#CyberPD Week 3 - Chapter 5 - Know Thyself

     Supposedly, Socrates uttered these words, "Know thyself" but the roots of  wanting to understand the self probably goes back much further.  Why would I bring philosophy into a conversation about literacy?  Well, chapter five is about Wild Readers Showing Preferences for reading - genres, authors, series etc.  To be able to have a preference, one must know thyself.  What do I like/dislike?  Why?  How might this help me select books I enjoy in the future?  How do I need to challenge myself as a reader?

     At the beginning of the chapter, Donalyn reflects on her own preferences, therefore I reflected on mine.  Not only do I have clear preferences, but these preferences are dependent on the role I'm playing and the context I'm in.  I listen to non-fiction business and self-help books before bed to wind-down, but I don't read them. I enjoy a good science fiction book as an escapist read when I need to turn off my own thoughts for awhile. On an airplane, I prefer a realistic fiction book because it is easier to pick up and put down during interruptions and still follow the story. For some light or vacation reading, I'm currently collecting food-themed fiction and mystery books. Every few years I will re-read Anne McCaffrey, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott and Sue Bender.  In my professional life, I'm reading about language use, writing, and literacy as a cultural practice.  Resnick (1990) categorizes literacy practices into various purposes: the sacred, the informational, the pleasurable, the persuasive and the personal-familial.  Since we all read/write for different purposes, it would seem reasonable that we would have different preferences in different contexts.  I wonder if my students could create a list like this - not just what titles/authors they prefer, but when and where they prefer to read particular titles/authors/types/genres?

     But, I will admit that I haven't "pushed [myself] to read widely in order to best serve our students" (p. 167) as Donalyn recommends.  There were some young adult titles that I would read summaries and recommendations about, rather than actually read the book.  I greatly depended on the Cooperative Children's Book Center to help me recommend titles of areas I was ignorant about.  Although many children learn the habits of networking to find books they enjoy, we need to be aware of the children who use vague terms like "scary" or "funny" books to describe their preferences.  This is an indication that the child hasn't read widely enough to start defining his/her specific preferences.  Might this relate back to not just personal taste, but reading in a variety of contexts?

     As I was reading, I created what I imagined will be Hints or Guidelines for Teachers about helping students create preferences in reading:

1. As teachers, we need to help students develop a more sophisticated understandings of genres to include the sub-genres.  As Donalyn highlighted, not all sci-fi books have robots in them.  In fact, one of my favorite sci-fi books is a re-telling of Jane Eyre (Jenna Starborn by  Sharon Shinn). Not all mysteries have a murder. Not all romances are happy.
2. As teachers, we need to accommodate students' preferences while expanding their reading repertoires and challenging them to explore new styles.  This is a fine line to continue to encourage the text that students like AND introduce the unfamiliar.
3. As readers, we need to expand our own understanding and acceptance for non-traditional genres.  Styles, genres, and modes of text are changing constantly.  Remember, at one time it was thought that BOOKS would be the downfall of civilization. 
4. As teachers, we need to expose students to more non-fiction in a variety of contexts.  For many students, non-fiction has been assigned reading or report reading and they have lost the joy of reading to learn information.   We need to make reading non-fiction as commonplace as reading fiction.
5. As teachers, we need to create and use assessments/reflections that fit our goals for students and our own habits of organization. Over the years I've learned to work with my organizational style rather than against it which ensures that I actually keep records and can see the patterns of engagement of my students.

     Which, by the way, takes us to the last part of the book - the forms. There are almost 40 pages of the various forms that Donalyn and Susan Kelley have used with their students.  This includes all the forms for students' reader's notebooks, student reflection forms, the Wild Reader Survey that formed the basis of this book, plus a list of students' favorite titles and series.  An amazing resource for anyone who is using a workshop approach to teaching reading.

     Why does all this matter? And I'm not just talking about chapter 5, but why think about providing time to read in class and help students develop habits of reading on the edges, guide students to become confident self-selectors of reading materials, share their reading with others, and have reading plans?   Because as Donalyn states so eloquently "By the end of the year, our students have practiced all of the lifelong reading habits in our classrooms, they have reflected on their personal reading behaviors, and they have developed the tools and skills they need to become independent readers without our support. . . Their reading lives belong to them and they don't need us.  They are wild readers now (pp. 192-193)

    

Resnick, L. B. (1990). Literacy in school and out. Daedalus, 119(2), p. 169-185.

