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. :)

On Code-Switching

As I've been pondering the past week, I've noticed a common theme regarding the concept of code-switching as well as nonstandard English.  I think it's particularly relevant to the class I observe, because these students generally fall into two camps of code-switchers: African American Vernacular English and Spanish.  The code-switching from English to Spanish is more obvious in the classroom setting, just because it's easier to hear a completely different language; however, I've noticed the code-switching from AAVE to English in the context of a request to the teacher.  In fact, a couple of African American students were arguing with each other, and in order to settle the argument, one student explained the facts of what was going on to the teacher, a white woman.  The student's language didn't exactly become formal English, but it was clear that she was attempting to use a more "standard" form of English in order to convey what was happening to the teacher; perhaps she was afraid that the teacher wouldn't understand her, or she is simply aware of the fact that standard English affords her words more power than a nonstandard English.

The code-switching between English and Spanish occurs constantly in the classroom, as many Latino students are efficient at finding the exact words that they need to express themselves in both languages. The school has flyers that utilize both English and Spanish, so it's not like the school is actively suppressing their mostly native tongue. However, they also realize that standard English is the language of power.  I came into class this past Tuesday with a "Yo Vote" sticker on (I can't find the accented e on here).  A couple of the Latino students questioned me about it.  They wondered why a voting sticker would be in Spanish, even explaining to me that "that's not English, Miss."  I took the opportunity to have a conversation about the fact that English is not the official language of the United States, which they expressed surprise about.  Their way of infusing their English with Spanish and vice versa is such a rich use of language, but I honestly haven't seen them doing this in their writing at all.  Instead, they focus on using English conventions that are sometimes very stilted at the expense of richness and creativity.  I think this is unfortunate, and I think that it comes from teachers never explaining to them that they can actually write this way.

As always, I think the most important aspect of writing that we have to keep bringing up with students is considering your audience.  As Hill's article recommends, "Teachers must facilitate distinctions and support students as they negotiate appropriate contexts for employing language features."  So, sometimes students' different versions of nonstandard English are the most appropriate to use; at other times, we (sadly) must work within the existing power structures of language and try to use a more formal, "standard" version of English.  I went to a presentation this weekend given by the woman who's the director of reading, writing, and Social Studies assessments for the Texas Education Agency. It was interesting to see how the testing measures were constructed, especially from the other side, but one of the biggest recommendations that she gave to teachers was to instruct students to consider their audience.  Of course, she's talking about audience in the sense that it would guide your essay structure, but I also think that this is true for code-switching and nonstandard English.

While we don't want to tell our students that their version of English is wrong, we do have to explicitly introduce them to the tools of power that currently exist in our system.  And one of those biggest tools is "standard" English.  While, as Hill notes, "standard English should be a choice, not an imposition," she makes this statement conditional.  Yes, it "should" be, but standard, or white English, remains imposed on American society as a structure of power, and I'm not sure how quickly a change will be made to this structure in the foreseeable future.

Complaints About the Time-Space Continuum

So, it's November.  I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and frenetic about all the stuff I have to do in the upcoming month.  It's always a tough time because I'm not very good at organizing my schedule so that I get certain things done ahead of time; instead, like many students, I depend on deadlines to push me to produce.  I'm beginning to realize that teaching is a profession that doesn't improve this tendency.  Because of all kinds of last minute issues that come up, planning lessons often occurs at the last minute, whether you intend to do so or not.  I think that's where I've been struggling to see progress in the classroom--I feel like there are days when not much is taught or learned, and I wonder if it has to do with poor planning.  However, there are times when there's not much to do about it.  For example, my CT has been required to go to two all-day workshops in the past two weeks.  Luckily, they didn't both fall on an A or B day, but still.  It's tough to think about that much time being wasted over the past couple of weeks, when there's had to be a lot of catch-everybody-up time already (due to a lot of student turnover).  And it is wasted time--the substitutes at Reagan pretty much let students have free reign.  (Two students wandered in our classroom the other day from a class whose teacher wasn't there and promptly proceeded to throw things at another student, start a fight, and cause the class to completely lose focus for a good 20 minutes.)  And they're testing for two days this week, which takes away from class time that they could be using to actually learn.

