Readicide Book Study: Chapter Five

The final short chapter of Readicide reiterates the author's key points with a little gravy on top:

The increase in test scores we've seen isn't reflective of better readers. Test scores can (and have) been manipulated. Worse, the rise in scores has an inverse relationship with the ability to function as readers in the real world. 

Real-world reading is changing as the hit-and-git text of the internet becomes the text of our young people. This is leading our thinkers to be 'jacks of all trades, masters of none' as the breadth of information widens and analysis decreases.

(Dialectal difference - 'git' is 'get' in Southern American English. For our UK-English speaking friends, I'm not calling anyone a git. At least not today.)

Teaching to compliance, with one right answer and one way to get it done, sucks the life out of the American entrepreneurial spirit, the one real advantage we've got left.

The author also holds up, as was a trend when the book was written, Finland's schools as the best example of literacy teaching, based, oddly, on scores on an international assessment. 

So, what have we learned?

Yes, teaching only testing genre reading dumbs down your kids, especially in states, like Virginia, where a certain percentage of each school's students are required to pass and there's no growth model. (By the way, the state's testing system is called the S.O.L.s! Can't make this stuff up, folks!) I can't say that I needed a book to tell me that, but I'm also not one of the teachers who declare, "If it's not on the test, I'm not teaching it."

I think the reading available on the internet isn't too dissimilar from the reading available in the library. Analysis and deeper thinking is definitely there, if you bother to look. My high schooler is better informed on most foreign policy topics than most adults because he finds it interesting and has quick access to the information. He bothers to keep searching.
That's not to say that the internet isn't loaded with fluff; it is. The inane comments made by many on any topic is cringe-worthy. However, so's the book world. Can you say, "Harlequin Romance Novel?" or, at the risk of starting a war, "Twilight"? Fluff has its place.

Digging deeper into what's on the net is also a parent's responsibility. Obviously, I don't read to AJ anymore, and haven't for years, but at dinner, what he's been reading and thinking about online is a regular topic. It gives us, as parents,a chance to say, "...and you believed that?!" or to discuss his ideas about America's place in the world, which are very different from mine. (There are days I question the whole 'I want him to think for himself' thing. Maybe that wasn't such a great strategy...) 

I have argued for years that teaching to compliance does a disservice to children who will not grow up into factory, textile mill, or farm jobs as our parents did. Teaching to creativity and collaboration doesn't take a lot of extra work, but it does require a paradigm shift. Still, one could argue that America's done a lot of inventing and inspiring while the teachers were the old battle-axes of my childhood. My generation can also spell. Just sayin'.

Can creativity be taught? There's a whole different blog post.

Is the Finland Miracle any different from the Texas Miracle? As a Southerner, I've learned that faith healers are a dime a dozen and are usually frauds. I question anything with the word "Miracle" as part of its title. My parents and a couple of my siblings, who are Texans, absolutely believe in the superiority of their schools (but don't have kids in them.) A teacher from Finland I once met says that she most certainly does give homework, as do most teachers she knows.  She just doesn't give tons of it, as students and parents in some countries expect. Time will sort out the smart teaching strategies from the hype, and we'll continue seeking out our own Miracle. 

Thank you for joining us on our own learning journey. Next, you're off to Jessica, our Whimsical Teacher, to wrap it all up.

Readicide Book Study, Chapter Four

I started to subtitle this, "Thanks, Captain Obvious!" but I won't. This chapter shows how vastly different the mindsets of elementary and secondary teachers are. I found this when I taught middle school: People with elementary licenses teach children. People with secondary licenses teach content.

Which isn't necessarily bad. I mean, you really wouldn't want me teaching chemistry...

A number of the strategies Gallagher suggests we should add to our teaching repertoire are exactly the things most elementary teachers are working.

Still, there were some things to think about. I tend to do my teaching with my read-aloud. Each kid has a copy; we notebook and blog our way through it, then, hopefully, transfer the skills learned to book club reading. However, how well am I framing the book club books? Am I doing as much as I can to catch the one in the group that's struggling with a particular book?

So, I've got a new plan, but it's going to have to happen as we go. For our book club books:
* What essential question(s) will become blog posts? Decide this before the kids start and let them know what they/it will be.
* Let the kids know the value of the book they've picked. Besides being 'good', what can they expect to learn about becoming teenagers? About citizens?
* What places are good for second and third reads?  This makes a lot of sense and would let me streamline my guided reading, which already happens in book clubs anyway. Do we really need read aloud and book clubs and task cards and interactive notebooks? Not all of the time. I should figure out where things overlap and make some changes.

What's scary is that I'm an advocate of student choice in reading and I own a helluva lot of book sets. Yeah, I've got my work cut out for me! I think it will be worth it.

So, I understand that our Whimsical Teacher is off to Vegas this week! Nonetheless, she's got her last stop on the hop all ready. Learn lots, Jessica! (And now the teacher becomes the student...) May the Force be with you!

Is this your first stop on the hop? Head back to the beginning! It's here

Readicide Book Study, Chapter 3. No, Really, It's Not You; It's Me.

This chapter tackled what individual teachers do, within their classrooms, to cause Readicide.

