Gallagher parade by Susan Bistrican

I appreciate this chapter because Gallagher addresses the issue of underteaching—something many of you were concerned with when he mentioned the detriments of overteaching. It’s hard to strike a balance between underteaching and overteaching, but Gallagher explains this challenge in way in which we can all attempt to find our “sweet spot” of instruction.

Gallagher notes that there is “a huge difference between assigning reading and teaching reading,” (p. 87) something that I wish a lot of my secondary teachers were aware of when I was in school. I mentioned frontloading in my last blog which is tantamount to what Gallagher calls framing. It makes sense that a text should be introduced in a way that primes students’ background knowledge in order to prep their existing schema to retain new information. I agree with Gallagher’s disagreement with Nancy Atwell insofar that I believe students benefit from reading the same title as a whole class, especially when it’s from the canon. However, it’s hard for me to be aligned with Gallagher’s notion that there are universal truths in classic literature that all students can benefit from, but I think it’s due to being exposed to post-structuralist theory. Students can benefit from themes and concepts in books—“universal truths”—but it’s obviously important to discuss the value of these “truths” with the class so students can arrive at their own beliefs. Literature can undoubtedly shape students’ lives in this manner. I guess I just don’t like Gallagher’s wording, but I understand the essence of his sentiment—especially the notion that reading classics increases students’ cultural literacy.

Atwell’s idea that students need to be trusted with difficult academic texts to read on their own because "that’s how English classes will be when they get to college" caught my attention. College professors don’t teach through a “chop chop” curriculum; they assign reading in large chunks and expect students to comprehend the text enough to come to class prepared to discuss it. This is completely appropriate for college, not necessarily the secondary classroom. While I believe students should be trusted with reading difficult academic texts on their own, they have to be taught how to handle this task. Students have to build up endurance for reading longer, more difficult texts in order for them to be prepared for the college literature classroom. Thus, high school English teachers should scaffold this experience, building up to this kind of rigor. What Atwell describes can be achieved after students are sufficiently prepared. This kind of scaffolding will prepare students for post-secondary English classrooms so they are not surprised when they get to college. This is what I plan to do in my classroom, as I was somewhat prepared for college after taking Advanced Placement English classes. I would like to offer more rigorous English classes at the Honors and regular tracks as well. Not all students who choose to go to college take AP classes and not all schools even offer them. Students should be challenged in an appropriate manner, anyway, regardless of their career paths. 

I'm ready to throw Gallagher a parade. As I said, he offers feasible solutions to the most pervasive issues in the secondary English classroom. No theorist/philosopher/educational psychologist/teacher researcher is going to get everything "right," they can only offer so many solutions to so many problems. In my book, Gallagher offers me a variety of tools that will improve my classroom in the long run.

I'm down with ZPD--yeah you know me! by Susan Bistrican

I didn’t have the same qualms with this chapter as everyone else did. Gallagher’s ideas are highly accessible and well-organized. Some of his ideas may be obvious and if you think so, that’s probably because you’re a good teacher and/or have taught for awhile. I think Gallagher makes a fine argument when discussing the need for less choppy reading experiences. Gallagher isn’t trying to completely get rid stopping for analysis and checking for understanding; he is just making the case for more uninterrupted reading time. This will allow students the opportunity to become interested in what they are reading to ultimately lead to the intrinsic motivation to read. I think this produces life-long literate students: those who are able to transfer literacy skills to their daily lives in order to thrive in the real world. This should be the the primary goal of English teachers. 

The most useful portions of this chapter are the instructional strategies and activities he suggests and cites from others. Gradual release of responsibility (scaffolding) is a huge part of my educational philosophy so I am on-board with Carol Jago’s recommendation of the guided tour and the budget tour. I also agree with providing students with supplementary texts to accompany the novels they are reading, as Gallagher did with 1984. The “topic flood” is also a great idea as it provides students with a mixed sample of information on an array of current social and political issues. I especially like the idea of the teacher collecting the articles for the students because it serves as an early model of how to conduct research—yet another instance of scaffolding.

The “one pager” got me thinking the most; I think it is a perfect for accountability in recreational reading. It isn’t a daunting task and it is built in a way that preserves student agency because it allows them to respond to the book without heavily analyzing it based on the teacher’s prescribed prompts. Students are able to retain ownership of their self-selected books long after they finish reading it because they are responding to it on their own accord. I would extend the one pager to a blog or a wiki that the class gradually builds as the semester/year progresses. I think I would also have the students find songs, films, and images that relate to their self-selected novels to include in their one pager in order to get them thinking about comparison. This would serve as a front-loading activity in the future when students have to write more academic comparison and contrast papers.

