Reading for Many Purposes

We are one week into our summer vacation, and I have discovered I have four books going today. Each one fulfills a different purpose:

Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction (Bear, D.R., Invernizzi, M, Templeton, S, & Johnston, F. Pearson, 2008): This book is helping me on two fronts: my work next year teaching middle school language arts, and helping my poor adolescent spellers at home. For years, my kids have told me, "I can't spell", and I have let it go, thinking it would come as they matured. However, at ages 12 and 14, they are still not proficient with some rules of spelling. After being introduced to this book by our elementary literacy coach this year, I bought a copy to experiment with, and my own kids are the guinea pigs this summer (lucky them!). If this seems like a successful approach, I'll try it out with my class this coming school year.

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key (Gantos, J.): On my quest to update my repertoire of young adult literature, I have been devouring titles from the secondary librarian's Best Books for MS list. Joey Pigza is my favorite so far. I am keeping track of my YA reading on Shelfari.

Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School (Bomer, R. Heinemann, 1995): OK, I know I already wrote about this professional book. But I'm now 3 chapters into it, and remember why I love it so much. Randy Bomer speaks from the front of the classroom, showing his teaching and reflecting as he goes. He makes mistakes, thinks about them, fixes them, and explains his process. Throughout, he keeps the goal of helping adolescents use print to make meaning of their lives central to everything he does. He keeps me focused on the big picture even as I consider adding pieces like word study to my language arts class.

Beatrice and Virgil (Martel, Y.): I have to keep feeding my adult pleasure reading life, even though I am busy reading other things too. Making time for good quality literature is one of my life pleasures. Besides, I have to choose a book for my adult Book Club to read this coming year!

Along with these books, I am also reading blogs and reviews and facebook posts and emails and Newsweek, each for their own distinct purposes. When I hear from students, "I don't read" or "I don't like to read" or "I'm not a reader", I need to remember all the different reading I do in my life, and try to help those students recognize that they, indeed, are readers, even if they don't pick up a novel to read for fun at night. I hope that I can help them match up the kind of reading they like to do with the texts that can build their reading skills and their sense of being a lifelong reader.

Cultural Chasms

There are times in my life as an international educator when I encounter situations that baffle me. Take an article I read on June 6 in a UAE newspaper, The National, which described a mass wedding involving 400 bridegrooms (but no brides) who feasted on 205 goats and 20 camels all paid for by the host city’s Municipality at an estimated cost of 5 million dirham (about $1.4 million). The brides will get their own reception on June 30 after they sign the marriage papers with their grooms. There is so much in this local interest story that is beyond my cultural experience or understanding. I think of these times as Cultural Chasms.

I wonder how often my students encounter Cultural Chasms of their own in my classroom. I am a white, middle class, American woman; I bring that cultural background into my teaching. However, my students are from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and experiences. The recent trend of “multicultural” education advocates celebrating the cultural holidays of the students within a class (including Kwanzaa; I have yet to meet anyone who celebrates this holiday, despite living overseas for over 20 years and six of those in Africa), reading books that reflect the cultures of the students, and even learning words in the languages of the students’ homes as a way to honor their cultures. I do not dispute that these ideas are better than ignoring cultural differences; however, they seem like symbolic gestures from a Eurocentric perspective, and I do not think this is enough to cross the Cultural Chasms.

Instead, I advocate establishing a classroom with a true openness to accepting and learning from each other’s cultures within the class, including my own WASPy culture. I am learning to look past my own biases, which judge the unfamiliar as bad, and consider the value inherent in the situation. For example, in the mass wedding story above, I admire how strongly the Emiratis hold onto their traditions despite the rapid changes around them. These traditions provide a stable foundation for their society. In my other postings, I marveled at the Kenyan optimism, at how each day was a celebration of what they had instead of focusing on what they didn’t have. I envied the extended Ecuadorian families; my students spent weekends full of grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts. And in China, I reflected on how the good of the group and wishes of the family took priority over the individual’s in a society trying to build a coherent common vision.

If all of us in a classroom—teacher and students—can work to establish a community with a spirit of openness to learning from each other, then we will build the true meaning of “multicultural understanding”. We can all learn words from each other’s languages, read books from around the world, and celebrate holidays as well as day-to-day triumphs. We can share stories that bind us in commonalities and help us understand our differences. In this way, we will bridge the Cultural Chasms.

Summer Reading

Summer vacation looms, just days away. Promises of living out of suitcases, staying with relatives, and long hours with nothing scheduled beckon. Those long hours yearn to be filled with summer reading. Here's what I have on my reading list so far:

The Twilight series: Not my usual cup of tea, but moving back into sixth grade English Language Arts means being ready for conversations around young adult literature. These four books will be the first ones I post on my trial of Shelfari, an online reading log/blog. From there I will be reading as many young adult books as I can, based on recommendations from my 12-year-old daughter, my librarian husband, and lots of online lists supplied by NCTE's Inbox Blog. I've lost momentum these past two years being out of the classroom!

Time for Meaning: Randy Bomer's book on teaching secondary English through the genre-study approach is one to re-read before returning to the classroom. His no-nonsense take on teaching the enormous Language Arts curriculum in unreasonably short Middle and High School classes is just what I need. Our Middle School is implementing a new genre-study workshop approach in our ELA classes, and I need to have Randy's words in my ears as I lead the department through this change.

Teaching Grammar in Context: Probably my biggest weakness as an ELA teacher is teaching grammar and conventions in an effective and meaningful way. Part of my discomfort is that I was not taught these things well, so I have a weak knowledge base and no good role models. Constance Weaver's book gives practical suggestions for how to teach the structure and rules of the English language within the context of reading and writing workshop. This is another re-read for me, but is still the text that is referenced by the professional authors I trust.

Fair isn't Always Equal: Rick Wormeli presents a compelling case for differentiating instruction and assessment based on formative data. I "get" it (intellectually), but I also don't "get" it (practically), and sitting down for another think about his suggestions in the context of sixth grade ELA and Social Studies will prepare me for the mix of kids that walk through my door in August.

Beatrice and Virgil: Yann Martel's new book was a birthday present, and sits ready for me to dive into. I'm considering it for a Book Club book this year, but don't want to recommend it without reading it first.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Everyone I know has read Stieg Larson's mystery series, so I guess I need to jump on the bus. Mystery is not my favorite, but I hear this one is gripping.

This list won't get me through the whole vacation, but it'll get me started. Then I can count on my friends and family and the local libraries to get me through the rest.