Shoot for the Moon, part 4: Focus on students-not subjects

When someone asks you what you teach, how do you answer?  Do you say a grade level, a subject?  Most of us do.  We consider ourselves reading teachers or writing teachers or first grade teachers or high school teachers.  The thing is reading, writing, first grade, and high school are things. They don’t need to be taught anything.  ReadERS, writERS, first gradERS, and high schoolERS are people, and they do need to be taught.  Reading and writing are tools that help people to become literate.  Yes, as teachers and administrators, we need to know the tools that are most helpful, but we have to teach those tools with the user in mind.  Even more, we have to help our students develop their own tools, and we can only do that by focusing on them.  So, here are some ways that we can shift our focus:

1. Prioritize choice...it DOES matter...A LOT.   

We hear buzzwords all the time in education. Rigor, engagement, student-centered learning, etc.  We hear them so much that they start to lose their impact. We become desensitized and don’t really think about what it means.  In the past few years, “student voice and choice” has been the phrase that I have heard more than any other.  There’s good reason for that.  It matters!  Motivation is a crucial factor in student learning, and being heard is a fundamental need in humans.  Part of being a reader and writer is making choices about what to read and write. When we limit students to only reading novels or “real books”, we discount the value of magazines, graphic novels, and media.  When we tell students that they can only read books on a certain level, we discount what research has said for years about the impact of interests on reading ability.  In fact, a student who is interested in a particular topic, author, series, can often read more difficult text than what a readability test may show him to be capable of comprehending.  It goes the other way, too.  When we are disinterested or lack of background in a topic, we tend to have more difficulty reading it.   

Our choices reflect our interests, so they essentially reflect us. When students choices in reading are valued, it sends the message that THEY are valued.  The thing is, choosing what interests them may not come naturally to many students. They’ve likely never been given the opportunity.  We have to teach them how to make choices about books.  We have to teach them how to determine if a book might interest them, where to find the types of reading materials that they enjoy, how to build reading interests.  The same goes for writing.  We show students how authors work, then help them to make choices about how to get started, what to consider when making decisions about organization, word choice, etc.  We don’t dictate a process; rather, we show them tools and help them develop their own process through making choices.

2. Emphasize authentic purposes for reading and writing.

I once asked a fourth grader that I was tutoring, “Why do we read.”  She said, “to answer questions.”  My heart broke, then I got very angry, then I changed the way I approached teaching. That is NOT why we read.  And we don’t write for a test.  Those are both ways in which we may apply our reading and writing skills, but they are not the REASON(s) we read and write.  As teachers of readers and writers, we have to model for our students what it is to be a reader and writer.  That means...we have to read and write! Seriously.  I’m not saying you have to have a novel on every nightstand or write creative stories every day….I mean we have to be people that can’t do life without reading and writing.  We bring those experiences into our classrooms.  When I am helping students to decide how to make a plan for reading, it is much more impactful when I can bring books from home that I am currently reading (or show my shelfie) and walk them through how I make decisions about when to read, where to read, how much time to give myself, and so on. When I can show students my blog or my notebook where I keep gems that I’ve highlighted from books or articles, it makes a difference. They see that this is not just something that they are learning in class, but that reading and writing are tools for thinking in all aspects of life.  

3. Shift from teaching to learning.

Years ago, I was watching Dr. Phil, and I remember him saying (imagine his Texas twang here) that every time we do something for a child that they COULD do themselves, we are indirectly telling them that we don’t think they are smart enough or capable of doing it on their own.  At the time, I taught first grade, and I remember making a conscious decision to trust my students and let them learn.  It wasn’t my job to do everything for them.  It was my job to help them become learners.  Far too often, we still do all the heavy lifting for our students. When it is time to read a text, we have already previewed it, picked out words that might be difficult, determined what background knowledge the students may need, and have put together an extensive lesson plan for helping them know the words and build their background.  And we’ve done it all with the best of intentions.  What do they learn from this, though?  We’ve already made all of the planning decisions for them.  What if we shifted from...

• “This book is about….”  to…..”Let me show you how readers determine what a book is about…”
• “You need to pick books on ____ level…” to…”Let me show you how readers make decisions about what books to read”

• “Stop after each paragraph and write a summary…” to “Let me show you how readers decide when to stop and capture their thinking...:”
• “You need to read ___ number of books”...Let me show you how to think about and set reading goals…”
• “Write about ______” to “Let’s look at how some writers get ideas”

Do you see the difference?  There is a shift in focus and the change in the role of the teacher in these lessons.  The focus is not on the books or the level or the particular way of annotating. The focus is on the readER and writER and how to help them become independent.  

So, as you reflect on where the focus is in your own classroom or school, here are some questions to consider:

1. What are students interested in?
2. When do they choose what they read and write?
3. What do they say is the reason for reading and writing?
4. How do your teachers describe their role?
5. How many questions do students ask?
   
   

Thanks again for taking time to stop by and read part 4.  We’ll meet again soon for part 5!