Deeper Reading

From the time I read Kelly Gallagher's Readicide, I knew that he was an educator whose writing would always catch my attention. It was a pleasure to finally read another of his books, Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12, and I am excited that I have a couple more of his books waiting to be read because once again I loved Gallagher's voice.

Last year, a colleague and I talked frequently about moving students toward a deeper level of understanding. As such, I closely connected with concepts I read about in Comprehension Going Forward this summer. As the title implies, Gallagher's book is another great contribution to an on-going conversation about moving beyond surface-level comprehension.

At the start of the book, he discusses baseball as a metaphor for the way that adolescents read. Drawing from experiences with his daughters, comparing their understanding of the game to his own, as well as watching them develop their knowledge-base over time, Gallagher made connections to adolescents as readers. Referring to his daughters and baseball, he stated, "They now read the game at a fairly sophisticated level, but they were taught how to do so. They did not acquire their skill spontaneously or randomly," (p. 3). The book continued on to explore implications for teachers to scaffold the way students read.

Published in 2004, this is one of Gallagher's earlier books; however, it is still highly relevant. While reading, I frequently thought about current discussion about the CCSS emphasizing a need for deep understanding. Gallagher's book is a blend of anecdotes, rationales for needs, and strategies to address needs. He explains each of the strategies and provides specific examples of many. It is evident that his suggestions are based on close-observation of students and intentional teaching over time. I have frequent notes in the margin of how I will implement his suggestions.

It felt great to finally read a professional development book for pleasure again. This break I am looking forward to reading more of the books that I have been wanting to read for  a long time.

Teacher Educator: Who I Am

This fall I did a lot of reflecting about who I am as an educator when I am not teaching in the context of middle school reading and writing workshop. It took a lot of reflecting to consider the type of teaching that I would do. I considered how other professors taught the content, and as such their course syllabi and assignments served as mentor texts. I was considering how to shift to a new teaching context and still have my teaching and learning philosophy present in my practice.

It is not like I never taught other content areas. I had taught ESL, Spanish, a 6th grade self-contained classroom, social studies, and a couple of adjunct teacher preparation courses... It was just that for the last year I had been so absorbed in workshop teaching, that it took me a while to zoom back out and closely consider who I would be as a teacher educator. I knew what I loved about teaching middle schoolers, especially with reading and writing. I knew from a course that I taught last spring that there were certain components that I loved with my middle schoolers that were present with adults, such as interacting/discussing content. I knew that one main role as a teacher educator was to frequently model various teaching practices, and to allow pre-service teachers space to construct their own understandings of who they want to be as teachers.

Thus, though I knew certain aspects at the onset, I still was not quite sure about others. I worried about aspects that I would miss. Nonetheless, over the course of this fall term, I realized that there are more aspects that transfer over to my current position than I had originally anticipated. Here were some of my realizations:

• Pre-service teachers can still use support with writing. There is a place for writer's workshop. Winter term I am excited to scaffold a couple of research paper assignments by utilizing workshop philosophy. Inspired by Penny Kittle, I will guide students through examining mentors of product, and I will write with my students as a mentor of process. 
• Along the same lines, students need support in other areas, such as content area reading. At the start of the course, I was thinking that reading books from my favorite education publishers focusing on k-12 education would be more of a special treat, an avenue to support k-12 teachers or to consider how I could have improved what I did as a teacher. However, I did not think they would be as highly relevant to my position in higher education. I thought I would really miss that excitement of reading and seeing ideas that would immediately apply to my practice. Yet, once again, to my delight I realized that many of the ideas did still apply. As I am finally getting a chance to read more professional development books for pleasure again, I am realizing that the texts serve to inform my practice, as well as providing ideas to share with students to supplement course texts. 
• Just because my students are adults now, and not middle schoolers, doesn't mean that they have everything all figured out. Some still need support in balancing various aspects of life and to have effective time management. Others need support in dealing with stress. Teacher-student connections are still highly important. There is a need to get to know students and to understand their strengths and areas for growth.

As I look at my list of realizations, I think, Of course that would be the case. I am not sure why I did not think of these aspects from the onset. Nonetheless, I have been glad to notice there are more constants in education of different age levels than I had initially realized. I started the year excited for a new opportunity to stretch myself as an educators, to learn and to grow. Yet, I was also worried that I might miss my regular teaching position too much.

The initial disconnect that I felt between who I was and who I was becoming as an educator was evident in the lack of blogging throughout the fall. I thought about how for so long my blog had narrowed in on workshop teaching, that I was not sure if my new experiences were relevant to this specific blog. As I have noticed more connections, I am realizing that indeed they are. 