This chapter was very helpful to me when contemplating reading instruction in my future classroom. Everything Gallagher proposes is feasible, even in a stifled test-prep setting. In my opinion, every set of ideas—academic reading v. high interest reading; literary analysis v. reader response—is well-balanced. I kind of feel awkward for not having any criticism to offer, but I’m pretty much behind everything in this chapter. Huh.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions by Susan Bistrican

Gallagher enlightened me to the idea that teaching to the test isn’t detrimental when the test is worthy. I read a book in methods on planning backwards called Understanding be Design (Wiggins & MiTighe, 2005) that explains the concept of designing lessons and units primarily based on their assessments. Of course, assessments are supposed to be authentic and comprehensive of what instructors teach, not the “shallow” standardized tests that Gallagher describes in chapter 1. This type of lesson planning makes for better instruction and assessment, as both are considered as a unit, not two separate entities. Gallagher cites Langer’s study (2002) as evidence for the necessity of differentiated approaches to assessment: “Schools that rely solely on any one approach are unlikely to rise to the level of an effective school” (p. 25). This makes complete sense, especially when one focuses on the context of a single classroom and the success of its students. Good teachers assess in a variety of different ways—formal and informal, comprehensive and selective—to appropriately measure student learning in order to use that data for instructional decisions in the future. In theory, thorough instruction should prepare students for assessment.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for the current state of affairs in secondary education. Sure, the Department of Education isn't scheming to make teachers teach to the test thus allowing reluctant and undeveloped readers to fall through the cracks. But Gallagher’s argument isn’t about intentions, as he says over and over. That’s fine and dandy that the government had “good” intentions with NCLB—after all, they set out to measure whether or not students are learning and use that data to assess whether or not teachers are teaching. Their intentions don’t change the fact that (a) standardized tests assess a breadth of information that teachers can spend only so much time covering, (b) teachers make the decision to teach to the test because their jobs depend on it, and (c) some students are ALWAYS going to be considered “failing” (helllooooo bell curve!).

The system is broken, plain and simple. I’m so glad Gallagher cites Ravich as well. She explains the detriments of standardized testing in an accessible way, as a former NCLB’er. Assessment is invaluable; it allows teachers and school officials to measure progress in order to make instructional decisions so they can meet student needs. Standardized tests don’t work that way, as is Gallagher’s argument and in turn, they produce “readicide.” Struggling readers are caught in a cycle of failure and aren’t given the chance to enjoy reading because they are thrust in lifeless, soul-sucking remedial courses  that teach them to be shallow readers, if they even improve at all.

My own personal readicide by Susan Bistrican

I was balancing this book on the elliptical at the gym which proved to be successful. Not to be dramatic, but when I need motivation to go that extra 10 minutes or crank up the resistance on the machines at the gym, I think about literacy. I seriously do. I think about struggling readers and I try to figure out ways to instruct students in reading and writing. I also get angry about the current state of affairs (a lot of the same issues Gallagher discusses in chapter one). I then have to use my cardio exercises as an outlet for all the negative things that occur in our profession. This makes me sound like a madwoman now that I think about it. Reading Gallagher has helped me figure out what to do about all the problems that fire me up. The organization of the book makes it accessible for teachers: problems and solutions are presented conspicuously and not mysteriously, as is apparent in some books and articles. That being said, chapter two clearly states the root of the problem of readicide and offers multiple solutions.

As I remember my high school years, I can relate to the material in this chapter. By the time I was in ninth grade, I barely read anything for fun, save blogs on the internet. My love of reading was killed off in middle school (which is very sad, considering middle school is a great time to expose students to chapter books and literature circles). No offense to older teachers, but my middle school English teachers were prehistoric. All three of them, from sixth to eight grade, were on the verge of retirement. I only mention this because there seemed to be a trend at that time where we had tons of older teachers who hated teaching and were coasting along until they could officially retire. I remember reading one novel (The Cay) that I didn’t even read and still made an A in the course. I didn’t have to read to make good grades; I just answered questions on worksheets about grammar, spelling, etc. I was never challenged to read and I was hardly encouraged to read. It wasn’t until my sophomore year in high school that I really started to like reading. However, I think I just liked literature, I didn’t really like reading. I loved to discuss the themes in the books…I loved the characters. I had really good literature teachers in high school. I read most of the books in their entirety, but I honestly did not start reading for pleasure on a regular basis until I took a young adult literature course when I was 21. TWENTY-ONE! How is this okay? I hardly think I’m unique in this sense. I’m just lucky that I loved literature enough to go into a lit program in college that led me to education that led me to a YAL course that led me to actually enjoy reading and helped me become a better reader of literature.

