What to Read? (Reflection #2)

            This past week I have been thinking extensively about what texts we should teach as English teachers that will fully engage and excite our students while also encouraging meaningful reading and response.  According to our Bomer text, students begin to hate reading once they hit Middle School.  Before they reach this educational level, many young children and adolescents enjoy reading and even look forward to shopping for books.  So what happens?  Many believe (myself included) that this happens due to lack of student involvement, therefore interest, in classroom texts. 

So what texts should we choose?  Should we be teaching the predictable high school English canon which includes books like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Odyssey, The Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, etc.?  “The purpose in secondary and tertiary education was to make sure they read good things; the result is that they don’t really read anything.” (Bomer 71) Where are the more contemporary texts that our students actually might want to read?  I’m not saying that these books should be excluded entirely but shouldn’t we be looking for texts from this decade?  We should be choosing texts that students will be able to connect with in a meaningful way.  But how do we do that? 

In many of my placements, I have seen most of my cooperating teachers promote independent reading by taking students to the library and letting them choose any book that interests them.  This is a nice idea, but most students wander the aisles of the library not knowing what to choose.  Many of our students don’t know what they are interested in because they have never interacted with any text in any meaningful way. So what happens is that our students choose a book that they have no real interest in and either sleep or zone out during their independent reading time that these teachers have set aside.  This independent reading time has become a waste of time.  As teachers, we need to introduce them to texts that they may have never seen but will truly interest them.  We could do this in a variety of ways:  book talks, lit circles, classroom libraries with reviews.  In one of my placements, my cooperating teacher had an amazing classroom library that included student reviews of each book.  These student reviews were effective because they were written by students for students.  I have also seen literature circles in another placement.  This worked well because students were able to choose the book they were assigned and were able to discuss and connect with the text with other students.  I hope to use all of these ideas in my own classroom because I have seen very few teachers who have classroom libraries, who do book talks, or even include lit circles in their classrooms. 

In my current placement, the students are currently learning about the elements of plot by reading a series of stories of suspense.  My cooperating teacher has chosen all of the texts that they are currently reading.  Most of these short stories are engaging and suspenseful so most students are engaged and are actually enjoying the unit.  Because of the level of this particular class, my CT has had to model many reading strategies.  This has included mostly whole-class discussions which have been led by my CT and me.  I hope that as the year progresses, we will be able to involve our students more with what they read but I also hope that they will be able to interact with each text more meaningfully. 

The truth is, I still struggle with two questions:  How am I going to help all of my students discover their own reading lives?; and with so many books to choose from, how do I go about choosing texts that will excite them, teach them about the world in which they live, and find authors that they can identify with?  I realize that there is no perfect answer to these questions and I hope to do my best with helping the majority of my students find texts that will excite them and also challenge them while developing their critical reading skills that will turn them into life-long readers. 

The Workshop Classroom (Reflection #1)

It has been an exciting few weeks for me at my placement school.  I finally have all of my students’ names mastered (I think!) and have started to really feel a part of the classroom.  The first few days are always a challenge but I feel that they have really started to see me as a teacher.  My CT and I have started co-teaching which is new for me but I love every minute of it.  I still feel slightly awkward correcting students’ behavior or even disciplining them but hopefully that awkwardness will wear off over time.  I have even asked for clarification from my CT about how he wants me to handle certain situations.  He has assured me that he wants me to be a teacher in the classroom and I should discipline or correct students in whatever manner is appropriate.  This has eased some of my concerns but I will still feel strange about it.  I have begun thinking about how I will handle these classroom management issues in my own classroom and I worry sometimes about how effective my classroom management will be.  I’m sure my first year of teaching will be a lot of trial and error.  I have started a teaching journal where I have written down ideas from my CT and most of what I write down concerns classroom management and routines and procedures.  Hopefully this will give me good idea of what works and what doesn’t before I start my first year. 

My CT starts every class period by reading aloud a chapter from a Bluford High novel. This is a series of novels written for young adults that follow students enrolled in Bluford High School.  These stories explore many issues that are relevant for today’s youth:  poverty, violence, crime, teen angst, family issues, peer pressure, drugs and alcohol, etc.  Many of the students seem to be enjoying the novel but many also either zone out or sleep during the first fifteen minutes of class.  My CT has explained why he does this every class period; he believes that many of his students have never seen or heard how an effective reader interacts with a text.  While he reads, he does it in a way that is very entertaining and is easy for the students to follow.  My question is this:  Is reading aloud for fifteen minutes a good use of class time? 

After he reads aloud, he then gives his students twenty minutes to read their library book.  I do believe that it is important to give class time to promote independent reading.  His students were able to choose any book out of the library that interested them.  Independent reading is integral to showing our students that not all reading is boring and that much of it can be enjoyed.

His classroom is very much the “workshop classroom.”  The students spend the majority of the class time either reading or writing.  In Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms, Randy Bomer describes the importance of the workshop classroom:  “If we want them to read and write outside school, we have to value it inside school and also give them a chance to get engaged with the work.” (Bomer 13)  I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.  How can we expect our students to want to read and write outside of school if we don’t allow them to do so in school?

The big assignment that they have been working on is “Who Am I?”.  He had them read several short memoirs where they did before, during and after reading activities as a class. He did this so he can model for his students how they should be interacting with the text.  After they finished reading the memoirs, he had them do some pre-writing where they were able to answer “questions for memoirists.”  This was to get them thinking about their life and any memorable experiences that they may have had in preparation for an eleven sentence paragraph that they had to write.  I didn’t realize how difficult it is for freshmen to reflect upon any experiences in their life.  Many of them agonized and claimed that they couldn’t think of anything.  I do believe that my CT did a great job scaffolding the idea of personal narrative writing and this helped many students move beyond their barriers of thinking intrapersonally. 

During this assignment, I had the opportunity to work with many students and was able to read their writing.  Many of them struggle with sentence fluency, transitions, and conventions.  However, I was pleasantly surprised with their creativity and how funny many of their paragraphs were.  I look forward to seeing their improvement as the year continues.