#CyberPD - Reading in the Wild - Chapter 3 - Reading is a Social Activity - Chapter 4 - The Badge of a Wild Reader

      As firmly as I now believe that reading is a social activity, as a young reader I firmly believed in NOT sharing my reading with others. In school, no one “got” why I read what I read, I was frequently teased for always having my nose in a book, and no one really wanted to hear what I thought about what I read. Book reports were delivered to the sounds of crickets (think cartoon silence) and construction paper leaves for a tree or cars for a train lining the classroom walls were written up to prove my progress to a class goal of reading so many books. In high school, when we were finally allowed to “discuss” books, the conversation was very teacher driven and focused on proving we read the book and understood the symbolism. I did not experience a community of readers, who eagerly read, shared and supported each other, until I became a middle school teacher. Not only did I try to foster this type of environment in my classroom (surviving without a classroom library because my school didn't believe in such things) but as I attended my first professional conferences, I connected with other middle school teachers who enthusiastically shared their reading, made significant recommendations for books for my students (and me), and embodied lives of wild readers. In the challenging days of a first year teacher, these wild readers (like Linda Rief who actually wrote me encouraging letters and sent her own students' work) inspired me to “keep calm and read a book” and I continue to advocate for reading time in school, student choice, and, as chapter three details, help my students (both young and adults) to “share books and reading with other readers” (p. 87).

     Donalyn quotes Jeff Wilhelm (who is another of my teacher idols) from a conference when he stated, “What's your bottom line? What do you really want to happen for your students? Now, how does what you do every day serve that bottom line?” (p. 89). I've been pondering this lately and I'm reminded of an activity my teacher-husband did with a group of high school students. They were reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teensby Sean Covey and for Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, my husband asked the students to create and design bumper stickers for their own life motto or mission statement. More recently, Daniel Pink asked the question,“What's your sentence?”  So, what is your literacy teaching mission/motto/sentence?

I'm playing with this one:

Donalyn describes many of the negative factors I experienced as a young reader – the demeaning social stereotypes of readers, the limited access to books at school and a school community that didn't support wild reading and social engagement with reading. Yet, even more importantly, Donalyn provides numerous suggestions on how to “foster school and home reading communities” (p. 91) and delineates the “benefits of reading communities” (p. 96). The main idea here is creating a sense of community – developing relationships and habits of mind both in school and at home that center around reading and writing. As I mentioned before, I had supportive reading parents and I learned to cherish the smell of bookshops and libraries and interact with readers outside of school. I wonder how much more would I have engaged in school and enjoyed it, if I didn't have to hide the reader side of my life? I wonder how many other children still feel this way?

     Besides many suggestions on how a teacher, classroom and school can create and sustain community connections, Donalyn shows how to help a new teacher embrace a wild reading life. I wept in awe reading Malorie's (a student teacher) initiation into the classroom community of readers. As Donlyn describes, “Watching Malorie talk with two of our students about the book later [The Hunger Games], I realized that Malorie had crossed over. She wasn't a classroom observer anymore. She was part of our reading community with powerful reading experiences and opinions to contribute. Our students respected Malorie's teaching role in our class, but they embraced her because she read alongside us” (p. 106). When I work with teachers, I know the importance of providing not just lip-service to these principles, but a functioning and successful model of a reading/writing workshop. For many teachers, it is the first time they have gotten to choose to read titles of their own selection and discuss something other than guided reading questions. The process of experiencing and envisioning a wild reading and writing classroom is essential in creating wild reading and writing teachers. 

 

      I love Banned Book Week because, as Donalyn states “books could be subversive contraband, worth passing back and forth among friends. Books hold secrets that you can share with other[s]” (pp. 108-109). I remember sneaking books from under my mother's bed – they were adult mysteries or horror novels and non-fiction crime stories, yet I felt I was rebelling against the cheesy teen romances that were the rage in my classroom. When Donalyn noticed a secret book her boys were reading, she read it too, but found it held little opportunity to grow as a community. Instead, as she stated, “My role changed from reading advisor to reading policeman” (p. 109). So now, when the secretive book is passed along, she takes note, but doesn't interfere. I wonder, how do other teachers handle banned or controversial books in their classrooms?

      I know conferring with readers is a constant struggle for many teachers new to the workshop approach. They ask the same question Donalyn did, “What's the point?” And, most teachers I've met tried checklists, notebooks or post-it notes to keep track of who they conferred with and who they haven't. Donalyn challenges us to think about why we want to confer with readers. In her classroom, it was to “forge relationships with each one [student]” (p. 131). To ensure this happened, Donalyn reflected on her own personal style of conferring and worked with this style, not against it, to create a process that provided consistency, growth, assessment, and evidence. After explaining her process, she also highlights her colleagues variations. The important part is that “conferring with my students is finally meaningful and manageable” (p. 134). I want to copy the last few pages of chapter three and send them to all the workshop teacher I know! It is such a comfort to realize that even master teachers struggle with this practice. 

Chapter 4 - Wild Readers Have Reading Plans

Here's my badge of a wild reader.  What does your badge look like? 