The purpose of my rant was to enhance the points Gallagher brings up in chapter two. My story is an example of readicide. Fortunately, I was never a struggling reader. But I think that if it wasn’t for that YAL class and my switch to being an education major, I would still have a hard time reading literature and I probably wouldn’t enjoy reading it as I do now. I think if my schools were structured in the ways Gallagher proposes, I would have started to enjoy reading long before my 21st birthday.

I definitely agree that SSR has its place in the classroom if it is implemented appropriately. Gallagher says that it’s one thing to encourage reading and another to offer an array of high interest reading materials for the students to consume on their own. When I was in SSR in middle school and high school, I didn’t have access to a classroom reading library like Gallagher’s. We were lucky if the teachers had old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys titles. I know schools lack money etc. etc. etc. but if I was encouraged to read by a teacher who was an avid reader and could recommend titles as Gallagher did with Who Killed My Daughter? I would have been inspired to read more. English teachers have a ton of responsibilities and I’m not trying to say that they need to tack on one more. I’m saying the same thing Gallagher is saying, and that is that getting kids to read should be the number one priority in school (not just the English classroom). I’ve been slowly building my classroom library because I believe that students need access to a variety of reading materials— a “book flood zone” (Elley, 1991). Reading Readicide has helped me determine how to deal with the problem of a loss of love for reading. I’ve always been aware of the problem, but Readicide has been a great resource in helping me understand what to do about it.

Also, I read The Grapes of Wrath during summer reading between 9th and 10th grade. I actually enjoyed it!

"I'm a writer" by Susan Bistrican

It’s very apparent that Baca is a poet because he uses his aesthetic voice, even during an interview. He uses cheesy metaphors, like barking at the back door of language. But he also explains how literature changed his life, likening his experience reading Madame Bovary to altering his view of the standard of beauty. That was cool to me. For every sappy thing Baca says, he follows it with two more insightful and evocative ideas.

What stuck out the most to me was Baca’s view of himself as a writer and sharing his writing process. It’s very important for writers to talk about their methods of madness and equally important for students and other burgeoning writers to consider the advice. Baca mentions a few times of what it means to be a writer. He says that his goal in life was to be an English teacher (at the time of his prison sentence) and he wasn’t privy to the idea of sharing his work with others because he was trying to grasp language and didn’t consider himself a writer or a poet. I think it’s important for students to have a safe place to experiment with language—that place being the English classroom. Teachers shouldn’t tell students they aren’t writers; rather, teachers should use Baca’s idea that beginning writers are trying to harness language and aren’t expected to write on the same level as an “accomplished” writer or what have you. I guess my point is that students fear writing, as Baca also mentions, because they think they aren’t good enough to write. This is an idea I’ve come across many times while researching writing. Teachers shouldn’t lower expectations and say, “Well don’t worry, kid, you’re not a writer anyway so don’t try as hard.” I’m just saying there has to be a way to convey to students that it’s okay to be messy in their writing and as a beginning, fluency is preferred over correctness.

Baca talks about his “eclectic” and “eccentric” way of writing: “I’ll write ten minutes and get up, walk around, sit down, write five minutes, get up, walk around” (p. 155). I love that he mentions what I called his “method of madness” earlier. Again, it’s important for students to know how writers compose, down to how many breaks they take, what they like to do during those breaks, what they eat, what music they listen to (e.g., I hear Stephen King listens to AC/DC, as he notes in his book On Writing). Beginning writers need to know that writing is a process, and not the same Donald Graves process of prewriting, drafting, editing, etc. etc. The writing process is what goes in to composing a piece of written text, whether that is letting your cat sit on your lap, eating a sandwich (like Dr. Froelich said she does), or listening to heavy metal. Students need to know that writers are humans and writing is human.

Prison & Poetry by Susan Bistrican

Finally, Jimmy’s stories. I agree that these probably would have been more effective and relevant if sprinkled throughout the theoretical part of the book. Oh well. I actually enjoyed these vignettes. Some parts are obnoxious—like when Baca talks about himself as a savior of sorts—but perhaps it takes the kinds of experiences he went through justify his ego. “The Swing Test that Made Us Men” and “The Magic Marble” are two good, short stories that could be used at the beginning of class to spark some freewriting in journals or whatnot. Honestly, I read a few of the questions on the classroom implications part at the end of each story, but they more or less were irrelevant to me and had the potential to harm my reading experience. However, I do appreciate Baca and Lent including them, especially if you’re a teacher looking for some direction when using these stories in the classroom. I think I might adapt some of the activities, but reducing such a powerfully emotional story like “Forgiving the Godfather of Poetry” to a discussion on literary devices ruins the story. I think one could definitely teach, for example, diction and paradox using this story, but I would always ALWAYS take a more reader response approach before reducing a story to discussion on form and mechanics. These stories are rich in the opportunity for reader response in particular, even if they aren’t universal. I’m not a gang member, but the trust and betrayal in “Sign Language, Convict Style” resounded with me. I’m not a convicted felon in a penitentiary, but “Birdhouses” spoke to me as a female and as someone who has suffered pain and loss. “Jimmy” can be annoying with his superiority complex, but these stories make me respect him. Again, he earns bragging rights in my book because the man taught himself how to read and write in prison in his twenties—that’s pretty damn impressive if you ask me.

