Literacy Now

As teachers, we work alongside students, witnessing their thinking and learning process. We see students as writers, readers, listeners, speakers, and viewers.

However, in many “data-driven” schools, the “data” dominating meetings and students’ narratives do not have student or teacher voice but mostly reflect standardized, multiple choice tests.

Data analysis companies are thriving while schools purchase subscriptions for access to online software to analyze state and local standardized test scores. The information from the analysis—spreadsheets cross-referencing students with standards, demographics, teachers, other students—is not bad, especially because it provides teachers with multilevel reports.

In Texas, lead4ward (including staar4ward) is cited in nearly 700 school budgets as part of schools’ improvement plans, professional development plans, and district improvement plans, sometimes allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars to one company.

This phenomenon is not limited to Texas. Schools across the United States are using “data-driven” to communicate sound decision making to stakeholders. However, two major stakeholders are being left out: students and teachers.

Data help us make informed decisions, but we must be aware of what the data assess, what we are valuing, and what the data’s limitations are.

Some leading education websites and books romanticize the idea that “data” help educators “determine essential standards” students will be retaught and retested for mastery. This means standardized tests determine what is taught and standards with low passing rates are taught more. Sometimes “data” also determine what standards and vocabulary are not taught because they are not tested.

Some schools systematically allocate “standards” to grade levels, omitting them from others. Standards are sometimes segregated when schools “determined essential standards” to teach students of low-performing demographics to help “guarantee” higher scores and show growth on the federal Annual Yearly Progress report. In some “data-driven schools,” standards are no longer a promise to every student but conditional to standardized test data.

Standardized tests do not tell us why students do not understand something or how to help them. Yet some schools created local “high-quality interim assessments” to address the why and how. This approach validates more testing but continues to focus on test performance versus students’ actual thinking process.

As educators, we can determine why students are struggling. During guided reading, we have the ability to determine what influenced students’ cues. Did the meaning, syntax, or visuals have an impact on the child’s reading? We can even dig deeper by noting the actual elements of the text the student used for each cue and the patterns in which students used them. A teacher can witness a student make a mistake and then determine the cause, not just determine the standard.

When working in a small group with students or one-on-one, we have the opportunity to acquire qualitative data that reflect where understanding broke down. Sometimes we realize that a student is nothing like the standardized test data, whereas other times we see that the data were a small glimpse of a student’s true mastery of a standards.

Without looking for root causes, we are missing essential teaching opportunities. As a student who was labeled an English learner, I valued every time a teacher recognized that I knew something and recognized that my mistake was oversight or error. Let’s not miss opportunities to validate students.

Additionally, the data-driven phenomenon is often accompanied by interpreting standards solely within testing rigor, limiting the depth of concepts and standards to how they appear on tests. In Texas, some schools teach only first- or third-person point of view and not as perspective in order to “stay true” to the Texas standards.

Even the formatting of material, with student materials looking exactly like the test, robs students of the opportunity to learn 21st-century computer literacy skills. We cannot rob students of learning about formatting and leveraging material for varying audiences out of fear students will “be so shocked” by the test looking different from daily work that they will perform badly. Students need authentic texts in authentic formats.

Let’s add students and teachers back into data-driven schools by recognizing the limitations of standardized test data and empowering teachers to determine root cause of students’ struggle(s) in order to provide sound intervention. Let’s teach students more systematically versus teaching the test more systematically. We can know all students as writers, readers, listeners, speakers, and viewers.

Ilce Perot is currently an international literacy consultant and English learner specialist for LitLife, Inc. Ilce has traveled the United States and internationally supporting teachers of students across a range of settings including bilingual, ESL/ENL/ELL, Spanish education, and dual language programs. Ilce is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in education.

With 24 years of teaching under my belt, I’ve apologized more than my fair share—to colleagues, to administrators, and to parents.

But in those 24 years, I probably have apologized to my students the most.

Teaching can make one humble very quickly. Some teachers may think they have all the answers, but good teachers know they don’t.

As a high school English teacher, I learned that to work as an authentic classroom community, I needed to take responsibility when the lesson didn’t go well and show my students that I was willing to try again, even if they weren’t.

It usually went something like this: I had a great idea for a lesson and created a plan that I thought was foolproof. As I look back to those early days of my career, I realize the lessons that didn’t go well were the ones that were poorly planned and tended to rely more on an activity I had briefly read about or on a three-minute video clip I had seen. But the activity seemed engaging and fun and my students would love it!

