MRA Primer Journal 2022

FEATURED

Elaine Bukowiecki

Valerie Harlow Shinas

Nancy Witherell

MRA PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Dear Members, What an exciting time for MRA! The world is opening up again, and we are ready. So many new things are happening; it feels like a grand reopening, and maybe it is! First, this year the Executive Board has some new members: Joann Thompson is the new MRA treasurer, Shantel Schonour accepted the secretary’s position, Sarah Fennelly has become our new webmaster, and Adam Brieske-Ulenski our vice president-elect. New people and faces bring new ideas, and we are excited to hear them all.

You may have noticed that we a have a new logo! It’s modern, colorful, exciting, and what we hope exemplifies the future of MRA.

Our local councils and MACURE (Massachusetts Association of College and University Educators), our special interest council, are gearing up for their own grand reopening as they begin to once again plan faceto-face activities and programs. Be sure to join your local council and keep updated on literacy events and programs, which by the way, are also posted on MRA’s website.

Our traditional committees are beginning to plan events and projects, along with selecting award winners. We now have an Exemplary Reading Award for both the elementary and high school level. Some new committees are being formed, such as The Science of Reading Committee. If interested, all committees are happy to accept new members.

Which brings me to the next new happening---our brand-new website! It is easy to navigate, appealing to the eye, and informative. Interested in having your school be the winner of the Exemplary Reading Award? Find out how to apply on our website; your

You may have noticed that we a have a new logo! It’s modern, colorful, exciting, and what we hope exemplifies the future of MRA.

school could be the next to be honored. While on the website, check out the councils and committees; you just might be interested in one!

Also new is a co-editor of the Primer, Elaine Bukowiecki, who has worked alongside of coeditor and Immediate Past President Valerie Shinas to produce this issue. We are sad to have Patricia Crain de Galarce leave as co-editor, but when she assumes her position of PresidentElect for MRA, she will be busy planning the 2024 conference. Patricia, we do thank you for all the effort you have put into MRA publications!

And finally, it is thrilling to write that Pattie Kelley is running at full speed to plan a FACE-TOFACE conference! Yes, we will all be going back to the Boston-Quincy Marriott on April 27 & 28, 2023. Put that on your calendar now and catch exciting information on the conference from Pattie elsewhere in this issue!

There are so many “old” things that MRA could not survive without, and I’d like to mention two. First, is our long-standing mission “to promote literacy for all learners through professional development, research, publications, and advocacy.” We do this in so many ways. Second, is our membership, from the members of the Executive Board, including our Event Coordinator, Nancy Meagher, who put tons of energy into keeping MRA running smoothly to the full board members, the council presidents, and committee chairs, who make certain projects and programs fostering literacy happen throughout the Commonwealth. Finally, to our at-large membership, those of you who keep us on our toes by letting us know what we should be or shouldn’t be doing, and we thank you for that.

It’s a new and exciting time for all of us, as we take off our masks, take a deep breath, and dive into the wonderful future.

Nancy Witherell, MRA President

WELCOME FROM THE MRA PRIMER 2022 CO-EDITORS

Dear Friends of MRA,

We (Elaine and Valerie) are thrilled to share with you the MRA Primer 2022. As co-editors of this fall’s MRA Primer, we strive to share with you research, ideas, and inspiration for your teaching and professional growth.

The title of this volume, Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learning, was inspired by the 2023 MRA Annual Conference theme, our first in-person conference experience since 2019! You can read more about it in the letter from our President, Nancy Witherell and in the conference update from Pattie Kelley, our 2023 Conference Chair.

The articles in this volume were selected especially for you, our devoted readers, to serve as an invitation to think about how you create literacy learning experiences for all readers. Within the covers, you will find a selection of thought-provoking scholarly articles; book reviews from MRA Board members; and the return of our children’s literature column, written by MRA Past President and MACURE President, Marlene Correia. You will notice that the format of this volume is a bit different from past editions with the inclusion of a new section we call Making School Connections. There, you will find timely and practical advice from educators in public and private schools. We know you will be inspired by their contributions.

Please enjoy this volume of the MRA Primer 2022. Wishing you warm wishes for a great new year and happy reading.

Yours in literacy, Elaine Bukowiecki & Val Shinas Co-Editors, MRA Primer

MESSAGE FROM THE 2023 MRA CONFERENCE CHAIR

Dear Friends in Literacy,

As you are aware, plans are underway for MRA’s 2023 in-person conference, Be the Beacon That Lights the Way to be held Thursday, April 27th and Friday, April 28th at the Marriott Boston Quincy. This is MRA’s 52nd Annual Conference, and I am so excited to share the names of the dynamic keynote and luncheon speakers who are sure to engage and motivate attendees during this two-day literacy event.

I believe we are all “Beacons’’ for our students and fellow educators as we navigate our way amid the confusion and uncertainty post pandemic. This conference is a way to gather educators together to reconnect and rejuvenate! There are more than 40 sessions covering a variety of literacy-related topics, including some of our favorite authors and illustrators. I hope you will join us for this professional development opportunity.

Online registration is open. Register right away to take advantage of Early Bird Discounts and to reserve your seat in the sessions you most want to attend. www.massreading.org

See you at the Marriott Boston Quincy!

Dr. Pattie Kelley MRA 2023 Conference Chair

2023 MRA CONFERENCE

MRA 52nd Annual Conference | April 27-28, 2023 Boston Marriott Quincy | Quincy, MA Pattie Kelley, Conference Chair

Pattie

BRINGING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY INTO STEM CLASSROOMS:

Findings from a Collaborative Inquiry-Focused Professional Learning Initiative

CHRISTINA L. DOBBS, JACY IPPOLITO, and MEGIN CHARNER-LAIRD

Advanced literacy skills across various disciplines are key to student success in secondary school, college, and the workplace (CCSS, 2010; Lee & Spratley, 2010). Recently, attention is being paid to the differences in how experts in various disciplines interact around literacy within their fields (Shanahan, 2012; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Increasingly, secondary students may need to develop disciplinary literacy skills in high school, to experience an initial induction into various disciplinary communities. Furthermore, secondary teachers must support students as they use both intermediate and disciplinary literacy skills as a foundation for becoming more expert.