I look forward to reading more professional development books, as well as blogging more regularly about my current experiences.

Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards

When I saw that NCTE had a new series of books focusing on implementation of the Common Core State Standards at different grade levels, I could not wait to read the middle school edition. Tonya Perry with Rebecca Manery wrote Supporting Students in a Time of Core Standards: English Language Arts Grade 6-8. I appreciated that the authors emphasized the language in the standards highlighting the intent for the CCSS to provide guidance in what to teach while educators can still determine how to teach it. In contrast to other resources that appear to be disseminating their ideas as the way to implement the standards, this book provided a range of scenarios and contexts.

In the introduction, series editor Anne Ruggles Gere stated, "Regardless of teacher responses, the CCSS are now part of the educational landscape. But these standards do not replace the principles that guide good teaching. Some things remain constant regardless of new mandates. [...] This book is designed to support you in meeting the challenges posed by the CCSS. It stands on the principle that standards do not mean standardization or a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching," (pp. 2-3). These thoughts encompass well what we cannot forget as CCSS implementation rolls out. We should all play a role in considering whether implementations closely examine individual contexts or whether they simply try to seek the answer in how to implement the standards.

Before highlighting implementation scenarios, the book starts with a chapter titled "Demystifying the Common Core State Standards." Last week I was sharing the book in one of my literacy classes because I read it as part of my final project. A colleague stated that a diagram provided was the best she had seen in order to illustrate the set-up of the ELA standards. The question/answer format of the chapter also appealed to her.

In the section sharing how different schools have started to discuss and integrate the standards into their classrooms, the examples are coupled with questions/exercises to prompt other educators/schools to interpret the CCSS and consider their own contexts.

An excerpt from the final section of the book, Building, illustrates once again the emphasis of the text, "[...] building with the CCSS in mind does not mean checking boxes for individual standards; it means integrating a careful examination of the CCSS with the contexts and practices of our classrooms, always putting students at the center," (p. 68).

I thoroughly enjoyed the voice and tone of this book and would be excited to read the others in the series.

Adolescent Literacy at Risk?

I originally checked Rebecca Bowers Sipe's Adolescent Literacy at Risk? The Impact of Standards out from the library, in an attempt to not spend as much money on books; however, I quickly realized that I would want my own copy. I already have others in the NCTE Principles in Practice Adolescent Literacy series, and similar to those I already had, this book was thought-provoking and an important voice to add to the discussion on the current context of adolescent literacy.

When one of my professors saw the title, he was worried that the book might be too skewed against standards, rather than a balanced view. I explained to him that it actually was not. Far from it, Sipe provided a knowledgeable voice sharing her rich experiences with and historical information about the standards movement. While she discusses a range of standards, one large focus in the book outlined her experiences co-authoring Michigan's English standards and then seeing implementation into classrooms.

While reading the book, I thought about how standards in and of themselves are not necessarily good or bad, but rather the process involved with implementation is vital. This will be key to keep in mind with the Common Core State Standards. As educators we need to advocate for dialogues about how to implement the standards into our contexts with a close eye on our students needs, rather than seeking one-size-fits-all solutions.

Here are some quotes that stood out to me from the text:

"As standards came to represent high expectations, it became increasingly clear that for higher standards to succeed, we could never entertain notions of standardization in our interpretation or delivery of them," (p. 11).

"The movement to more finite descriptions was intended to offer teachers of definition of what should be considered across a program of study, not a prescription for what had to happen in a particular unit of instruction. This is an important distinction, and one we felt strongly about. Standards, not standardization, drove our work," (p. 32).

"To our frustration, the message that was so central to our work--local development of curriculum based in these inclusive standards--has gotten somewhat lost along the way," (p. 33).

"Standards provide a definition of what is possible, but standards are not curriculum documents," (p. 41).

"If standards are to achieve even a portion of their early promise--and I still believe this is possible--educators everywhere must consider carefully the role of standards in curricular planning, and collectively we must avoid being bogged down in an assembly line approach to covering expectations that fails to fully account for organic and fluid instruction that good teaching represents," (p. 43).

These are just a handful of excerpts that caught my attention while reading that are even more powerful when read in context of the whole book. Throughout the text Sipe emphasized the need for dialogue.

We can all ask ourselves:

What am I doing to influence the way in which Common Core State Standards are implemented at my school/in my community?