      Clearly, Donalyn is a wild reader.  I've followed her on Twitter for a while (@donalynbooks) and love her recommendations. But, beyond having stacks of books and lists of books, wild readers need to have a plan for when and how they are going to read their stacks and lists of books.  Goal setting - for time read, amount of pages read, types of books read, or amount of books read - gives wild readers a destination and a challenge to become more widely read wild readers.  

     In the past few years, I've started my own book blog to become accountable to a public audience and reconnect to my readerly life. On the blog, I tried a few book challenges, such as the Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge sponsored by the Book Vixen; Off the Shelf Book Challenge by Bookish Ardour; or The Big Book Challenge by Book by Book.  What challenge might you take up in the next few months?

#CyberPD - Reading in the Wild - Chapter 1-2 - Alleluia!

      As much as I love #CyberPD, I kind of think that by selecting this book, the choir is being preached to. Based on my experience in past years with #CyberPD, I think that most of the teachers and educators joining us will be singing, “Alleluia” as they read Donalyn Miller's Reading in the Wild as it confirms, validates, and supports many of the practices that we know are good for kids. And not in the “raise test scores” kind of good, but good in the way that helps students become life-long readers. As Donalyn states early in the Introduction, this is not a program to be implemented, but a way of thinking about how life-long readers and writers integrate reading and writing into their lives and then applying those principles to the classroom to help students develop the habits of life-long readers.

     With all the current tension surrounding the implementation of Common Core, and in many states, the newly minted Smarter Balanced Assessment System, I found it interesting that Donalyn returned to the 1996 NAEP report for this quote, “Students must no only develop the ability to comprehend what they read, but also develop an orientation to literacy that leads to life-long reading and learning.” I don't know about your own school districts, but around me it seems like we are moving further away from this ideal – to not only create students who can demonstrate the skills of reading, but inspire students to actually want to read and write outside of school and develop positive dispositions towards engaging in literacy for their own purposes. Or, as Donalyn writes, to foster "their capacity to lead literate lives.” (p. xx) Wouldn't that be an amazing part of any school's mission statement?

      Donalyn reminds us, “living a reading life requires some commitment” (p. 2) and highlights that too often, students have to wait until adulthood to create a readerly life because many literacy classrooms focus on skills and strategies, rather than the full experience of becoming a reader. I enjoyed reviewing the Classroom Non-Negotiables: 1) Provide time to read and write 2) Give choice to students 3) Provide multiple opportunities to respond to reading 4) Create a community around literacy and 5) Create structures to support students and teachers to learn more and assess their work together. Although these non-negotiables are very familiar (I was an early adopter of Atwell's workshop approach), it is good to be reminded of the essence of classrooms that foster the habits of life-long readers. These habits are so essential because those who become life-long readers are “readers who incorporate reading into their personal identities to the degree that it weaves into their lives along with everything else that interests them” (p. 3).

      Managing time is one of the biggest factors in determining if one will become a life-long reader. With so many requirements, responsibilities and distractions, it is easy for reading to be pushed aside for other things. Chapter 1 focuses on how we can “practice living like readers” (p. 9) by snatching reading time on the edges (the multiple few minutes of time spent waiting that inevitable happens) and getting into the habit of always having book available for “reading emergencies” (p. 14). Lately I have gotten into the habit of downloading books to my smartphone. I have been amazed at how much more reading I've been doing just because I always have a book with me. Like many of Donalyn's students (and my own), I have been under the false assumption that I need to have long stretches of time to really be reading, but the 3 minutes here and 10 minutes there allows me to savor a book as I have time to mull over sections, rather than racing through the book. However, I do have to admit that I am a horrible binge reader and will, at times, stay up for hours reading. And again, now with having books on my smartphone, I don't have to turn on the lights and bother other people, so I sneak in a lot more midnight reading. 

 

      Self-selecting books is essential to developing life-long reading habits, and Chapter 2 reviews how readers learn to select books through multiple networks, community conversations, and read alouds. I was fortune to grow up in a household that a trip to a used bookstore was common and it was expected that each of us would leave the store with multiple books. My parents never censored my reading, though they were well aware of my choices and available to discuss things with me. Most of the books that I have learned to hate are those that I was assigned to read and dissect. I hated it when teachers told me, “Don't read ahead!” If it really was a good book, I couldn't help myself! 

 

      I have really enjoyed how Donalyn has incorporated the research behind each of her recommendations, provided teaching anecdotes to show life in a real classroom, and given us access to all her handouts and forms.  She has really opened both her classroom and her thinking to us - showing how she thinks through planning a literacy block, takes notes on students' work, and even how to spot students who are fake reading.   Although many of the ideas are not new to me, I'm learning new ways to demonstrate to other teachers how to make the transition to independent reading or reading/writing workshop less daunting. She has even illustrated how to create and maintain a solid classroom library. I wish I had this book when I started teaching!!!!!!!!