The Book Whisperer (4 page)

Granted, it was someone else's plan.

With a workshop structure in place, my students were more engaged in reading and writing and more enthusiastic. Instead of teaching books, I taught comprehension strategies and literary elements that students could apply to a wide range of texts. I implemented the reader's notebook, taken straight from Fountas and Pinnell's model, in order to manage my students' independent reading; set up reading requirements for my students based on genre as a path to choice; and assigned book talks to replace the dreaded book report. I photocopied mountains of reading strategy worksheets, lists of reading response prompts, and workshop management forms. I bought every picture book that my workshop mentors recommended.

The structure of the workshop drove everything that I did, and it left me frustrated. Instead of finding my own way, I was now bent on channeling those master teachers. If I was unable to follow the step-by-step lesson plans laid out by reading experts because of the unique needs and personalities of my students, my own teaching style, the time constraints of my instructional block, or access to resources, I felt like a failure. I kept striving to make my class look like the ones I read about, full of engaged children and exemplary teachers, and when I fell short, I did not know what to do except to try harder. Making the workshop work became more important than the readiness or interest of my students or me. You see, while I searched for the key to being a master reading teacher, I forgot what workshop teaching was all about—my role as master reader—which goes beyond just following a lockstep sequence of lessons that some distant guru had advised me to use.

The funny thing is that I knew how to inspire readers thirty years ago because I knew what made reading inspirational for me. These days, I share with my students what no literacy expert could ever teach me. Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters—the saints and sinners, real or imagined—reading shows you how to be a better human being. Now, I accept that I may never arrive at teaching paradise, but as long as I hold on to my love of books and show my students what it really means to live as a reader, I'll be a lot closer than I once was. Finally, this was my epiphany.

—W. Somerset Maugham

—Emily

 

 

Y
ES, I GREW A LOT those first two years, but I still had a lot to learn about being a responsive teacher. What I thought my students needed each week when I wrote my lesson plans was not as important as how I responded to their needs when they expressed them to me.

On the first day of my third year of teaching, after I delivered a lengthy lecture on class rules, homework demands, and locker and restroom procedures to my new class of students, I stopped to ask whether they had any questions. One boy raised his hand and, glancing at the wall of books that forms the class library on one side of the room, asked, “When will we be allowed to check out books?” I was taken aback. I never saw myself as a teacher who did or did not allow students to read. Was there a magical, undetermined time when it was acceptable for the children to begin reading? Well, no, there wasn't. Surprising my students and myself, I blinked a few times and blurted, “Now. We will check out books now.”

Tentatively, students got out of their seats. After listening to my rules lecture for the past fifteen minutes, I think they were amazed that I would let them touch my books without some additional diatribe. I can imagine their thoughts. “What, no talk of jelly stains and dog-eared pages?” “No threats of tongue-lashing if we misplace a book?” “She spent three minutes telling us how to go to the bathroom, but she is just going to turn us loose on those books?” A few pioneers thumbed through the bins. When I saw one girl select Sharon Creech's journey of self-discovery,
Walk Two Moons
, I asked her whether she had read it before. She had, so I directed her to one of Creech's more recent books,
The Wanderer
. A group formed around me.

Students clamored for recommendations, asking me whether I had read the treasured books many were now clutching in their hands. I raised a copy of one my favorites—
The Thief Lord
, Cornelia Funke's magical tale of Viennese street orphans—over my head, and asked, “Has anyone read this? I loved it.” Two boys, digging through the fantasy section of the library, raised their hand. I declared, “Two, only two? That's not enough!” I went into my cabinets, where I kept crates of my book sets, many of them from my whole-class unit days. Dragging out a tub and snapping off the lid, I doled out copies of
The Thief Lord
. When that tub was almost empty, I popped open others, which held
Stargirl
, by Jerry Spinelli; Gordon Korman's
The Sixth Grade Nickname Game;
and, yes,
The View from Saturday
.

Students grabbed books and gave book recommendations to each other and to me. I was talking to one child about books and then another and another. I located some index cards and had students jot down their names and the titles of the books they were checking out. My classroom looked like the floor of a bizarre stock exchange, with students excitedly waving cards and calling out book titles. Jace, a student from that class, still remembers the experience: “I walked out of there with three books that day, and they are still on my list of favorites,” he told me recently. At the time, Jace was not an enthusiastic reader, but he got caught up in the wave of excitement from his classmates and me.

Since that landmark day, when I decided to listen to what my students needed and not tell them what I thought they needed to hear, I have always started the school year with this book frenzy. By making book selections and sharing past favorites the first activity in which we engage as a class, I emphasize the prominence that reading will hold all year. I also reveal to students that I am knowledgeable about books and that I value their prior reading experiences and preferences. The book frenzy sets the tone for my class. Everyone reads every day, all year long.

In those first days, I never preach to my students about their need to read. I never talk to them about the fact that many of them do not like to read, struggle with reading skills, or have not found reading personally meaningful. If I were to acknowledge that these excuses have merit, I would allow them to become reasons for my students not to read. They pick books on the first day, and they read. If the book they chose during that first frenzy does not work for them, they abandon it and choose another. Choosing not to read is never discussed. It is simply not an option. Although I never state it outright to my students, my mandate that they read and the enthusiasm I show for books sends a powerful message. I want my students to know that I see each of them as a reader. All students in the class are readers—yes, with varying levels of readiness and interest—but readers nonetheless. I must believe that my students are readers—or will be readers—so that they can believe it. The idea that they can't read or don't like to read is not on the table.

