at the end

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.