Maybe I'm just sounding negative because I've been listening to a lot of problems voiced by my CT about the school culture and administration.  Teachers were recently informed that they should not send students to the principal's office.  Reason?  The students already have to face problems at home that are scarier than anything they could encounter in a principal's office.  WHAT??  I do understand that we should be cognizant of our students' issues at home, and I'm also aware that some teachers will attempt to avoid confrontation by making principals deal with issues of student discipline.  But when you create a school culture that coddles students' behavioral problems, you're condoning bad behavior.  You're giving them an excuse.  Rather than saying, hey, I'm sure there's a reason behind why you're acting out, you're saying, hey, life is tough, so don't worry about it.  Instead of providing structure that may be lacking at home, and that the students may want, the school seems to be avoiding this issue, lest students may have a problem with it.  I understand that they really want students to show up, but they're lowering their expectations of students.  Also, they're making a broad generalization that seems pretty prejudiced.  So all students who come from a lower-income household have a bad home life?  A lack of money does not equate a lack of family support.  So anyway, I'm not sure what I would do as a teacher in this situation.  The administration recommends sending a "problem" student into another teacher's classroom to cool off, but this could cause unwanted distractions in that teacher's classroom.  I'm not really sure that there is a good solution, other than the fact that I'd try to avoid a blow-up from occurring by utilizing other classroom management techniques.

To address this week's articles about online literary communities and responses, I think that providing an online space for students to express themselves is a great idea.  However, the logistics could be a problem.  I know that it seems fairly easy for the students in the articles to have access to a computer and the Internet, but I don't even know where a computer lab is at Reagan.  There are two computers in the classroom, but for work on the computer to be helpful and accessible for everyone, I think that there would have to be a lot of explicit instruction on how to use the programs and time would be an issue.  There doesn't seem to be enough time just to get through the TEKS requirements, so I think you'd have to start at the beginning of the school year with regular instruction on technology use and a focus on online writing.  Ah, time.

In Search of a Writing Life

I've never been much of a diary writer or a journal keeper.  I definitely have desk drawers full of failed efforts, where I've never made it much past the page full of New Year's resolutions.  I used to think that I just wasn't a creative writer, but after taking a Creative Writing class in college, I think it's more that it's hard work on my part and that it's never been highly valued by teachers during my school career.  In addition, I think that most aspects of creativity related to reading and writing are lacking once students get to high school.  While I don't think that "book reports" are always helpful for engaging with texts and assessing reading comprehension, I really enjoyed the creative aspect of book reports in elementary and middle school.  But once I got to high school, there seemed to be no place for that creativity.  Instead, I was taught a specific five paragraph form within which to rangle my ideas, and writing about and engaging with texts was all analytical.  (I do remember one project where I wrote some journal entries in the voice of Yossarian from Catch-22--loved it.)

I think that the focus on all "good" writing being academic analyses caused me to think that creative writing was somehow a lesser form of writing, and I didn't want to "waste" my time on it.  However, I think that a lot of the articles we read for this week actually show that being aware of how to utilize and write in different genres (creative writing!) is helpful for the real world as well as for discussions on the how and why of different genres (as noted in Whitney, Ridgeman, and Masquelier).  Also, one of the most important aspects of writing, at least that I think, is being aware of audience; creative writing, at least in the sense of multigenre projects, forces students to really think through who they're writing to and for what purpose.  As noted in the Whitney article, students should be able to "take ownership of their writing as a tool for social life" (2011, p. 533).  We don't want students to think that the only purpose of having a literate or writing life is to do well in school.  We need to show them that good writing skills are important for having a rich, communicative life.

So, I am glad that we are taking part in a multigenre composition.  It's good to know what we're asking our students to do and note any problems that we come up against: "[B]y becoming writers themselves, teachers would better understand the composing process and use these newfound insights to work more effectively with their students" (Cohen, 2004, p. 120). But also, I think it's good practice for teachers to have a writing life beyond putting comments on student papers.  If we encourage our students to write, they need to see that we practice what we teach.  I think it will definitely be a stretch for me, but becoming a better writer is something that I definitely want to work on.  Even writing this blog is a good practice for me because even though I keep things mostly academic, there's a different voice that I get to use and hone.  I mean, my grandpa wrote an epic poem about his father a few years ago; I really have to flex my Homeric skills if I want to show him up.

