It's 7 AM...Do You Know What Your Child is Reading?

It's funny to think about how only a few months ago, I would not have questioned the premise behind Lisa Simon's article on scaffolding complex texts.  I understand that we want to give our students the tools to read across all genres and eras, especially when thinking about what they might be required to read in college.  But do we have to make them read stuffy texts like House of Mirth?  I was required to read this novel in college for an American Lit class, and even I had trouble with it, partly due to its length.  I think that we can teach students the same concepts with other texts; even teaching one of Wharton's short stories would be more accessible and probably much more interesting for the teacher and the students.  Simon mentions several times that students had problems with engagement.  So, yes, we don't want to "teach down" to students because they are capable of reading and understanding difficult texts, but if a constant issue is that they are not engaged, then is the exercise of making them read a complex and long novel really doing anything helpful?  Again, I think that all of the helpful points about reading a novel from a different era can be taught from a short story, which is probably much easier to engage with.  I think that we have such a limited amount of time with students that we should open up the curriculum to expose them to more texts, not force them to slog through one novel for weeks.

That being said, I have watched the students in my class at Reagan engage with their individual texts for a couple of months now.  Although they get 25 to 30 minutes at the beginning of each class period to silently read their books, I've seen several students still only a quarter of the way through their chosen books.  And generally, these books are not very difficult as far as reading levels, content, or length.  I'm concerned that time has not been given to them on an individual level to talk about their texts.  Their end goal for reading is supposed to be a project that they'll work on in a couple of weeks, but it doesn't seem to motivate anyone because they're not being conferenced with on a regular basis.  On top of that, I wonder if some of the students are having problems with comprehension; however, I don't feel like it's my place to work on these issues, because the reading time is supposed to be completely silent.  Instead, I can only read a book with them and hope that the time is useful.

This process of individual reading also makes me concerned about issues like the ones brought up Wendy Glenn and Marshall, Staples & Gibson.  These authors show that all kinds of fiction are valid for students to read, whether the fiction is considered "literary" or not, but there are issues of money and gender are raised by certain texts.  If we are not aware of what our students are getting out of the individual texts that they're reading, then we're allowing dominant systems of power to be passed down to another generation.  Instead, like the authors point out, we must teach students to question characters, their choices, and the ideas that they're promoting.  We can't utilize critical literacy and foster social justice if we aren't even aware of the books that we require students to read for 30 minutes a day.

Obviously, I have learned this semester that it is difficult for me to observe under someone else's system and not want to take charge.  Since I have such difficulty with this concept, it's definitely something I need to work on.  It's been a great learning process so far, but I'm still mostly ready to be the one in charge. :)