This increased focus on adolescent literacy has meant an increased focus on disciplinary literacy practices in secondary schools, with a renewed interest in the roles that teachers play in helping to prepare students (Greenleaf et al., 2010; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Lee & Spratley, 2010; Moje, 2008; Moje et al., 2010; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). For decades, literacy professional learning initiatives have focused primarily on helping teachers implement general literacy strategies in their content-area classes. However, these initiatives have had minimal success in raising student achievement, and they were not widely accepted by teachers (Conley, 2008; Jacobs, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). The recent push for instructional changes that are more disciplinary in nature theorizes that these practices are more relevant to classroom teachers in various disciplines, as they apprentice students into the various ways that disciplinary experts communicate. The idea is that a focus on the discipline-specific aspects of communication and resulting strategies will be more effective than general ones at improving students’ literacy skills within disciplines (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2014).

Research is only beginning to understand how these disciplinary literacy instructional practices can be enacted, and we have much more to learn about which combinations of professional learning structures best support teachers in doing this work (Charner-Laird et al., 2016; Dobbs et al., 2016a, 2016b; Ippolito et al., 2019).

Background

As recent standards have increasingly emphasized the importance of disciplinary literacy (CCSS, 2010; Houseal et al., 2016; Lee & Spratley, 2010; National Research Council, 2012), mathematics and science teachers have greater reason to focus on disciplinary habits of mind and literacy instructional strategies than ever before. Because science and math classrooms are rich with language and literacy means of interacting with content, and yet have sometimes struggled to become intentional sites of literacy, they are fascinating sites in which to study how disciplinary literacy professional learning and resulting new practices unfold. Before describing a case in which professional learning influenced a group of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) teachers’ practices related to disciplinary literacy, we first briefly discuss the literature on teaching literacy in mathematics and science settings and review the tools of effective teacher professional learning.

Literacy in Science and Math Classrooms

Science is a broad discourse community with its own particular conventions that operate differently across an array of varied specializations, and this large discourse community includes a variety of expositional and argumentative tasks (Halliday & Martin, 1993; Hand et al., 2003). The learning of science involves being able to use reading, writing, and reasoning to learn scientific content (Fang, 2014; Fang & Coatoam, 2013; Ippolito et al., 2017a; Lee & Buxton, 2013; Moje et al., 2004; Moje & Speyer, 2008; Shanahan et al., 2011). However, text in science classrooms is often underused (Fang, 2013/2014), despite the centrality of literacy skills to science learning.

Osborne (2002) describes a lack of focus on the central role of language in science classrooms. The process of deciding whether data support a particular interpretation of a phenomena is a key activity in scientific thinking and work, and researchers note that scientific theory does not exist without some sort of text (Norris & Phillips, 2003). Frameworks for teaching about science and literacy have been proposed, with many focusing on argument- and inquiry-driven pedagogies (Cavagnetto, 2010; Draper & Adair, 2010; Rainey et al., 2018; Spires et al., 2016; Washburn & Cavagnetto, 2013).

Because science and math classrooms are rich with language and literacy means of interacting with content, and yet have sometimes struggled to become intentional sites of literacy, they are fascinating sites in which to study how disciplinary literacy professional learning and resulting new practices unfold.

Bringing Disciplinary Literacy into STEM Classrooms

Historically, less has been written about literacy in mathematics, although increasing attention has recently been paid to language-rich and disciplinary literacy instruction in math classes (Croce & McCormick, 2020; Enderson & Colwell, 2021; Hillman, 2014; Ippolito et al., 2017b; Siebert & Hendrickson, 2010). Thompson and Rubinstein (2014) describe the process of developing mathematical literacy as one in which students complete tasks to “build networks of meanings around critical concepts” (p. 106). There is also a rich vein of research about how discussion can foster math learning (Chapin et al., 2009; Herbel-Eisenmann et al., 2013), though the literacy skills necessary for success in math extend beyond discussion. Students in math are asked to grapple with vocabulary, justify their decision-making, and read descriptions and problems in textbooks (Thompson & Rubinstein, 2014).

Teacher Beliefs and the Tools of Effective Professional Learning

The ways that individuals teach within and across disciplines often reflect the beliefs that teachers hold about content (Lederman, 1992; Southerland et al., 2003). For teachers to incorporate new practices into instruction, they sometimes have to change beliefs and overcome resistance (Draper, 2008; O’Brien & Stewart, 1990). The work of adopting a disciplinary literacy stance often requires that teachers shift their identities in relation to literacy learning, a process that Spitler (2011/2012) terms teacher literacy identity transformation, and one that can be supported by communities focused on practice (Phillips et al., 2009).

Instruction shifts to incorporate new practices when teachers believe in the importance of the shift and see it as connected to their domains (Alsup, 2006; Johnson & Watson, 2011; Massey & Riley, 2013). Yet the complex relationship between teacher practice and belief has been debated extensively, with some researchers arguing convincingly that teachers must tiptoe into small instructional changes first, then analyze results with students, in order for deeper changes in their belief systems to take place (Guskey, 1985, 2000). Ultimately, we have found in our own professional learning work that for teachers to change practice, they require time to explore together how literacy fits into their own work and to try out new practices to then shift beliefs and practices long-term. These collaborative professional learning spaces require a combination of intentional effective professional learning supports, several of which we briefly discuss below.

Professional Learning Communities. Many schools have implemented teacher teams, often called professional learning communities (PLCs), to provide teachers with ongoing professional learning (Parise & Spillane, 2010; Servage, 2008; Talbert, 2010). PLCs create opportunities for teachers to learn together and to draw on each other’s expertise or develop new ideas. Some commonalities of effective teams emerge across the literature: trust and respect, openness to improvement, reflective dialogue, collective focus on student learning, shared norms and values, and regular time to meet (Charner-Laird, et al., 2016; Dana & Yendol-

Hoppey, 2008; Kruse et al., 1994; Louis & Kruse, 1995).

Collaborative Inquiry . Over the past 20 years, many scholars have placed collaborative inquiry at the center of teacher learning, asserting that inquiry-based approaches are likely to lead to changes in practice more than traditional approaches (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Crockett, 2004; Gallimore et al., 2009, Ermeling et al., 2009; Garet et al., 2001). While a few studies document changes in student or teacher learning based on learning through inquiry (e.g., Ermeling, 2010; Saunders et al., 2009), many scholars make theoretical assertions about the possibilities inherent for teachers in inquiry-based learning (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009).