Of course, I was sure I would get the same result that the author flaunted or the same result displayed in the video: students hunched over their desks, working with peers with such ferocity that lunchtime couldn’t wedge them out of their chairs, followed by a discussion that would be one for the ages, with students eager to raise their hand to share wisdom beyond their years. Yes, I knew exactly what this activity would look like in my classroom, and I was eager to share it with students.

As an example, during Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, I decided to assign students Act I, scene IV to read at home. We had read the prior acts as a large group. I was confident that with the necessary scaffolding and background information I had given to them about Queen Mab, they could read it, interpret it, and come back the next day with incredibly insightful notes. I anticipated a discussion with perceptive analysis and keen awareness. I was ready to be mesmerized!

They weren’t. Most students came back with what looked to be poorly copied SparkNotes. Some read the scene and gave me a three- to four-sentence “overview” (Internet based, I’m sure), and others didn’t bother to read at all.

Then it hit me: The reason the lesson failed and the reason I owed students an apology was because I didn’t set a purpose for reading. I didn’t explain why the reading was important.

I didn’t blame my students. My desire to send them on their way to see what they could do “on their own” was poorly thought through. The discussion I had hoped for became a brief lecture by me of the four most important “takeaways” from the scene.

And so, I apologized. First, I apologized for not thoroughly explaining Mercutio’s chaotic personality and why the scene exemplified his personality. Second, I apologized for failing to highlight the value of the dream sequence and how that haunted Romeo later. Finally, I apologized for basically throwing them into the deep end without a net.

I had given students the background knowledge they needed for the scene. But I didn’t tell them to offer evidence of Mercutio’s chaotic personality. I didn’t ask them how those examples of evidence demonstrated his personality. I had told them briefly about Queen Mab but didn’t ask students to explain the dream sequence or ask them to predict how Romeo’s dream haunted him later in the play. I didn’t bother telling the students what I wanted them to look for in their reading. I gave them what could be considered arguably the most difficult scene in Act I and threw them in, feet first without a life jacket. No wonder some of them struggled to stay afloat.

That was 24 years ago. Now that I’m an instructional coach/reading specialist at a large, urban high school, I use “why” questions when I work with teachers on gathering resources, lesson planning, and assessment: Why are we using those resources, and what are we hoping students gain from them? Why are we using that standard to represent that skill? What do we want to assess, and why should students know that information?

Yes, I’ve apologized many times to students throughout my 24-year career in the classroom. Although apologizing has never been easy, I always knew it was the right thing to do. Looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any other way and I know my students feel the same way.

Peg Grafwallner is an instructional coach with Milwaukee Public Schools. Learn more about Peg on her website.

At our first department leader meeting this fall, I asked each person to share a one-word goal for the year. There were 14 people in the room, and three listed survival as their word. Their goal was to survive. One other said persevere and still another’s goal was serenity. Almost a third were thinking about their emotional needs and steeling themselves for what would come next. No one in the room was surprised; in fact several others said they had considered using the same word—survive—but weren’t brave enough to admit it to the group. There was a bit of nervous laughter, and we moved on to business. Teaching is a tough job, and getting tougher.

Inspired by these teaching warriors and Shanna Peeples’ article in October’s Literacy Today, I starting asking teachers for their stories. What happened that influenced your day? What made you smile? What made you change direction?

Hearing stories from the trenches helps us realize we’re not alone. Better yet, our students (and colleagues) might provide us with cause to laugh. I consider humor cheap therapy.

Let me provide you with some cheap therapy.

I was working alongside a dedicated, energetic secondary teacher. On this particular day we asked students to practice reading authentic online text and respond to what they had read. Engagement was high, keyboards were clicking purposefully, and we were feeling the rush of professional success and mentally high-fiving each other.

One young lady who had been typically distracted and disengaged broke away from her response writing and motioned for my attention.

“Hey, Reading Lady. Do I capitalize the ‘h’ in Hispanic right here?”

I smiled, proud of her question. She was making such progress! “Yes, of course.”

As I walked away, I heard her mutter to herself. “Duh. Of course I should. Hispanic is a pretty big religion!”

End scene.

A short time ago I was watching a phenomenal teacher perform a close reading lesson. She had the kids near her in a semicircle, each with a notebook and pencil. A few minutes into the lesson a young man popped up and headed to the pencil sharpener. He started sharpening…and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening—with occasional peeks to see if the lead was sharp enough yet.

