at the end

Nancie Atwell’s latest book, The Reading Zone, was my read this past weekend. She has confirmed for me a number I things that I have believed but not been able to put words to myself. She states: “students who don’t enter high school as skilled, passionate, critical, habitual readers have an even slimmer chance of experiencing meaningful literacy, there or ever.” (Atwell, 110) Her solution: frequent, voluminous, self-selected reading. This seems like an obvious statement and set of conditions for students to develop into “passionate, habitual, and critical readers”, but in too many classrooms, time to read is treated as a novelty or a privilege, and not as the core of effective reading instruction as it should be.

I began the year this year with a novel study (shame on me, I know). I thought I had sworn off of them last year—I thought. I don’t know what happened. There I was, without really thinking it through, reading a novel aloud while the class read along. What was I doing?

I swear, read it here and hold me to it, that I will never do that again. No one benefits from such a cruel act. I chose a book I love, one that most students love too, and I read it with passion—it was a flop. Novel studies all are.

Students want to read what they want to read. Each of them are different, and each of their tastes are different. There is no way that I could ever choose a novel that twenty-nine 11, 12, and 13 year-olds are all going to engage in and enjoy. Especially when I ask them to talk about it at regular intervals and interrupt the flow of a good story. Could you imagine on the weekend if the theatre put up the houselights every twenty minutes for you to answers some comprehension questions, to see if you’re making enough connections, to see if you are inferring in a meaningful way. No, you couldn’t. Have you ever laid out on the beach with a good worksheet?

That last five chapters of the novel was a race to the end. I closed it firmly and apologized to the class.

Students need time to read. They need a quiet space. They need to choose what interests them. They need to be left alone. The foundation of a student-centered curriculum is student choice. Atwell has given a very succinct and convincing argument about what those conditions should look like in the classroom.

It is not complex.

Since I have shifted my reading instruction to the workshop model, I have seen greatly increased engagement and enjoyment in our reading time. The kids look forward to it everyday. I look forward to it. Nancie Atwell’s approach to teaching reading has verified a hunch for me, and has given me something credible to refer back to when asked by parents or administrators what is happening in my classroom. She’s given me permission and enthusiasm to further venture in the direction I have already started myself and my students in.

Have you ever felt like you have stumbled upon an idea just a little too late. As a classroom teacher, I feel like the best ideas are ones that come to me later in the year, and I find myself wishing for a “do-over” on the school year, suddenly aware that what I’ve been up to was not quite where I wanted to be.

Frank Serafini’s work with the Reader’s workshop, and my discovery of his work, has led me into just such a crisis. I’ve been working for some time with the Writer’s Workshop framework in my classroom, and have been quite comfortable (in a constantly revising and improving approach sort of way) with its routines, rhythms, challenges, and especially its successes. My students ask for more time to write every day, and my conferences with them each week tell me that they are all improving their writing repertoires. It is a very satisfying experience for me, but especially for the students whom I serve. Their passion and excitement for their writing is the greatest reward of the Writer’s Workshop.

Reading Instruction has been bothering me though. A month ago I was talking with my neighbor—a very wise, experienced, and current teacher—and asked her what she thought, and what has worked for her when teaching intermediate students. She pointed me toward Dr. Serafini, telling me that her previous school had been working with him on improving their capacity for reading instruction. I looked into his name on the internet that weekend. His website, plus the sample chapters from his books were enough to draw me in.

Modernism and Reading Instruction

Our teaching of reading comprehension in schools has traditionally, and largely continues to, fall into the category of a Modernist perspective. From a Modernist perspective, texts are privileged over readers and the socio-cultural contexts of the readers in which those texts are interpreted. You can quickly uncover a Modernist take on comprehension in schools as it tends to emphasize literal recall (at the elementary level) over other types of comprehension. Questions such as “What colour was the wolf suit that Max wore?” are given importance over a question such as “Why do you think Max wore a wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another?” A Modernist perspective has us believe that a text has a single, correct interpretation, and that only very skilled readers, teachers, university professors have access to it. It’s not a very comfortable perspective for someone who doesn’t believe in it. The problem, however, lies in the fact that nearly all of the classroom resources created for teachers (still) align with such a perspective.

A Sociocultural Perspective on Reading Instruction

If we are to take readers out of the world of literal recall, and show them that literature is a tool for enjoyment, as well as a way to help us better understand the world that we live in, then a new approach is needed. I f we are to invite students into the world of literature, and help them develop into “passionately literate human beings”, then we need to teach comprehension in a way that they can connect what they read with their lives. We need to show them that the interpretations that they bring to texts, based on their previous experience as people and as readers, are valid and rich with meaning. The goal then becomes, as I see it, to teach students comprehension in a way that values each individual and his or her unique perspective on the world. That is a difficult task in a traditional classroom, with each student expected to do the same thing at the same time.

The Fulcrum

The socio-cultural perspective is nothing new to me. It was the basis of most of my literary studies as an English student. The challenge for me as a teacher, has been find an approach to the classroom that enables all of these “preferred visions” for instruction and understanding to occur. Dr. Serafini has, in impressive detail, laid out such a plan. And the key component of his work is that he is not simply laying out a philosophical framework—which he does—but he offers us a model of a classroom, with living breathing children in it, and a real human teacher, that embraces and embodies his preferred vision. Furthermore, he references piles of research to justify such an approach.

Now here I am, though. I’m looking at this, in December, and thinking that his is a framework that needs to be begun on the first day of school, and probably before. The ideas are so impressive and necessary, though, that I can’t shelve it and continue on this year without changing my direction. To begin the Reader’s Workshop now will not serve the students its fullest possibility, but to not move in that direction would be worse. And that’s where I feel like I’m making up for lost time—stuck with an idea I have to act on, but not able to embrace it fully yet. I have been trying to work out such a “preferred vision” myself, but it’s been a crap shoot sometimes, without much in the way of resources to support me. So Dr. Serafini’s ideas, I feel, have saved me 10 years of planning time—his vision is where I would have hoped to be in ten years without such a guide to direct me.

So I trudge on, and I transition. I am working this framework slowly into my students’ daily lives, and renegotiating many of the expectations, procedures, and responsibilities that we laid out with one another this year. They remain somewhat skeptical, but interested. I’m encouraged and inspired. It’s a fair place to be so far.