MC Grammar

So, I'll admit it.  I actually had a difficult time reading Bomer's chapter on language and grammar because, at heart, I am a grammar nazi.  As much as I attempt to resist the chains of commas and misplaced modifiers, I am a rules follower by nature, and I actually like the structure that "proper" grammar affords me.  Or maybe it's really because following grammar rules is more like a secret game that I play (I love to win, and I love playing games that guarantee my victory--I like to think that more times than not, I am winning the grammar games).  So, while a lot of what Bomer presented on talking about language as more of a linguistic structure makes sense, it will still be tough for me not to want to mark obvious grammatical mistakes.  I've seen teachers in a community college setting that do mark all over their students' papers, and I know what happens--the students feel overwhelmed with the bleeding ink everywhere (even if the ink is purple or something) and they don't even attempt to decipher what the teacher has probably spent hours marking.  And if it doesn't work in higher education, it will probably not work in a high school setting.

The problem with avoiding grammar to talk about language development and structure is that it's a whole area that is supposed to be covered, according to the TEKS.  They try to pretend like they're not addressing grammar by calling it "oral and written conventions," but it's there.  ("Writing legibly" is also under this TEKS subheading, just fyi.)  And in a way, I agree with them.  I hate sounding like an old school rule follower, but I've seen the difference that it makes when people know how to correctly use punctuation.  Their resumes look sharper, their college essays look smarter, and their professional e-mails look, well, professional.  I realize that a lot of grammatical conventions are silly.  Who even came up with some of these rules?  And they're always changing, which makes knowing the rules seem untenable.  However, when you clue your students into these little details, I think that you're showing your students the "hidden curriculum."  You're helping them to use the dominant culture's tools for exclusion to their advantage.  And how can that hurt your students, as long as they know where these so-called rules are coming from?

There is a problem with time constraints, though.  There is so much material to cover in a class period that there doesn't seem to be any extra time for teaching "finer" points of grammar, even when those "conventions" are required to be covered by the TEKS.  Also, for students who are still working to use and understand the English language, grammar rules seem to be a little beside the point.  This is all to say: Randy Bomer, bless your heart, but I still think grammar has a place.

For anyone who's interested, I think that the grammatical problem that I explain the most often in a tutoring session is the dreaded comma splice.  Most people think that the phrase means that there's a comma in a place where it's not supposed to go, and I have to get into a discussion of the frailty of a comma all on it's own, stuck between two complete, heavy sentences.  So please, don't leave that comma hangin'.

P.S. I went to another football game this past Friday night.  REAGAN WON!  I think it's their second win this season, which is probably more games won than the last four years combined.  As weird as it sounds, I think it really boosts school morale.  I never thought that sports were that important, but now that I'm in Texas high school football land, I am experiencing the seriousness afforded to the almighty pigskin.  I shouted, jeered, and cheered on the bleachers with the rest of 'em, though.  When in East Austin...GO RAIDERS!

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

I went to my first high school football game in Texas this past Friday.  I had pretty big expectations, mostly due to the show Friday Night Lights, and I wasn't let down.  One of the students in the class I'm observing informed me that he had just been moved up to the Varsity team, and he wanted me to watch him play.  Even though I was planning on being there to watch him, I thought that he probably wouldn't get much on-field time, simply because he'd be one of the younger players.  I was wrong--he was part of every offensive play.  And he definitely played his heart out.  Though they lost, they played hard; I was really proud of him and my adopted school.  I even saw three of my students there!  (I was greeted with "Hey, Miss!" a few times.)  For more background information on Reagan's football history, check out this 10 minute clip from Sports Illustrated's series on Underdogs.  Apparently, Reagan used to be the top high school in Texas football in the '60s and '70s; in recent years, the team has struggled to win any games, due in large part to the change in the area's shift in population and economic status.  This new push to reinvigorate Reagan's football team brings me to one of the most important concepts that Beers talks about in When Kids Can't Read: confidence.

Beers notes that we can help students become more skilled readers, but more than anything else, we have to find a way to re-instill (or just instill) a sense of confidence in our students of their abilities.  My CT has definitely emphasized the need for affirming students, but I like that Beers goes further and looks at the role of the classroom as a whole.  We can't view our students apart from the classroom environment, or even the school environment.  We have to improve the climate of the classroom environment so that it nurtures each individual on his or her journey towards reading improvement.  In addition, I think that the entire school needs to be a safe place for students, or at least promote itself as such.

First, Beers states that teachers should not "dumb down" the level of materials that they teach.  Instead, they should provide lots of scaffolding so that students can work their way through more complex texts.  I think this is true, as long as we keep in mind that more complex texts can still be interesting.  Also, if we are teaching these more complex texts, we should realize that it may take longer to get through some books than anticipated.  (Perhaps this should be true of higher-level classes as well--as we know at this point, being a faster reader doesn't mean being a better reader.)