Thinking About Standards

Standards have been on my mind a lot lately, as I am sure they have been a topic of consideration for many educators. I started my teaching career shortly after NCLB was enacted, so my whole career has been during the context of standards-based reform. When I first saw the CCSS document for English Language Arts, I was not that concerned because of the emphasis of the standards providing what to teach, without dictating how to teach it. I could see how they could still align with the workshop philosophy, as well as appreciating the shift toward an emphasis on higher levels of critical thinking. I could also recognize advantages of collaboration among states.

Yet, I started to hear diverse perspectives on the Common Core and questions of whether or not it was really a step in the right direction. I also heard criticisms of professional organizations such as NCTE for accepting the standards too quickly without putting up a fight against them. One person in particular was a   name that I have known since my undergraduate ESL/bilingual education courses, someone who was regarded as one of the "big names" and who I highly respect, so it gave me even more pause and careful consideration.

However, over time I have realized that I tend to agree with NCTE's rebuttal that they recognize the standards are not going away completely and that as an organization one of their roles is to support teachers with the transition. I appreciate that they are prompting dialogue and considering how teachers can participate in the process of thinking about implementation. I also recognize that they have played a role in voicing concerns, both through the process to provide feedback and through their recent Resolution on Challenging Current Education Policy and Affirming Literacy Educators' Expertise.

Recently, I read two NCTE books related to standards, Adolescent Literacy at Risk?: The Impact of Standards and Supporting Students in a Time of Common Core Standards: English Language Arts Grades 6-8. I will post about both of them separately soon, but one of the main aspects that stood out about them was the dedication to treating teachers as professionals, just as the resolution mentioned above also highlights.

Fall Update

This fall I have been finding my bearings in a new context - a one year sabbatical replacement position teaching undergraduate teacher education courses. I have many of the same students in the three courses that I am teaching because of the cohort model at our university. I really enjoy the close-knit community of learners since for the past three years I have been in an educational context that valued the sense of collaboration and community in a k-8 setting.

I co-presented at my first national conference along with two of my colleagues, sharing research on recruiting and retaining teachers in rural areas with implications for administrators and teacher preparation programs. A nice bonus was that the conference was held on the coast of South Carolina, being able to intermix conference sessions with walking along the beach reflecting (and experiencing the wonder and joy of learning about something new - horseshoe crabs).

I have also been attending classes for my doctoral degree - one on large scale literacy assessments and another on quantitative research, along with working on the preliminary stages of my dissertation. Considering the Common Core and the implications it has for teaching has also been on my mind a lot lately as well.

Needless to say, I have been thinking and reflecting a lot this fall. I have missed blogging, but I am also working through what to blog about. For so long I have been blogging about teaching reading and writing, areas that I am still passionate about, but this fall my work has had a different focus. I am looking forward to winter term when I will be teaching some literacy courses, such as Children's Lit and Emergent Literacy.

As educators, it is interesting to consider how our identities are shaped over time by our contexts and experiences. I hope to blog on more consistently once again in the upcoming months.

Stenhouse E-Books

I have been seeing so many new Stenhouse books that I can't wait to read. I have held off from purchasing for a while because my reading for pleasure has been really limited with my new teaching position and doctoral studies; yet, I couldn't resist any longer. Today I ordered five Stenhouse books - mostly new, but a couple of older books. Whenever time permits, I can't wait to read them. It's hard to decide which to read first!

When ordering, I decided to try out the new E-book option that Stenhouse offers. Once purchasing, it was a quick process to click on the link to download to my computer as a PDF and then transfer them onto my Kindle. The only drawback that I have noticed is that on my Kindle the font is really small, showing a page at a time on the smaller sized Kindle screen. It does have the option to enlarge the text, but it is not like regular Kindle books, instead it zooms in on a part of the page and you have to scroll around to view the rest of the page, rather than just being able to click from page to page. I'm not sure if I will be able to actually read them on my Kindle or if I will end up reading them right on my computer. It will all depend on whether I can handle the small font because I know for sure that I will not be scrolling back and forth! I am thinking that it might work better with an iPad though because of the larger screen.

Either way, I am really excited about the books I ordered. I bought three of the books because they are by authors that I absolutely love: Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This, Cris Tovani's So What Do They Really Know?, and Jennifer Allen's Becoming a Literacy Leader. Later this fall, I will definitely be getting Jeff Anderson's 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know when it is available.

Then I bought a couple of other books that captured my attention - Kassia Omohundro Wedekind's Math Exchanges and Mentoring Beginning Teachers by Jean Boreen, Mary K. Johnson, Donna Niday, and Joe Potts.

So much to look forward to...

What professional books would you like to read?