The Current Study

In this study, we consider how a group of six math and six science teachers from one high school collaborated to incorporate disciplinary literacy practices into their instruction. We followed the two STEM-focused teams of teachers from an initial, summer weeklong professional learning institute through their subsequent year of designing and implementing inquiry cycles around various domains of literacy. Our prior work analyzing teams in the humanities informs our understanding of how teams develop disciplinary literacy instructional practices (Charner-Laird et al., 2014; Dobbs et al., 2016a, 2017; Ippolito et al., 2014, 2019).

Research Questions

1. What domains of disciplinary literacy instruction did math and science participants choose as focal points of their inquiry cycles?

2. How did teacher participants describe their instruction around disciplinary literacy practices?

Study Context and Methodology

While data were being collected, over 140 teachers at Boddington High School (pseudonym) served roughly 1,800 students. At the time of this study, 28% of students were English language learners, and 15% received free or reduced-price lunch. Racially, the students were 9% African American, 14% Asian, 11% Hispanic, 5% multi-ethnic, and 61% White. While Boddington consistently achieved (and continues to achieve) at high levels on measures such as state tests, it is a school that is becoming more diverse. The Content-area Reading Initiative (CRI) was developed as teachers were thinking carefully about whether all students were achieving at high levels, including increasing numbers of students learning English.

The project was co-designed by Boddington personnel and us as university consultants. The planners used several structural elements including teams—who would use protocols,

video, and student work to guide reflection—as well as teacher leaders to guide the work, and inquiry cycles to select literacy sub-domains to explore. The initiative included professional learning workshops led by university consultants during the summers, professional learning days across the year, and weekly team meetings led by teacher leaders.

CRI focused on six content-area teams across the four-year project: English, social studies, and Spanish in the first two-year cycle, and math, science, and an interdisciplinary special education team in the second cycle. Our analyses in this study are focused on the math and science teams across their first year of inquiry work, situated within the larger study of the four-year professional learning initiative.

Data Sources

This specific study analyzes data from the ten teachers and two teacher leaders who comprised the math and science teams. All the teachers voluntarily applied to participate in the project. This case study describes how the two teams from math and science formed and worked to study and adapt disciplinary literacy practices for their own classrooms.

Qualitative data collected include interviews, focus groups, narrative reflections, and participant observation notes from team meetings, teacher leader planning sessions, professional development days, and meetings with administrators. Analyses include open and axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) of interview and focus group data and observation notes with member checks to ensure accuracy. We focused on themes related to how participants negotiated the relationship between literacy and content and their successes and tensions in attempting disciplinary literacy practices.

Addressing Validity

Given that the paper’s first two authors played dual roles as consultants and researchers throughout the project, we established several validity checks. First, the third author collected all interview and written narrative data from participants, to ensure that they felt free to discuss the project openly. Furthermore, data were analyzed by each author individually, and then the team came together to corroborate findings. Throughout this case study, we have reduced bias as much as possible, by attending to our own positionality in collecting data and drawing conclusions. However, we recognize that we were involved with the project on the ground in a variety of ways and therefore, must name this position throughout our work and our analysis of that work.

Findings

RQ1: The selection and study of literacy instructional domains in math and science

Across the first year of the project, the math and science teams studied new practices around a variety of literacy domains, including: vocabulary, multiple representations in math, discussion, writing in science, and reading. It was not clear early in the project, though, which areas would be chosen for further team inquiry. Data revealed that during the first summer, teachers expressed a lack of certainty that they would find relevant literacy domains on which to focus. The math team leader described early learning as particularly impactful:

[In the institute] we talked about what is literacy, and how it is literally everything. It’s communication, it’s discussion, it’s looking at graphs. It’s like so many things, and how pervasive it is, how it really is in our curriculum, and how we can focus on it . . . It’s not English we’re talking about, it’s literacy. I think that in the math and sciences, we confused those two. It’s not English—we’re not reading a novel about math. It’s these common basic communication skills.

She described the work later in an administrative meeting, saying that despite initial doubts, at the end of the first summer, the team had 40 instructional areas that they hoped to explore.

Interestingly, in contrast to their humanities-focused colleagues who focused early on reading, the science and math teams spent early inquiry time focused on productive literacy areas, rather than receptive ones. The math team elected to begin with inquiry cycles around discussion and academic vocabulary, and the science team collected assessment data that pointed them toward writing and expressive vocabulary. This focus on language use by students became central throughout the project. A science teacher described the vocabulary cycle as follows:

I think we all, as science teachers, want them to be able to be scientifically literate, which has a lot of meanings. At least to the extent that they can use vocabulary in a meaningful way to describe scientific concepts. [It] has to be part of our mission as science teachers.

The math team determined that they would focus on discussion, on urging students to frequently use the language of math to explain their thinking. Following the literature on effective discussions, the team began with activities to set initial norms around discussing math effectively and respectfully in class. One teacher described her key learnings as a process of learning to pose questions, saying the cycle taught her “how much thought really has to go into just asking questions, just the right way, and how hard that is to do on the fly.”

Another math teacher described the elements of the process they developed for class discussions as particularly important, saying “I think the norms we set during our discussion cycle are really what I’m using the most.” Several team members collected video footage of class discussions and found that students sometimes revealed imprecise or developing

understandings of terms. Consequently, the team decided to study how students acquire mathematical vocabulary, as vocabulary was proving a challenge to effective discussions.

Meanwhile the science team initially had also decided to focus on vocabulary. Team members described deciding to undertake a shared math/science inquiry cycle about instructional practices to foster use of vocabulary. Teachers identified and piloted science- and math- specific vocabulary strategies. For example, teachers described focusing on common words such as bond in a chemistry class or force in physics, or they explicitly brainstormed with students the ways in which words such as express and expression are related.

Across our data, teachers discussed the vocabulary cycle as particularly meaningful to their instruction. A science teacher described this result of the cycle:

The science group has looked closely at how we use, or don’t use vocabulary, how we introduce terms, and how to connect terms . . . It’s made me really explicitly emphasize, when I’m introducing new terms, what the term means . . . . I think I see the kids are having conversations now using the vocabulary, which allows me to think maybe they’re just a little bit more literate in science.

A second science teacher described a similar experience:

I’m just much more aware of vocabulary—[it] has been my biggest and first focus this year. Just breaking down words and realizing the new things that students didn’t know. I use the word medium to talk about material, like sound needs a medium to travel through. In the past, I would have never stopped at that word. [When] I asked my students, ‘What does it mean?’ It’s amazing, many of them thought [of] medium like the math term.

