On Friday night, I remembered at 9:56 that I had an interlibrary loan book that had arrived for me at Earlham's library. I called the switchboard while frantically pulling out my computer to see when the library closes on Fridays. As someone answered, I read: 10 pm. I asked to be put through to the library, and a calm student voice answered, "Lily Library, how can I help?"
This friendly voice said it would wait for me until I got there, and I took off running across Earlham's unseasonably warm campus (48 degrees) to get The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child, recommended to me by a teacher friend.
Author Donalyn Miller argues in favor of an independent reading program in English Language Arts classes in this book. She proposes a workshop model for a classroom, in which a teacher is a master and students learn tricks of the trade.
In the classroom, the trade is reading and the teacher is the most literate person in the room, charged with teaching children how to make sense of whatever they read, long after they've left the classroom. The goal is to create readers; this is the only goal, as far as Miller is concerned. '
Miller refers fairly early on to a phenomenon at many schools. Remedial reading classrooms read less and less, while the more proficient readers read more and more. Those who are good at reading become better, and those who struggle keep struggling, never making significant strides, and certainly never developing a love of reading on their own. She links this to the Matthew Effect, a phenomenon described in the gospel of Matthew thus:
Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.
She argues in favor of having all students pick books at the beginning of the year and that a significant chunk of class time, between 15 and 30 minutes (on her 90 minute block schedule) be dedicated to independent reading each day.
I have not finished the book so I don't know what her suggestions are for engaging students around a single text in a class that also has an independent reading program. I love the idea of independent reading, and absolutely am compelled by her argument that it builds students' desire to read after they leave the classroom, but I also want to read things together, to have a common source for discussion and thinking about specific, more challenging ideas that would certainly not occur to the students were they only reading their own young adult fiction, or whatever they chose to be reading.
I had never heard of the Matthew Effect before. I have no idea what is being discussed in that part of the Bible, and as we were cautioned last week at Meeting, "Context is everything" when reading a Bible verse, so I'll withhold judgment on what seems a very unjust principle in that verse.
Apparently that's not the only verse which supports the Matthew Effect.
Later in the day I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success and heard this verse:
For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. (Matthew 25:29)
Sounds familiar.
Gladwell is making a similar point to Miller, but speaking about success more broadly. Those who have certain conditions at birth and during childhood, are exponentially more likely to succeed, regardless of their merit or their inherent talent. This is not surprising to those people who know that where you were born, and how educated your parents are, matters, but his examples are no less compelling.
Earlier in the day I had been speaking to a mother and teacher about the level of vocabulary among my students in Richmond. They are unfamiliar with far more words in English than my students in Ramallah were, even though those were ESL students. I told my friend yesterday that the difference seems to be a) how much they read and b) the education level of their parents.
Gladwell's example confirm my suspicions. The people who do well are those whose parents were highly involved in their development as learners, and importantly, as actors. I do not mean actors in the theater sense, I mean people who exercise agency. Higher class parents teach their children how to advocate for themselves, how to ask for what they want, and how to question people in authority.
Lower class parents allow their children to develop naturally and mostly independently. The research Gladwell cites shows that lower class children grow up being well-behaved, creative and collaborative, but they don't know how to speak up as well. They do not develop a necessary sense of entitlement.
Reflecting on my own youth I see what solid training I got in advocacy for myself. My mother taught me how to assert myself from a very early age, to ask for what I need, and to work with people in a way that helps me get it while building a relationship with them. Those are the skills that allow people to be successful. How can I teach that in my class?
OK I've strayed significantly from developing independent readers to fostering a sense of entitlement in students. I wonder if the classroom can be a place for learning both? I'm not sure. It seems it would be difficult to train assertiveness in the classroom successfully if it were not modelled and appreciated at home too.
This friendly voice said it would wait for me until I got there, and I took off running across Earlham's unseasonably warm campus (48 degrees) to get The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child, recommended to me by a teacher friend.
Author Donalyn Miller argues in favor of an independent reading program in English Language Arts classes in this book. She proposes a workshop model for a classroom, in which a teacher is a master and students learn tricks of the trade.
In the classroom, the trade is reading and the teacher is the most literate person in the room, charged with teaching children how to make sense of whatever they read, long after they've left the classroom. The goal is to create readers; this is the only goal, as far as Miller is concerned. '
Miller refers fairly early on to a phenomenon at many schools. Remedial reading classrooms read less and less, while the more proficient readers read more and more. Those who are good at reading become better, and those who struggle keep struggling, never making significant strides, and certainly never developing a love of reading on their own. She links this to the Matthew Effect, a phenomenon described in the gospel of Matthew thus:
Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.
I have not finished the book so I don't know what her suggestions are for engaging students around a single text in a class that also has an independent reading program. I love the idea of independent reading, and absolutely am compelled by her argument that it builds students' desire to read after they leave the classroom, but I also want to read things together, to have a common source for discussion and thinking about specific, more challenging ideas that would certainly not occur to the students were they only reading their own young adult fiction, or whatever they chose to be reading.
I had never heard of the Matthew Effect before. I have no idea what is being discussed in that part of the Bible, and as we were cautioned last week at Meeting, "Context is everything" when reading a Bible verse, so I'll withhold judgment on what seems a very unjust principle in that verse.
Apparently that's not the only verse which supports the Matthew Effect.
Later in the day I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success and heard this verse:
For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. (Matthew 25:29)
Sounds familiar.
Gladwell is making a similar point to Miller, but speaking about success more broadly. Those who have certain conditions at birth and during childhood, are exponentially more likely to succeed, regardless of their merit or their inherent talent. This is not surprising to those people who know that where you were born, and how educated your parents are, matters, but his examples are no less compelling.
Earlier in the day I had been speaking to a mother and teacher about the level of vocabulary among my students in Richmond. They are unfamiliar with far more words in English than my students in Ramallah were, even though those were ESL students. I told my friend yesterday that the difference seems to be a) how much they read and b) the education level of their parents.
Gladwell's example confirm my suspicions. The people who do well are those whose parents were highly involved in their development as learners, and importantly, as actors. I do not mean actors in the theater sense, I mean people who exercise agency. Higher class parents teach their children how to advocate for themselves, how to ask for what they want, and how to question people in authority. Lower class parents allow their children to develop naturally and mostly independently. The research Gladwell cites shows that lower class children grow up being well-behaved, creative and collaborative, but they don't know how to speak up as well. They do not develop a necessary sense of entitlement.
Reflecting on my own youth I see what solid training I got in advocacy for myself. My mother taught me how to assert myself from a very early age, to ask for what I need, and to work with people in a way that helps me get it while building a relationship with them. Those are the skills that allow people to be successful. How can I teach that in my class?
OK I've strayed significantly from developing independent readers to fostering a sense of entitlement in students. I wonder if the classroom can be a place for learning both? I'm not sure. It seems it would be difficult to train assertiveness in the classroom successfully if it were not modelled and appreciated at home too.
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