American students start off strong. Young, eager learners compete with their global peers. By high school, they have fallen far behind the world in their scholastic ability. Theorists have said we are pushing a one-size-fits-all curriculum with difficult, jargon filled trade books, and we are. Sadly, it seems we have some of these very important answers for how to best help students, but have yet to put this knowledge into practice. I was astounded to learn that graduate teachers are forced to explain to eager teachers that in a good half a century, “relevant” research will find its way into their classrooms. Teachers have to struggle constantly between doing what they are told and doing what is right. I have to struggle with this everyday, but to be honest, it’s not much of a decision. I focus my attention on infusing a little joy into reading. We read a lot and we read authentic and interesting material. We cracked open a literature textbook three times in the whole year. It was a TON of work to do it on my own, design my own lessons and assessments.
I didn’t need to be told that one size fits all because I’ve been a classroom teachers to disenfranchised, academically struggling youth. My students run the gamut from dodgers to politicians, literalists and minimalists. The research together is reminding me over and over again that my students need individualized plans and attention, something that I feel is my responsibility, even while I don’t see how it is possible that I’m ever going to be able to give them everything they need to get back on track. They are so varied and diverse in their skills, so demotivated, so discouraged with reading. They’ve had difficult and therefore incredibly boring textbooks forced on them. They aren’t given options. They’re content area teachers are caring, but they teach by the book, a standardized curriculum purchased and pushed on them.
I don’t have fifty years. I have a few short months. My kids were the children in kindergarten targeted for intervention. Since they were budding learners they’ve been identified as high risk and thrown into reading intervention and now at the end of middle school, they are still behind.
Perhaps inventive writing and more authentic tasks since kindergarten would have helped. Maybe all the mistakes identified in research were made with my students. They were taught by para-pros, they were not properly assessed with an IRI, and had decoding and phonics pushed on them when that wasn’t the skill set they specifically needed. Perhaps unfounded research was pushed on them, a reading intervention that didn’t work, pushed on them by political greed and corruption. So sad.
Sometimes I feel like their last hope. We don’t do test prep. We don’t round robin read. We don’t do much reading aloud except in small groups, because their skills are so low they are embarrassed by their own reading voices. Tutoring and individualized attention would help, but I can’t manage it. I spend one minute with a student and the rest of the class, my avoiders and dodgers, start avoiding and dodging. They don’t want to read. It has never brought them joy.
I have spend hundreds of dollars buying books for my classroom. Books by authors who focus on books about minority kids. I knew that my kids read less, even with two hours of reading, than other kids who find joy in reading. My students devoured books, because I carefully selected them. By the end of the year I achieved two victories. They told me that reading wasn’t boring and they told me I gave them the first novel they’d ever read without having to read it for a school assignment.
This research gave some great examples of activities specific to the many types of struggling readers. Readers who answer a different question than the one they asked. Readers who read fluently but don’t comprehend. Literal readers who have not yet learned to infer meaning, even with nine years in public school and in intervention programs for this specific purpose.
I want to be better at integrating technology skills and assessments, particularly research and collaborative tasks, even with limited resources and internet access. I want to be able to identify my fuzzy thinkers and my minimalists and individualize their tasks. The more I know about their specific struggles, the better I can help them. Yet, I cannot bring more computers into my class. I cannot change the fact that there are 23 students in my “intensive” reading class. I cannot make more hours in the day or keep all my distracted and discouraged students on task. I can take what I know and know what I have to do and design lessons to the best of my ability that target many skills and many types of learners and readers. And I will, with concern and caring and love.
I can answer yes to important questions about my teaching.
Do they read more than they ever have before with me as their teacher? Yes.
Do we spend our lesson time actually engaged in the text? Yes.
Do I select appropriately leveled texts? Yes.
Do I give them books to take home that they actually read independently and with joy? YES and it’s my greatest strength and what I believe to be most important.
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