This growing awareness resulted in instructional changes that varied in scope. Several team members elected to teach vocabulary using vocabulary journals, which were large changes to routines, and the teams spent time together reflecting on the costs and benefits in terms of the broader curriculum. One team member described the intensive journaling, and she mused aloud, “I wonder if there is a way to streamline this a bit so that we could do the same thing, but with less time?” As teachers refined their practices, they found ways to streamline.

But not all teachers made large-scale changes teaching vocabulary. One math teacher described the small changes she made as follows:

My lesson plans are pretty much the same, but I’m not just glossing over the vocabulary. We were doing trinomial, monomial, and binomial today, those definitions of terms. In the past, I would have just done a very quick check . . . . I would have mentioned

those names and then moved on. Today, we talked about what tri- means, what bimeans, what mono- means The emphasis was there, as opposed to just multiplying binomials.

A science teacher shared a video of a lesson and described how he tried over the course of a typical discussion to be more explicit in breaking apart academic vocabulary. For example, he tried over the course of one thermodynamics lesson to highlight the relationship between the terms entropy and enthalpy, as well as to call attention to the word system. These subtle shifts, which were studied with his team, were evident in his honors course, and, ultimately, he cited his students’ growing awareness of science-specific language, as resulting in more precise word use—an important habit of mind in science.

The math team also named their cycle on multiple representations as important in developing clear conceptual understandings for students, and several members described learning to see the symbolic and graphic representations differently after their cycle. A math team member described this process:

I think we really talked a lot this year about multiple representations of being able to visualize a diagram and see the same thing in a word problem, just in text. Approaching literacy from thinking of it just as symbols, not just strictly words and instructions and things like that, . . . multiple representations has been a really eye-opening thing—this is literacy, having a kid be able to draw a Venn diagram or sketch out a word problem is a literacy skill.

Several other team members also described this changing definition of how literacy skills impact student performance.

At the close of the first year of collaboration, the teams had robust agendas for the second year of the project, drawing from the foundation they had built.

RQ2: Reframing literacy and collaboration

The work of the first year was also about collaborating and understanding each other’s content more deeply. One honors physics teacher went into the project expecting differences in other science content areas, but he found this not to be the case. He said:

CRI allows us to realize that we share the same frustrations. We share the same challenges, whether it’s teaching chemistry, physics, biology. Whether it’s teaching honors, standard, AP—that there are a lot of challenges that by sharing them with others, we can share and use and suggest strategies that might work for me, for my colleagues, and vice versa.

Over the first year of the project, many teacher participants began to view the role of literacy as a key lever in encouraging high achievement in STEM. The science team leader described her learning:

It really hit me—a lot of kids have weaknesses in academic literacy and their ability to read or write in an academic way. That kind of speaking speaking, writing, reading, is different than our normal, everyday conversation and leaves a lot of kids at a significant disadvantage. There’s a huge equity piece to that for me.

A physics teacher expressed a similar perspective:

This has been eye-opening to understand about literacy and writing. As a science teacher, it’s not something that we focus on to the degree that say English or maybe social studies would, but learning about how to approach literacy and writing in the science curriculum has been great so far in doing CRI, and it’s made me, as a teacher, much more mindful in each class about the vocabulary that I use.

Across these data, a shift became clear, as teachers transitioned from thinking of literacy as a set of strategies for “English or maybe social studies” teachers or an extra during instructional blocks. As a result of their explorations, all the interviewed teachers came to see their work differently. Whether their rationale was one of equal access to the language of science or a focus on improvement in students’ output, the STEM teachers were increasingly convinced that explicit focus on disciplinary literacy increased student engagement and achievement.

While many teachers described that they were aware of literacy instructional practices before the project, they said that they sometimes avoided those practices. One math teacher who worked primarily with students with disabilities talked about it this way:

I tended to avoid literacy stuff in my classroom because my kids struggle. I would organize my problems so that they could often anticipate what I was asking and maybe not have to do as much writing . . . . It seemed like a reasonable accommodation. And now, over the course of my work, I’m realizing that that’s not really helpful to my kids.

A biology teacher shared a similar sentiment:

I tended to avoid literacy stuff in my classroom because my kids struggle. I would organize my problems so that they could often anticipate what I was asking and maybe not have to do as much writing . . . . It seemed like a reasonable accommodation. And now, over the course of my work, I’m realizing that that’s not really helpful to my kids.

We’ve done a lot of passive stuff like, ‘Oh, I want you to write in complete sentences here on this assignment and answer these questions.’ You’re like, ‘Well, they didn’t do it—why not?’ Well, we haven’t spent any time going over what that really means within a science construct. That was a big thing for me.

Disciplinary literacy explorations across the year solidified the notion that the literacies inherent in STEM discourses were important to teach, particularly, if they were expecting students to communicate in sophisticated ways. Importantly, these shifts in thinking seem to have arisen directly from the structured team collaboration.

Teacher participants began to view collaboration as critical to their investigations of disciplinary literacy. The two STEM teams chose different methods for collaborating, including lesson study, collaboratively piloting discipline-specific assessments, observing each other’s teaching, and reading research and jigsawing findings. As some collaborative learning structures were new to the teams, at first, they spent time figuring out how to collaborate smoothly. But, as the teachers experienced successes, they became more confident in their collaborative practices.

Across data sources, teachers repeatedly discussed support from their collaboration structures, and they appreciated working with others to refine new practices. One science team member described her school as, “structured so that we’re all isolated.” She went on to describe the shared challenges across team members:

We share the same challenges, whether it’s teaching chemistry, physics, and or biology, whether it’s teaching honors, standard, AP—there are a lot of challenges. By sharing them with others, we can share, and use, suggest strategies that might work for me, for my colleagues, and vice versa.

A math teacher described the importance of having structured time to work together. She described it like this:

I think having the opportunity to set aside time to just kind of stop and reflect, to talk to colleagues, in a way that’s not just passing each other in the conference room and mentioning that this thing really works. Being able to really bounce ideas off people and come up with tangible things that we can try in our classrooms and then compare—that was very impactful for me.

As team members began to collaborate more efficiently within teams, they also began collaborating across the STEM teams. By December of year one, it became possible for participants to compare across teams how math and science teachers were teaching

vocabulary. Hearing the perspective of others was useful as teachers learned to approximate the thinking of those unfamiliar with the tasks they designed. The science team leader described it this way:

What does it mean for me to try to teach reading, writing, or academic discussion? I need to remember what it’s like to be a beginner, right? What I assume [my students] know because it’s just become second nature to me, it’s like the air that I breathe.