This is where it shows that the author's a high school teacher; his students have had several more years' of practice reading novels, and so one might assume that they don't really need instruction like our elementary-aged kids would. On the flip side, his students have also had more years to solidify their expectations of how a school novel works, all chopped up, and I imagine some wouldn't have the foggiest what to do if they had to manage on their own, which is  a point Gallagher didn't address.  Learned helplessness and all that.

He describes his district's pacing guide for To Kill A Mockingbird, a 122-page document of every aspect that could be taught with the book, ever. We have unit pacing guides from the county, too, but they're much more general. Still, when a former teacher mentioned to our county literacy person that she was taking a long time with a book because she was trying to do everything on the guide, the literacy guru looked at her funny and said, "You know you're supposed to pick and choose from that, right?" Obviously, she didn't.

Thankfully, in our county,  literacy instruction isn't a who-can-use-the-most-stickies contest. We're expected to adapt our instruction to our needs. That's not to say it's a free-for-all; downtown's also very into TCRWP, but if your classroom is happy and active and your kids are doing well, you're deemed intelligent enough to paddle your own canoe. If you find yourself up the proverbial creek without a paddle, there's help.

I've mentioned before, I've got a high-schooler at home (He just finished his sophomore year.) who had his English class this past semester, and his teacher was also reading Readicide. He had implemented a solid half-hour of daily recreational reading time into his block. It was a hit, at least at our house. I know he's read at least one class novel, The Book Thief, and a Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar,  so I asked said child how they had been taught. His answer, "He pretty much just let us read them. He'd give us questions, sometimes, to make sure we were reading, but that was about it." Not entirely true; I remember his writing an essay at the end. His self-selected topic was how the change in narrator (from Death in the book to a character in the movie) really damaged the story. I asked if, being a teacher's kid, he thought just letting a class read was an effective teaching strategy. He answered that it was. "I was reading anyway. It's a good book. I mean, it's an honors class; you shouldn't need to have your hand held. I imagine some of the lower classes might need more of that, but we shouldn't."

Which brings us to the real point. In the end, we need to make mindful choices about what and how we teach. If we, as teachers, expect to just follow along without picking and choosing, holding the county's hand while we hold our students', how do any of us expect to teach anything well?

Gallagher goes on to illustrate how he's met teachers across the country making well-intentioned but very poor instructional choices and asking him why they were failing to engage their kids. It must have been horrifying, especially since some of those choices were serious miscues taken from his own advice. (One teacher applied a single strategy from another of the author's books in every single teaching situation, and her kids hated it.) You're left wondering how he responded.

I once had a professor who said regularly, "Curriculum is what happens when the door is closed." It's your classroom. Own it. Make choices based on the needs of each year's/section's needs. Work so that your kids love being in your class because they're engaged, trusted, and growing; the rest will come.

When your lesson plans are so crowded that you hate writing them, chances are, the kids will hate doing the work. If you feel yourself getting lazy, or fried, make a change, look for a new spin, hang out with some young teachers, take a break if you have to. (A friend from down the hall is taking a year to do some missionary work. While she's excited for the opportunity, she's just as relieved by the belief that she'll like teaching again when she comes back.) If your teaching choices are closing more minds than they're opening, dude, you're doing it wrong. You're committing readicide, mathicide, and everything else-icide. (If you're an elementary teacher, you get it all! There's a thought that should really scare the author!)

This chapter focused on what not to do; next time, there will be more solution. I'm looking forward to it.

Next up on the hop is our Whimsical Teacher, Jessica!

Is this your first stop on the hop! Back up the truck! You've missed a few! Begin at the Research-Based Classroom

Readicide Book Study, Chapter Two: Laying Blame

Our second chapter outlines the three main causes for Readicide and some suggestions for what can be done.

1. There aren't enough high-interest books available for the kids to read. The author is a high school teacher, and that may be the case there. However, most elementary teachers I know work their butts (and their budgets) off perfecting their classroom libraries. I've invested more heavily, lately, in my book club sets than in my library, and maybe it's time to shift focus again. Truth, books are expensive. The author is all about Scholastic, but, frankly, the book club monthlies have had a lot more fluff and far less real literature over the years. It used to be (Yes, I'm dating myself...) that Scholastic had more academic stuff and Troll had the charm bracelets and the 'Movie Companion Editions'.
     However, Scholastic's book fairs have better stuff, and twice a year, they open their book fair distribution center for a monster half-price sale. In Charlotte, that's the second week of December and the beginning of May. If you're interested in finding out when and where your city hosts this sale, click here. You'll want to save up.
     I also need to put more effort into finding out what's new. A.J., now in high school, has grown past the chapter books of the middle grades, so I'm not so on top of the bestest/hottest books as I once was. I've started following some media specialists on Twitter (@MrSchuReads and @pernilleripp ) to help with that.

2. Challenging Material Is Being Removed to Make Room for Test Prep.  Top five reasons it's worth it to have your own. You'll get my Bridge to Terabithia when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. 'Nuff  said..