Reading “The Swing Test that Made Us Men” and “Wells Market” made me feel funny and laugh at the same time. Oedipal overtones in the former story, anyone? But I won’t go there because obviously the orphans were missing a motherly figure in their lives and sought out comfort in one of the nuns; the story deserves more than a psychoanalytical reading. It was just funny that he talked about her breasts so much, haha. Also, the part in “Wells Market” where he was “awarded” the chance of poking the pig’s testicles so he could see the pig get an erection was so weird! But I think these “weird” instances in literature are what make pieces of texts interesting for students. Baca’s evocative language, though sometimes dripping with sentimentality through his overuse of adjectives, contributes to a worthy reading experience.

Collaboration and group work by Susan Bistrican

I’ve been thinking a lot about collaboration and group work lately, especially because we’re co-writing articles for this class and Dr. Froelich’s writing research class. Admittedly, I never thought I’d like co-writing with someone else because (a) it’s seems chaotic to try and synthesize two people’s research into one product and (b) I like to work alone because I can control every aspect of the project without worrying about someone else’s input (though I’ve never considered myself a control freak!). But after writing the story grammar story for LAE 5736 with Melissa, I began to really enjoy and appreciate collaborative learning as a student myself. It was helpful to have someone else to shoot ideas with. A partner or a group is also a source for immediate feedback: when I can’t think of a word or a way to phrase something, Melissa helped me out. It was also helpful to have someone there to work with because it actually eased my tension and relieved my writer’s block. I thought I would be nervous writing in front of someone, but I felt motivated and surprisingly comfortable. I mention all of this because of the subject of chapter 4: collaboration and group work (p. 34-47). I’ve had the same concerns as Lent’s(?) daughter when it comes to group work—I thought I’d have to pick up the slack and come up with all the ideas. Sure, it’s easier at the graduate level to complete group work because people are more likely to contribute a fair share than secondary students (or even undergrads). But I agree with Roskelly that “students learn from peers because they value peers’ opinions and are influenced by them in ways they are not influenced by teachers” (p. 35).

In order to achieve the benefits of group work and avoid the detriments, we as teachers need to carefully scaffold group work by aiding in the selection process for group members and modeling collaboration strategies including how to effectively problem solve. I’ve heard from several peers, either in their internships or teaching positions, that facilitating group work is harder than it may seem. I think some very uninformed people think group work is a way to avoid instruction and save time as a teacher. They couldn’t be more wrong! As teachers, we provide the guidance that is the glue for collaborative learning. Jigsaw groups and other cooperative learning strategies require meticulous organization on the teacher’s behalf. As the text notes, there are multiple ways of organizing groups: ability levels, interest, learning styles, and personality traits (p. 41-42). In order to be able to group students in these ways, the teacher has to know her students well. So group work is not an easy way out for the teacher to read a newspaper at the back of the class; I would argue that it might take more effort to facilitate collaborative learning than it does to lecture.

Collaborative learning also has the benefit of fostering healthy emotional development. One of my undergraduate research interests was determining effective interventions for bullying, school violence, and victimization. I came across social psychologist Elliot Aronson who deviated from his usual subject of adult psychology into adolescent psychology. He wrote a book about fostering emotional development and empathy through the jigsaw classroom titled No One Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbine. In my research, I found that root-cause interventions like introducing and maintaining group work in the classroom can help students develop empathy for one another—to put themselves in other people’s “shoes.” Kids will by no means like everyone they come into contact with. They might even detest some of their group mates. But the research shows that appropriately implemented collaborative learning strategies in the primary and secondary classrooms tremendously impacts student attitudes toward one another, ultimately arriving at the community-like classroom Baca and Lent describe in the beginning chapter. I hope to utilize group work in my future classroom because of these benefits. I am especially excited about implementing literature circles in my classroom because I’ve never had the chance to! This book group idea is great, especially the technology component. I think it is invaluable for students to collaborate together, have some choice in the selection of their books, and have the chance to use blogs and other websites to express their opinions. This is definitely a good way to implement collaborative work at any level!