These collaborations were important as teachers observed vocabulary instruction in another discipline. As they continued to debrief their observations, this became a driver for changing practices, pushing the teams to begin collecting informal data about the efficacy of various new strategies. Through their attention on learning to collaborate, the project STEM teachers shared and revised a wide range of instructional practices.

Discussion and Implications

Initiatives that support STEM teachers in implementing disciplinary literacy might benefit from supporting teachers in choosing their own instructional focal points, as the inquiry portion of the project was particularly impactful for participants. Participants benefited from ongoing, structured time to use for collaborations, as these structures enabled learning, while increasing capacity to tackle challenging dilemmas of practice. And finally, collaborating with one another helped teachers to find ways to make new practices fit into an already demanding curriculum. Below we explore these ideas in more detail.

Freedom to Choose Inquiry Topics

The first year of work with these teams revealed patterns in how teachers made sense of how literacy fits into STEM instruction. Because the initial weeklong institute introduced a number of literacy domains, without pushing toward any particular domain, we were interested in where teams would begin. This choice allowed teams to zoom in on aspects of the work that they felt would be most aligned to their own content goals. By choosing productive domains, the teams were able to make clear connections to why these literacy skills were important in the mastery of new content. It built a strong foundation for the teams to then learn together for the remainder of the project and illuminated what was most important and impactful to them as they first delved into the idea of disciplinary literacy.

Acknowledging the Pressure STEM Teachers Face about Curricular Coverage

Teachers tried a number of instructional practices as they inquired, and they worked to balance the tensions of full curricula and increased focus on literacy. As teachers of contentrich curricula, including advanced placement curricula with associated tests and pressures,

many STEM teachers rightly felt concern for fitting new literacy practices into a curriculum already crowded with content learning. This was especially true when the teachers initially viewed literacy as an add-on instead of seeing it through an integrated disciplinary literacy lens. Negotiating these tensions collaboratively was one key focus of the teams. Together they were able to iteratively pilot new practices, including sometimes time-consuming ones, and then reflect on the degree to which they could sustain new practices or to streamline.

Participants were able to find ways to hone literacy instruction in their classrooms in ways that honored and deepened their content knowledge presentation to students. As teachers learned to collaborate more, they were increasingly able to find ways to effectively implement new practices that became routines. Ultimately, this iterative and collaborative work allowed the teachers to find ways that made sense to them to spend time on explicit disciplinary literacy instruction.

Conclusion

There remains much to be learned about when, why, and how STEM content area teachers determine that literacy instructional practices can support their teaching. This study begins to document some of the ways that high school math and science teachers implemented disciplinary literacy practices suited to their disciplines. These detailed insights into how the teachers made sense of their own learning and enactment of disciplinary literacy gives us new information about how and why STEM teachers might determine that disciplinary literacy practices are relevant and important to their content area teaching. Furthermore, this study suggests several professional learning structures that might support the development of those practices and inquiry structures. If we are to genuinely support the next generation of STEM professionals through strong secondary instruction, then we need to continue learning with STEM teachers who are engaging in disciplinary literacy professional learning.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Christina L. Dobbs is an assistant professor and director of the English Education for Equity and Justice program at Boston University. Her research interests include language diversity and the language of schools and disciplinary communities, the argumentative writing of students, teachers’ beliefs about language, and professional learning for secondary teachers. Additionally, she writes about being a woman of color in the academy. She is a former high school English language arts teacher, as well as a literacy coach, reading specialist, creative writer, and native Texan.

Jacy Ippolito is a professor of literacy and leadership in the McKeown School of Education at Salem State University (Salem, MA), where he currently co-directs the graduate programs in Educational Leadership and is the co-founder and co-leader of the Center for Educational Leadership at the University (CEL@SSU). Jacy has worked as a reading specialist and literacy coach, and his research, teaching, and consulting focus on the intersection of coaching, leadership, adolescent literacy, and school reform. For more about Jacy’s books and articles, or to connect with him, visit www.visualcv.com/jacyippolito or www.twitter.com/Jippolito .

Megin Charner-Laird is a professor of elementary education and educational leadership in the McKeown School of Education at Salem State University (Salem, MA). She currently codirects the graduate programs in Educational Leadership and is the co-founder and co-leader of the Center for Educational Leadership at the University (CEL@SSU). Megin worked primarily as a fifth-grade teacher, and she carries those experiences into her teaching, which focuses on teachers’ professional learning, teacher leadership, formal school leadership, and school change. To connect with Megin, please find her at www.twitter.com/drcharnerlaird

CREATING CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS

G. HARPER

“That’s it. That’s the end.” I told the class. They sat in silence and then started to clap, giving a round of applause for Charlie, the main character in our read aloud. One quiet voice piped up, asking a question only a six-year-old can so simply ask. “No more Charlie?” he said. “No more Charlie,” I had to quietly respond back. We looked at each other, collectively feeling the same sadness that the book had ended.

My first graders and I had just finished reading Roald Dahl’s (1964) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Most years, I have a sense of accomplishment in reading such an extensive chapter book in first grade. However, in my reflections of the read-aloud this year, I found that I looked upon the book with new eyes. I had previously viewed the story as a fun, fantasy world of chocolate and candy. Now, I saw opportunities to expose my students to experiences outside of their own worlds. Within the text, there were multiple openings to expose students to social inequalities, such as comparing the conditions of poverty Charlie lived in against the grandeur of Mr. Wonka’s factory. These disparities exist in our real world, but I had not provided my students an opportunity to discuss them. My reflections revealed missed opportunities for critical conversations.

What are Critical Classroom Conversations?

Critical conversations, also called critical dialogue, are those discussions in which teachers ask students to think deeply about their personal experiences. Critical conversations also involve reflecting upon how personal experiences influence the interpretation of actions and the interpretation of your own education (Marchel, 2007). Often, critical dialogue concentrates on addressing preconceived ideas about power or privilege (Marchel, 2007) and are filled with personal knowledge and experience (Bartlett, 2005).