3.  Students Are Not Doing Enough Reading In School. Again, in elementary, we often do provide SSR time. When I was a  young teacher, we were expected to read along with the kids, but now I use the time to (Okay, yes, to check email.) and do my conferencing. A.J.'s high school is on a 4x2 block system, so classes are an hour and a half long. His English teacher, Mr. Cole, had them reading at least half an hour a day in class, and I love him for it. For the first time since A.J. left elementary, he was reading again, and reading a lot. Better yet, he found out that he still likes to read. Getting time to in which he has no choice but to read has done wonders for his reading life and his intellectual curiosity.

... and now, here's where I get evil. Feel free to get out your flame guns. I probably have it coming, but I'm going to go ahead and throw this out here. I think there's a fourth reason. Or maybe it's just a subgroup of why number two actually happens.

4. We've got some people in the classroom for the wrong reasons. I went to college with a few girls who barely squeaked Cs out of their methods classes and had to retake their NTEs (For reference, we older teachers took those, rather than Praxis. They were sadly easy, thus the change.) because they didn't want to put in the effort to understand theory or even content; they just wanted to make cute things.  I've actually heard someone say that and seen heads nod in agreement.  At the other end of the spectrum, some people teach because they were the Gold Star Students. They thrive on the order of school and the Attagirl that comes from following the rules. They'll support any and everything downtown does because they're scared of disappointing the Powers That Be. These are the ones who privately lament the increased focus on testing, while outwardly riding the bandwagon. They fear disapproval so much (and, they'll claim, for their jobs, but I've been teaching 22 years in a dadgummed non-union state, and I've never, ever seen any teacher actually get fired) that they'll do anything to avoid it. If you find yourself having to fight for what's right and good for children, you've got to fight these teachers, too, and that's not OK. (You, dear reader, are surely not one of these, because you've picked up a copy of Readicide, which means you're a bit of a subversive yourself. Good for you.)

Okay, rant's over. I'll go put out the fires, now...

And while I'm doing that, you're off to visit with The Whimsical Teacher!

 

Is this your first stop? You've missed a lot! Start at the beginning,  here.

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Next week, we'll look at some more contributing factors to Readicide. 

Readicide Book Study: Chapter One. If there's an elephant in the room and everyone talks about it, is it still an elephant?

I'm hopping along with a fabulous group of fifth grade teachers doing a collaborative study of Readicide. It's fairly new and just getting traction (when my copy came in, my high schooler said, "Oh, my English teacher's reading that.") , so it seemed like a great book for bouncing around some ideas. At first, I thought that the author would really just be preaching to the choir, but then I thought about it, and I do know some teachers that would totally disagree with the book's basic premise.

I'm lucky. I work in a district that is very anti-drill and kill. We don't do AR because it promotes one-dimensional comprehension. We have bookrooms loaded with novels but don't have textbooks.I own enough book club sets that if my husband ever finds out how many (and how much I've spent over the years), well ....

Our math department's approach is similar.

Ours is an odd county. A four-lane highway (U.S. 74) run pretty close down the middle.  On the west side of it, where I live, is affluent suburbia. On the east side of it, where I teach, is still country, with large poultry farms, small family farms, and trailer parks populated, mainly, with new immigrants, along with pockets of new, expensive neighborhoods. While my school serves one of those pockets and some surrounding farmland, the schools on either side of us are Title I.

All that to say, our district serves a very diverse population. Our subgroups have subgroups, and even with that, our test scores are among the best in the state.

So why pick up a copy of Readicide?

One, I work in a building where we are allowed the freedom to be who we are and to teach like it. Believe it or not, there are teachers who choose to make their classrooms all about the test scores. What the (Insert your own expletive.)? 

Second, what the author describes as happening in low-income schools is absolutely true. I spent my young years teaching in inner-city schools (Seriously. One showed up in an episode of History Channel's Gangland series.) and this group of children, who live and breathe talk and wordplay, detest reading. If you saw the lesson plans handed down from that county's district people, you'd know why. Isolated skill after isolated skill, selection after selection. Don't think; just bubble, As a result, real reading is just for 'bookworms' or for 'actin' like (you're) white.' and while I'm not normally a conspiracy-theory thinker, a small part of me has always wondered if that isn't on purpose.

Finally, and quite related to the other two, our profession matters, and it's under attack. If we're going to be heard, we have to come correct, with actual facts and statistics. We can't fight a slick, insanely-well funded corporate and government partnership with "That's not nice." and "That's no fun." Nobody cares. There are profits to be made.

It's past time to talk about the elephant, and about the damage it's doing.

Anyone should be able to see that there is a big shift in what American business is all about. The era of manufacturing jobs has ended; there are very few 'We don't pay you to think. Shut up and push your button." jobs left. Why, then, would we educate people to compliance? If we're going to hold our own against the rising economies of Asia and South  America, we have to educate toward innovation and collaboration.  Will our current educational landscape support that? I'm thinking it won't.

So, if I haven't totally depressed you, there's one more stop on the hop! Jessica, The Whimsical Teacher, is next!

If, somehow, this is your first hop page, you'll want to begin at the beginning (in the words of Imogene Herdman). It all begins here, at the home of The Research-Based classroom!

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