Next, Beers emphasizes the importance of a classroom that encourages risk.  She provides one seemingly simple solution: that students should know each other's names.  However, I've noticed in a couple of classrooms that I've observed that students don't, in fact, know their classmates.  When putting students in pairs, my CT has called out names to be together, and a couple of students quickly said, "Who?"  How can we expect students to want to participate with one another when they haven't even figured out everyone's names?

Also, she states that teachers shouldn't tolerate put-downs.  This seems like the toughest part of creating a safe classroom environment.  I would say that a large part of the communication that I've witnessed among students has been comprised of sarcasm and put-downs.  It would be difficult to eradicate such a large aspect of students' communication style.  Maybe if the students decided on rules of conversation at the beginning of the year, it would be easier to enforce; otherwise, if I rang a bell every time someone said something negative, I would be ringing all day long...and these students are pretty good at tuning out what they don't want to hear.  I think providing this safe environment for students is a process that both the teacher and the students have to actively work on.

For right now, I'm glad to be at Reagan High School.  I get to witness this time of rebuilding confidence, and maybe even be a part of it.  They're rebuilding confidence in athletics and slowly rebuilding confidence in academics.  Though I'm not sure that some of the students in the school, and even in my class, believe that they can move past the label of "struggling readers and writers" or even "failing school, " Kylene Beers so aptly notes: "You must believe for them" (280).

Books and Beers

Though the first three chapters of Kylene Beers’ book When Kids Can’t Read seem pretty basic, they set up some situations in the classroom that I hadn’t even considered before.  Even in the class I’m observing, which includes a lot of students who don’t speak English as their first language, I haven’t noticed any students who are having major difficulties with reading or refuse to read.  This may be due to the fact that I haven’t witnessed any major reading assessments yet.  We’ve mostly been focused on writing abilities, so I’m interested to see if any of the more basic reading problems come up (such as issues with reading for comprehension). The one reading “problem” that seems to have already been addressed in the classroom is the issue of not wanting to read.  My CT has implemented independent reading time, during which students can pick out any book they want to read.  This may not solve all problems—they are still easily distracted from their books, and I can’t assume that every student has magically discovered the exact genre of book that they like to read and that they will continue to read.  However, Thursday’s reading time was pretty amazing.  Every student in class was engrossed in what they were reading, and all you could hear was the rustle of turning pages for at least 25 minutes.  This was the first independent reading session all semester that all students actually utilized fully.

One particularly timely point that Beers discusses in chapter 3 is how classroom teachers (or, more likely, schools) can’t fix reading problems by buying into a particular program.  During our last class in Adolescent Literacy, people who were observing at Akins High School talked about the new lexile program that was supposed to be utilized in the classroom; there seemed to be numerous difficulties with how the program decided “higher” readers from “lower” readers, as well as the intersection of the lexile program with reading for enjoyment.  I thought to myself at the time, well, good thing that I’m at a high school that doesn’t employ these measures.  I could see it really getting in the way of that sacred independent, purely choice-driven reading time.  And then I arrived at school on Tuesday.

It seems that lexile programs are now being implemented throughout AISD.  My CT was distraught over the numerous requirements that had been introduced during a faculty meeting the previous day.  She was worried about what the program would mean for her students’ independent reading time, and there was also talk of an incentive program to get students to read (by incentives, I don’t just mean a pizza party; I mean discussions about a four-wheeler).  While I’m not sure about the efficacy of the lexile program just yet, I’m sure it is well intentioned.  A teacher does want to make sure that her students are not overwhelming themselves with difficult reading material, and she also wants to ensure that they are challenging themselves with texts that are at the higher end of their current reading abilities.  However, as Beers points out, there is no guarantee that this program will succeed in all classroom situations.  Why?  Because “teachers—not programs—are the critical element in a student’s success” (Beers 38).

I’m actually glad to have the opportunity to see the initial stages of a district-wide reading program because the enforcement of programs like this one seems to be a common occurrence in public schools.  I want to see how my CT deals with using the program in a manner that will work in her classroom setting, or even how my CT deals with the program when it doesn’t work.  I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about the program in the near future, so I’ll get back to you on that one. One student in the class I’m observing finished two books in a week, when he had previously never read a whole book on his own.  I can’t say whether or not the books were in his lexile range, but I can attest for the reaction from the rest of the class—they seemed to be encouraged in their reading efforts as well.  Maybe we should expand Beers’ statement about student success to show that when teachers instill a sense of self-efficacy into students’ reading lives, both teachers and students are the critical elements in students’ successes.