Paulo Freire and Maxine Greene, both critical theorists, believed it was imperative that conversations about lived experiences, power, and privilege occurred in classrooms (Giroux, 2010; Greene, 2010). This was so students could learn how to find evidence of social injustice around them. Matters for discussion could include child abuse, inequality in schools, and hostility and cruelty (Greene, 2009). By exposing students to multiple perspectives on these issues, educators take students beyond their own experiences so they can imagine a better

TAYLOR CARTER AND REBECCA

future for one another (Giroux, 2010). Through critical dialogue, educators might inspire their students to consider new ideas such as “candor, integrity, decency, and compassion” (Greene, 1986, p. 178). Discussing such important social concerns could jumpstart social change, thus making the world a better place to live (Blanchard, 2010; Giroux, 2010; Greene, 2013; Spector et al., 2017).

Barriers to Critical Classroom Conversations

Cultivating critical conversations can be difficult in public schools. This could be because public schools may be powered by political systems (Blanchard, 2010; Spector et al., 2017). These systems desire measurable outcomes, such as standardized test scores (Greene, 1982). Strict curriculum, which usually drives student achievement, standards, and preparation for careers, can create a forced and unnatural learning environment (Greene, 2013). Likewise, teachers’ individual goals may only be concerned with providing instruction in content knowledge (Teo, 2021). Plus, since many schools utilize scripted curriculum programs that teachers are expected to follow with fidelity, deviation from the required script can have negative repercussions for the teacher when it comes to instructional monitoring and evaluation. As a result, classrooms have increasingly become places where students only receive information by memorizing content, and critical dialogue has become sparse (Greene, 2013). Yet, classrooms can offer students safe spaces to discuss sensitive topics in a nurturing environment.

Practical Strategies for Incorporating Classroom Discussions

Many scholars provide glimpses of how to develop productive dialogue, such as structural changes to programs and policies (Green, 2021); building communities based upon differences (Guyette, 2018); and shifting the focus from yourself to the perspectives of others (Blanchard, 2010). While these ideas are certainly valid, they seem to be out of the control of classroom teachers. Instead, I offer tips on three areas that could help produce critical classroom conversations, even in the primary setting. These include:

• Discussion strategies for effectively hosting critical conversations

• incorporation of picture books as mentor texts

• Increased opportunities for storytelling

Discussion Strategies and Tips

When observing their students during classroom conversations, teachers may find that some students have a difficult time building upon what others are saying. Often, students

Critical conversations, also called critical dialogue, are those discussions in which teachers ask students to think deeply about their personal experiences.

simply repeat ideas that have already been stated or provide an idea unconnected to the conversation, resulting in disjointed or short conversations (Pilonieta & Hathaway, 2022). To help alleviate these concerns, teachers could consider using specific strategies to develop deeper critical discussions. Strategic instructional methods can help foster discussion and conversations in the classroom.

Think-Pair-Share

Think-Pair-Share is a common student engagement strategy that can help develop classroom conversations. The technique is a progression of thought in which students first think about a question or discussion prompt, then discuss and refine their ideas with a partner, and lastly, share their thoughts with the entire class. The think session of the strategy provides students time to develop their thoughts and think more critically about difficult topics before discussion begins (Sharma & Saarsar, 2018). Teachers find this strategy to be effective as it builds speaking and listening skills (Sharma & Saarsar, 2018), is quick (Kaddoura, 2013), and increases self-confidence in quieter students who are reluctant to share with a large group (Raba, 2017). Because students are given reflection and processing time, along with a specific purpose for thinking and sharing, students may find that participating and responding to classroom discussions becomes easier.

Fishbowl Technique

The fishbowl technique is a strategy designed to encourage wide participation in classroom conversations (Wood & Taylor, 2007). During this method, the teacher arranges students into an inner and outer circle that face one another. The students in the smaller inner circle are given a discussion prompt which will be the focus during the conversation. Students from the outer circle are expected to observe and listen to the conversation, but may join in the conversation by tagging a student in the inner circle and trading seats (Defrioka, 2017; Taylor, 2007). Benefits of the fishbowl technique include a focus on student-centered conversations (Wood & Taylor, 2007); an emphasis on developing listening and critical thinking skills (Defrioka, 2017); and an increased awareness of multiple perspectives of the prompt or question posed (Effendi, 2017). Plus, it allows for the teacher to strategically place students in the inner or outer circle based on their comfort and ability levels. For example, I often placed my most outgoing students in the outer circle so they would be forced to actively listen instead of dominating the classroom discussion. This allowed more introverted and reserved students the opportunities to share without being eclipsed by their classmates.

Strategic instructional methods can help foster discussion and conversations in the classroom.

Time Limits.

It is important for educators to understand that critical conversations may not have a feeling of being finished, regardless of the strategy implemented. For this reason, teachers may want to set a time limit for the discussion. At the end of the designated time, teachers could close the conversation by summarizing what has been said, and plan for future conversations to continue the ongoing discussion (Kang & O’Neill, 2018). Teachers might also have a designated student record any lingering thoughts or questions that could be taken up at a later time. With these discussion strategies in place, teachers may find they become more effective at developing productive student dialogue.

Incorporating Picture Books

The use of picture books is heavily referenced as a way to begin deep conversations with younger students about a variety of topics (Fitriana & Windiarti, 2018; Hajisoteriou, 2021; Lysaker et al., 2016). Utilizing a diverse array of titles can provide students with a view of different cultures, races, or socioeconomic status that is different from their own (Wissman, 2019). The understandings that students develop from reading from a wide selection of texts can enhance classroom dialogue (Giroux, 2010; Greene, 1995).

Specific reading strategies can develop deeper understandings of the text and prepare students for critical conversations. Teachers could guide students towards interpreting the aesthetic elements of the book, such as the use of colors, lines, and location on the page so they can learn how to think more deeply about its content (Panaou, 2021). Students could also act out parts of the text to better understand different points of view (Wissman, 2019). Other strategies for using picture books as a conversational springboard include looking slowly at the pictures to further understand the text (Pantaleo, 2020) and allowing students time to deduce what is happening in the text based upon “facial expression, gestures, settings, events, actions, and motives” (Serafini, 2014, p. 25). Arizpe (2021) writes that it is necessary for educators to understand that simply using a picture book to raise awareness of diverse groups may not be enough to initiate social change. Instead, encouraging students to question the message of the author, how characters are portrayed, and ways in which examples from the text can be compared to issues in the world can help students begin to critically question texts to which they read and respond.