Embracing their inner reader starts with students selecting their own books to read. This freedom is not a future, perhaps-by-spring goal for them, but our first accomplishment as a class. Why does choice matter? Providing students with the opportunity to choose their own books to read empowers and encourages them. It strengthens their self-confidence, rewards their interests, and promotes a positive attitude toward reading by valuing the reader and giving him or her a level of control. Readers without power to make their own choices are unmotivated.

Students come into our classrooms with all sorts of reading experiences, many of them not positive. By middle school, students have an image of themselves as readers or nonreaders. Students who do not read see reading as a talent that they do not have rather than as an attainable skill. We label students according to their success on standardized reading tests and their personal motivation to read. Students who have not met minimum standards for test performance are called “struggling readers.” We classify students who don't read books outside of school or require substantial goading to pick up a book as “reluctant readers.” Lord, help the student with both labels.

I need to put forward more encouraging terms for my students than the negative popular terminology
struggling
and
reluctant
. Where is the hope in these terms? I prefer to use positive language to identify the readers in my classes. Peeking into my classroom, I see sixty different readers with individual reading preferences and abilities, but I consistently recognize three trends: developing readers, dormant readers, and underground readers.

The type of students whom I call
developing readers
are commonly referred to as
struggling readers
. For any number of reasons, including inadequate reading experiences or learning disabilities, these students are not reading at grade level. They have difficulty understanding the reading material in every aspect of their lives. By the intermediate grades, the majority of developing readers have been in reading intervention programs and tutoring for several years. Their standardized test scores are low, and some have failed at least one state assessment. These students do not see themselves as capable of becoming strong readers, and they (and their parents) are beginning to despair, perhaps thinking that reading competence will remain forever out of their reach.

Why do developing readers continue to struggle in spite of every intervention effort? Well, the key might be in the amount of reading these students actually do. Reading policy expert Richard Allington explains in
What Really Matters for Struggling Readers
that when he examined the reading requirements of Title I and special education programs, he discovered that students in remedial settings read roughly 75 percent less than their peers in regular reading classes. No matter how much instruction students receive in how to decode vocabulary, improve comprehension, or increase fluency, if they seldom apply what they have learned in the context of real reading experiences, they will fail to improve as much as they could.

The fact that students in remedial programs don't read much has serious consequences for developing readers. Students who do not read regularly become weaker readers with each subsequent year. Meanwhile, their peers who read more become stronger readers—creating an ever-widening achievement gap. Dubbed
the Matthew effect
by Keith Stanovich, referring to the passage in the Bible (Matthew 13:12) that is often interpreted as “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” this gap indicates that no matter the intervention, developing readers must spend substantial instructional time actually reading if they are to attain reading competence.

Here is why I have hope for children who have fallen behind and why I call them developing readers instead of struggling ones: these students have the ability to become strong readers. They may lag behind their peers on the reading-development continuum, but they are still on the same path. What they need is support for where they are in their development and the chance to feel success as readers instead of experiencing reading failure. They also need to read and read. Time and time again, I have seen a heavy dose of independent reading, paired with explicit instruction in reading strategies, transform nonreaders into readers.

The first time I saw Kelsey's name, it was on “the list”—the list of students who had failed the state assessment three times but were being promoted to sixth grade anyway, on the assumption that with the right mix of tutoring intervention and strong reading support, they would be able to catch up. Kelsey was not just a struggling reader; she was a defeated one. Kelsey feared that she was going to fail the state assessment again and be retained in sixth grade. Her mother was supportive but did not really know what to do, either. She read to Kelsey and read with her. She spent hours at the dining room table working with Kelsey on practice items for standardized tests from the workbooks that Kelsey's teachers sent home, and she remained vocal and involved in Kelsey's school life, but none of her efforts had helped improve Kelsey's reading ability to the degree that she had hoped.

Although Kelsey could trill off a staggering list of strategies for attacking reading on a standardized test, she did not have much experience reading books on her own because she spent most of her time during reading instruction practicing test-taking and comprehension strategies and thus had few opportunities to apply and practice what she had learned with real books. It was clear that the rescue recipe of equal parts tutoring, test practice, and parental support that is commonly served to developing readers was not working. Kelsey was way behind the other students in her class and, without making up the reading miles she had missed, had little hope of catching up with them. When Kelsey found out that I expected her to read a lot in my class, she confessed to me that she did not know how to choose a book that was appropriate or interesting to her, and that she struggled to read the books that her classmates read because those books were too hard for her.

Learning that Kelsey loved animals, especially horses, I steered her toward books in the Animal Ark and Heartland series, which are written at a third- or fourth-grade level, because I knew she would be able to read these easily and have a positive experience with the books. As Kelsey developed experience as a reader, her confidence grew and she read book after book. As Kelsey continued reading, the difficulty and sophistication of the books she chose increased naturally and she became a stronger reader. She made amazing progress and was reading close to grade level by the end of the year. Most important, Kelsey discovered a love for books and saw herself as a good reader for the first time. Kelsey received reading intervention services from our reading specialist all year, just like always; went to tutoring after school, just like always; worked with her mother at home, just like always; but this year, she also read every single day.