The teacher motioned for him to have a seat. Reluctantly and dramatically he dragged his feet back to his space.

A moment later he popped up again, even more enthusiastically, and dashed to his chair. He dug through his backpack, tossing everything and leaving items strewn all over the floor, chair, and desk. Triumphantly he held up what he had been seeking: a small pencil sharpener.

He smiled and skipped back to his place in the front of the room…and began sharpening. Sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening and sharpening…. The teacher, valiantly continuing to teach, walked to her desk and pulled out a pencil. She walked to him and gave him a meaningful stare as she handed him her pencil. He looked at it as she walked away, perplexed. Then his face lit up with blissful understanding, and he started sharpening her pencil.

End scene.

You can’t make this stuff up.

To be fair, sometimes my colleagues provide me with cheap therapy as well. For instance, in recent years, I’ve helped to dispel many misconceptions regarding standards and testing. I’ve had conversations with colleagues referencing “formalative” assessment (as opposed to “summalative”). During curriculum writing, somone referred to our “new STRANDards.” One of my favorites is this: “What are we going to do about this CANNON Core?”

We all need to seek out the lighter moments and collect stories from our schools to share. It’s a matter of survival.

Do you have a good story? Share it with us on social media with #ClassroomTales.

Julie Scullen is a former member of the ILA Board of Directors, and has also served as president of the Minnesota Reading Association and Minnesota Secondary Reading Interest Council. She taught most of her career in secondary reading intervention classrooms and now serves as Teaching and Learning Specialist for Secondary Reading in Anoka-Hennepin schools in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. She teaches graduate courses at Hamline University in St. Paul in literacy leadership and coaching, disciplinary literacy, critical literacy, and reading assessment and evaluation.

Recently I took a trip to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, and some friends told me about this Polar Bear experience I just had to have while on the island. They would not tell me much about it, but the warmth with which they described this experience convinced me it was something to try.

The Polar Bear experience has been taking place for more than 60 years at the Inkwell, a beach on Martha’s Vineyard with strong African American ties. It opens the fourth of July and closes Labor Day weekend. According to the Vineyard Gazette, there are three types of Polar Bears who meet at 7:30 a.m.: swimming bears, nonswimming bears (“bear-watchers and talkers”), and the exercise bears.

I met my friends early in the morning to be an exercise Polar Bear. We walked to the Inkwell, and there were people, mostly African American women, holding hands, making their way into the water. As I approached the water, one of my friends said, “Let me hold your hand,” and we proceeded into the water to join the others.

Instantly, I felt part of the family. From holding of hands, songs, chants, and movement, to the engaging leaders who seemed to truly “see” all of us, I felt like I was part of this family.

I thought, “This is a perfect example of culturally responsive teaching that can used in classrooms all across the United States to reach all students, but especially those who have been marginalized by society and those who come from communal backgrounds such as African American and Hispanic students.”

Here are the Polar Bear lessons we can take into our classrooms:

Create community in the classroom

Oftentimes we tell students, especially high school students, to work independently. However, many of our minority students come from communal backgrounds, and we thrive and grow when we can help each other. With the Polar Bear experience, the more experienced were helping the new bears, instantly creating a sense of community. At one point, the new Polar Bears were asked to move to the middle of the circle. Being new, I was reluctant, and an older Polar Bear took my hand and went with me to the middle of the circle. Even I, a grown woman, needed this gesture to ease my anxiety.

Establish routines and rituals

People thrive off of routine, and they work in any classrooms along with norms that help students to feel they belong. Whenever I start singing, “Started from the bottom, now we’re here,” my students instantly join in and know that we would be referring to Bloom’s taxonomy. The Polar Bears sang their same songs, at the same time, and there was a sense of comfort in my next visit, because I knew exactly what to expect. Oh, the joy I felt in being able to help new Polar Bears.

Celebrate individuality

It is important that students are viewed not only as individuals but also as part of the group. It is important to celebrate differences in the classroom: culture, family dynamics, race, religion, gender, and so forth. Near the end of the Polar Bear session, there is a chant. People are called upon to call out a dance or move for the group to do. This is the part of the routine where individual personalities are highlighted and celebrated. Because a sense of community and trust was established, this was the time when people took risks and allowed their “little light shine.”

I had been on vacation and looking forward to lots of rest and relaxation, but because of the sense of community I felt at the Polar Bear experience, I got up most mornings to attend those 7:30 sessions. When we create community in our classrooms, establishment routines, and celebrate individuality, our students will continue to want to come back home—to our classrooms.