Storytelling

In addition to general exposure of new experiences, students must be allowed the opportunity to tell their own story as well. One final strategy teachers could implement to help develop critical classroom conversations is the use of collaborative storytelling. Storytelling offers several benefits including:

• Allows students to explain their own views of the world to their peers (Kalpazidou et al., 2020)

• Gives students the opportunity to teach others about their culture in positive ways (Kalpazidou et al., 2020)

• Allows students to hear perspectives of more diverse experiences than what may be found in a scripted curriculum (Brown et al., 2017)

• Promotes the inclusion of students of all cultures, races, and ethnicities (Bartlett, 2005)

By telling and hearing the stories of their classmates, students increase their ability to see how others live in the world, imagine more equitable communities, and value their own experiences (Hajisoteriou et al., 2021). Discussing the differences found in their own lives may serve as a catalyst for creating social change (Greene, 1982, 1995, 2013).

Storytelling is a natural way of communication as individuals live storied lives. Primary classes offer multiple storytelling opportunities that can easily be integrated into everyday classroom instruction. Naturally integrated prompts like, “Tell me about your day,” or “Let’s talk about what you did in music,” can provide students with a natural segue into the storytelling of our daily lives. This can help students as they craft their own stories with fictional characters and settings both orally and in writing.

Conclusion

While hosting critical classroom conversations may seem intimidating for teachers due to their sensitive nature, they offer numerous benefits for students of all ages. With a few classroom discussion suggestions, along with the integration of picture books, and carving out space and place for storytelling, teachers can begin to integrate critical conversations in their classrooms with success and ease.

References

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Effendi, A. (2018). The effectiveness of fishbowl technique towards students’ self efficacy in speaking. Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 5(2), 46-51.

Fitriana, F., & Windiarti, R. (2018). The effect of the use of wordless picture books in improving emotional intelligence of children age 5-6 Years in Paud Terpadu Lab Belia Semarang.

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Green, P. M. (2021). Making explicit connections between experiential learning and justice: New approaches to teaching and learning through an imagination for justice. Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education, 4(2), 1-8.

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Hajisoteriou, C., Panaou, P., & Angelides, P. (2021). Empowering children to speak up and act on social justice issues: The use of folktales and collaborative storytelling as tools of social imagination. British Educational Research Journal, 1-19.

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Kalpazidou, G., Ladopoulos, D. A., & Papakonstantinou, T. (2020). Tackling negative representation: The use of storytelling as a critical pedagogical tool for positive representation of Roma. Critical Romani Studies, 3(2), 58-70.

Kang, H. K., & O’Neill, P. (2018). Teaching note—Constructing critical conversations: A model for facilitating classroom dialogue for critical learning. Journal of Social Work Education, 54(1), 187-193.

The MRA Primer 2022 | www.massreading.org

Lysaker, J., Shaw, K., & Alicea, Z. R. A. (2016). Emergent reading comprehension: Social imagination and kindergarteners’ readings of a wordless picture book. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 39(3), 245-255.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Taylor Carter is a first-grade teacher. She is working towards earning her EdD in Educational Innovation at Augusta University. Her research interests include teacher agency and autonomy.

Rebecca G. Harper is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy in the College of Education and Human Development at Augusta University, where she teaches courses in literacy, qualitative research, and curriculum and serves as the EdD program director. Her research focuses on writing and critical literacy, and the ways in which authentic literacy can foster engagement, agency, and empathy in students. She is the Director of the Augusta University Writing Project, and the author of three content literacy books.

A

COURSE OF SELF-DISCOVERY, JOY, AND MENTORSHIP: Inventorying Texts in a Middle-Grade English Curriculum

LAURA HUDOCK AND BETSY LAZO

National news coverage about the seismic wave of recent book challenges and bans in public schools and libraries has quickened in recent years (Natanson, 2022). Though shocking infographics quantify the magnitude and scope of curricular materials being removed from libraries and classrooms (“Access”, 2022; Friedman & Johnson, 2022), a viral TikTok video sharing the lived experience of one elementary educator in Tennessee has helped many to envisage the adverse effects of legislation that abrogates students’ right to read and erodes of teacher autonomy.

In a three-minute recording, third-grade teacher Sydney Rawls (2022) details the process of cataloging every title in her curated classroom library, a required task to permit her students to access these books. She explains how her school librarian will compare Rawls’ list of titles to those that have been deemed to be “appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials” and “suitable for, and consistent with, the educational mission of the school” by the school board under Tennessee’s newly enacted “Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022” (TN Code § 46-6-744 (2022). If a title is not on the pre-approved list, according to Rawls (2022), it must undergo further review. As Rawls questions the identity of these reviewers external to her school, that is, their professional expertise as educators, she makes no mention of being able to share her expert rationale for a book’s inclusion in her classroom library, and how it connects to learning objectives. Yet, she is expected to purge every book that has been preemptively designated as inappropriate and/ or unsuitable for her elementary-aged students. Eventually, her revised list of “approved” book titles will be posted online to allow for students’ parents or guardians to “chime in” with their added challenges. Unsurprisingly, Rawls’ classroom library collects dust. She laments: “The kids want to read books. They’re asking me, can I go get a book and read? And they’re so excited. And I have to say, ‘No, you can’t!’” (Rawls, 2022).

Until this tedious review process concludes, she indicates that her third-grade readers are prohibited from self-selecting books from her classroom library. Rawls’ frustration is apparent.

Though Rawls may have intended to merely emphasize in this TikTok the practical burdens of this legislation in deterring her students from self-selected, independent reading

while adding to her professional responsibilities, she also implicates broader concerns. First, lawmakers’ political agenda denies the professional expertise of educators like Sydney Rawls and their firsthand knowledge of individual readers–their social identities, cultural backgrounds, learning needs, interests, etc. Second, numerous position statements such as The Students Right to Read (2018) by the 25,000-member strong National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) intended to advocate for students’ choice of reading materials are ignored. And third, the prevailing metaphorical insights of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors that advocate for the inclusion of multicultural books in classrooms are disregarded (Bishop, 1990a; 1990b). By emphasizing two subjective criteria, appropriateness and suitability, this approval process perpetuates dominant social structures and invites challenges that are entrenched in intolerance – an unwillingness to recognize and embrace the cultural and linguistic diversity of today’s P-12 students and of the nation at-large. Rawls (2022) students’ access to stories and histories told by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors and/or that feature affirming portrayals of oftmarginalized populations will likely become restricted.

