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.