Jacqueline Stallworth is a high school English teacher in Northern Virginia and the writer of a literary blog, The Big Sea. She is also the founder of Stallworth Educational Consulting Team, a company committed to having school curriculum reflect the diverse world in which we live.

It is vital that future teachers understand research-based strategies and methods that will best serve their students, especially today, when there is a shift from how we teach a text to what text we are teaching. Literacy research has moved from a content area reading approach to a disciplinary reading approach in which strategies that are unique to specific disciplines are used to help students comprehend discipline-based texts. In fostering this shift, we must not move away from encouraging students to make connections in disciplinary literacy.

Content vs. disciplinary

Content area literacy focuses on techniques that readers use to comprehend content area texts; disciplinary literacy shifts the focus to the way that readers need to critically think, understand, or engage in the reading of a specific text to construct and convey meaning in an academic subject. Research has documented reading strategies that good readers use, and these can look similar across disciplines; however, they tend to neglect specific information necessary for discipline-specific comprehension. Consequently, literacy instruction must shift from general reading strategies to more specific ones that can be uniquely used, in order to make sense of texts in specific academic disciplines. This means that the student must read like a historian, mathematician, scientist, and book critic. 

Read like a historian

This type of reading engages students in historical inquiry through analysis and interpretation, involving critical literacy and inquiry-based learning. The strategies used in this discipline involve corroboration, analysis of multiple perspectives, questioning historical claims through evidence, determining importance, contextualizing sources, and summarizing and sequencing events.

Summaries would include the important social, political, economic causes or consequences of a historic event. Reading like a historian requires students to think critically and provide evidence from their reading. Students must be encouraged to make connections in this discipline in order to recognize how the ideas in the text connect to their experiences, beliefs, happenings in the world, and their knowledge of other texts.   

Read like a mathematician

This type of reading focuses on abstract concepts regarding numbers and space. Mathematical texts are written in compact form, containing many concepts wrapped in a sentence or paragraph. Students must learn to analyze, reason, formulate, interpret, and solve a variety of problems.

Strategies in this discipline include visualizing and conceptually understanding mathematical language, drawing conclusions and determining importance, analyzing and communicating ideas effectively, interpreting and formulating procedures, investigating the reasoning and arguments of differing opinions, transcribing detailed mathematical arguments, and evaluating data. Students must be encouraged to make connections in this discipline by relating mathematical content to real-world situations. Project-based learning and meaningful learning experiences engage students and make mathematical learning relevant to students’ lives.

Read like a scientist
Strategies in this discipline include making predictions, asking and answering questions, defining the problem, contrasting fact from opinion, reevaluating, reviewing, and reflecting. Students need to make connections in this discipline in order to engage in real-world problems and science-related issues that affect their world and other human beings. These connections empower and engage students to discuss and debate relevant issues such as global warming, access to clean water, and renewable resources.    

Read like a book critic

The study of literature involves critical literacy and analysis of texts that contain artistic uses of language and literary techniques used by authors to capture the human experience. In this discipline, elements of fiction and devices such as tone, foreshadowing, mood, and irony are explored, requiring the student to read critically in order to gain the most meaning.

The strategies used in this discipline include predicting, clarifying, drawing inferences, visualizing, analyzing text from differing viewpoints, questioning, examining story structure, leading discussions that include author’s purpose, and using summaries to identify the central issue, raise questions, identify literary approaches, and include characters’ emotional responses. Students must be encouraged to make connections in order to explore characters, scenarios, and viewpoints in an effort to explore questions involving purpose and meaning in their own lives.

Teaching literacy with a disciplinary literacy approach requires students to be immersed in the language and thinking processes of that discipline, learn the content in each discipline, and understand how and why reading and writing are used in each discipline. Connections are required in order to engage students in relevant and purposeful activities, which lead to engagement and motivation in everyday life. Engagement and motivation should remain our focuses in today’s classrooms in order to foster deeper comprehension and better learning in all disciplines.

Vickie Johnston is the program coordinator for the MEd Curriculum & Instruction Program in the College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University where she teaches literacy and teacher education courses. Karen S. DiBella is an assistant professor and director of the Reading Center at the University of Tennessee at Martin and teaches graduate and undergraduate reading methods and foundations courses, content area literacy, children's literature, and adolescent literature courses. After 14 years as an elementary and middle school language arts teacher, Cynthia Dawn Martelli is an assistant professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Culture at Florida Gulf Coast University.