sense of personal responsibility for learning, and to pursue meaningful learning goals in light of the broadest sense of what is possible for themselves.
In a world where nothing is static, anything is possible; and with opportunity and a sense of purpose, a child can achieve goals that were once unimaginable. But the opposite is also true: for a child lacking purpose and opportunity, the future can be treacherous, particularly in a society that increasingly lacks the capacity to provide for those who lose their way. The need for school to affirm the child’s sense of possibility has never been more vital. Genre Practice views children as active participants in their own education. It strives to re-engage children in school and equip them with a clear sense of their own competence and potential. By restoring children to their rightful place at the center of the curriculum, Genre Practice helps children regain a sense of joy in the process of their learning. Cynthia
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EVENTSAMERICAN EDUCATION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION Unison Reading: Engaging, Effective, Heterogeneous Small-Group Reading Instruction, K-8 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION Genre Practice: A 'Principled' Pedagogy for Adolescent Literacy Genre Practice: A Pedagogy fo Student Responsibility for Literacy Learning Unison Reading: Engaging, Effective Small-group Reading Instruction, K-8 Genre Practice: A Pedagogy for Literacy that Supports Avoidant and Low Achieving Students Research Poster Session by Cynthia McCallister, Kim Greene & Kerry Decker NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH Supporting English Language Learners with Genre Practice Engaging Reluctant Learners through Genre Practice: Literacy Instruction that Supports Engagement and Achievement Genre Practice: A Model for Accountability for Literacy Learning Radical Freedom and Genre Practice: How Children Still Learn What's Expected When They're in Control of Reading Workshop Feelings, Emotions, and Genre Practice: Restoring Joyfulness into Standards-Based Literacy Education
59th NATIONAL READING CONFERENCE Acquiring English Literacy through "Genre Practice": Accounts of K-8 English Language Learners
RECOMMENDED READING
"The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, by David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, is a comprehensive and descriptive survey of literacy across a full range of social and psychological functions. The authors' treatment of the topic of literacy extends far beyond the narrow concerns of learning to reading and write, offering a constellation of insights that hold promise to guide the reconceptualization of literacy instruction." Cynthia McCallister, Ed.D. FRIENDS OF GENRE PRACTICE Jenny Brown, has a great web site devoted to childrens' books. It's called Amy Simone Piller is a poet, teacher and blogger.
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