In September 2022, elementary education teacher candidates seeking initial licensure who are enrolled in Laura’s literacy methods course examined this TikTok video with a critical eye towards positioning, context, and their affective responses. They contemplated the sine qua non of their emerging pedagogical content knowledge, public perceptions about teachers’ professionalism, exercise of teacher autonomy in selecting texts, and ways to advocate for their future students’ intellectual freedoms. Above all, they wondered about the inverse of Rawls’ experience–what happens when a teacher interrogates an existing English language arts and literacy curriculum to create critical spaces for students to read diverse and inclusive children’s literature?

Designing the Inventory Process

The recent experience of this article’s co-author, Betsy, a seventh-grade English teacher, school-based literacy leader, and post-master’s certificate graduate student pursuing her specialist licensure in reading, addresses the preservice teacher’s pondering. In a 1-on-1 online directed study of children’s literature, Laura engaged Betsy in a critical inventory of the diverse titles that anchor her school’s seventh-grade English curriculum. Figure 1 describes the assignment as stated in the course syllabus and that emerged from our synchronous negotiations.

FIGURE 1

Description of Course Assignment

CRITICAL INVENTORY OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

STEP 1. Generate an organized list of all texts assigned to students to read for the grade level(s) that you currently teach. This list should be comprehensive enough to cover the duration of the school year or include at least 30 titles. Then, create a chart noting each text’s title, author, publication date, genre, format, featured content, and any additional information that you deem important. Use assigned readings (Crisp et al, 2016; Henderson et al, 2020; Koss & Paciga, 2022) to inform your consideration of diversity markers evidenced in each text.

STEP 2. Analyze the data collected on your chart. What do you notice? Look for patterns, potential gaps, or problems within each text and across the entire text set. For example, think about the authenticity and accuracy of intersectional identities of real people or constructed characters? Reflect on possible gaps or areas for improvement that you identify. How might these be addressed? What additional information do you need to know/do to address them? Type up your findings and initial thoughts.

STEP 3. Revisit your chart and initial findings. Reflect on any new insights gleaned from new course content and discussions with regards to diversifying the texts that your students encounter and the ways that they have been expected to respond to them. Consider these guiding questions: (1) How do my new insights confirm and/or refine my initial findings?; and (2) In what ways do these insights affect my plans for curricular and instructional changes?

STEP 4. Based on your reading of Leland’s et al. (2012) Teaching Children’s Literature: It’s Critical!, design six new lessons that invite your students to critically engage in reading in ways that are new to your instructional practice. Your lessons should feature a combination of texts–those that already exist in your curriculum, and those you have proposed for curricular inclusion/adoption either in your classroom or across a grade-level curriculum.

Akin to the role of a literacy coach, Laura designed the course assignment with consideration of an adult learner’s needs, motivations, prior knowledge, and experiences while keeping course’s learning objectives and current children’s literature research in mind (Lassonde & Tucker, 2013). Though well-versed in Massachusetts’ 2017 English Language Arts & Literacy Framework (herein Framework), Laura had been unfamiliar with Betsy’s curriculum–its pacing, sequence, and text materials. So, a dialogic approach situated in a social constructivist paradigm positioned Betsy as the curriculum expert while Laura provided guidance (Bakhtin, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978).

Multiple research studies employing critical content analysis informed this course assignment. Short (2017) explains the flexibility of this process, “the researcher uses a specific critical lens as the frame from which to develop the research questions, select texts, analyze

the data, and reflect on findings” (p. 5). Prior to the assignment, Betsy read two research articles exemplifying critical content analysis. Crisp et al. (2016) used this methodological tool to code children’s books on the shelves of preschool classroom libraries for depictions of six categories of cultural identities: (1) U.S. parallel cultures; (2) socioeconomic status and class; (3) dis/abilities, developmental differences, and chronic illnesses; (4) sexual identity; (5) religion; and (6) gender. Henderson’s et al. (2020) inventory of three primary elementary classroom libraries examined protagonists’ identity markers and language use, depictions of family structures, and socially significant topics to the students engaged in these books–homelessness, incarceration, and immigrant/refugee status.

Just as Betsy embarked on her inventory, The Reading Teacher published an online article detailing the process of closely examining the inclusivity of texts selected for learning spaces, namely P-12 classroom libraries (Koss & Paciga, 2022). Koss and Paciga’s “diversity audit” has a multi-step procedure similar to Laura’s planned assignment. Emphasizing quality texts over quantity, their first step is an interrogation of the unconscious biases and ways curated curricular materials become prioritized and organized based on content, nostalgia, etc. Using Bishop’s (1992) classification system, Koss and Paciga (2022) prioritize culturally specific books.

To Bishop, culturally specific children’s books “illuminate the experience of growing up a member of a particular, non-white cultural group” (1992b, p. 44). Inclusion of the following textual details signifies a high degree of culturally specify: “language styles and patterns, religious beliefs and practices, musical preferences, family configurations and relationships, social mores, and numerous other behaviors, attitudes and values.” (Bishop, 1992b, p. 44)

Bishop defines culturally neutral children’s books as containing “few, if any, specific details” (p. 45), and culturally generic ones ascribe universal experiences across parallel cultural groups, e.g., everybody goes to school, in which racial differences mostly appear in illustrations (Möller, 2016). Books from parallel cultures are usually penned by “outsiders” and are about a specific cultural group, but the literature does not belong to that group (Cai & Bishop, 1994). Coding for parallel cultural groups within the United States, Crisp et al. (2016) included “African Americans, American Indians, Asian/Pacific Americans, Latino/a Americans, Middle Eastern American, and mixed-race Americans” (p. 33). The ability of literacy educators to identify textual and visual depictions that affirm and celebrate sociocultural and linguistic differences as well as expand readers’ worldviews is a strength of our profession, especially when mindful of tokenistic representations. To identify the varied social identities and cultural groups represented in each title to be inventoried, Koss and Paciga (2022) recommend a second step: “Consider categories such as ability (physical, cognitive, social emotional), age, body acceptance, ethnicity/race, family structure, gender, geographic region, mental health, other marginalized populations, own voices, religions, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.” (p. 4)

Laura approached this assignment with the belief that when literacy educators make critical reading a habit, the outcome is a heightened awareness of these multi-layered and culturally specific markers of diversity in children’s literature.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s complicates “single stories” on account of the incompleteness that occurs with overly simplistic, reductionist, and sometimes false perceptions (2009). Similarly, Koss and Paciga (2022) forewarn that “counting a singular identity group reduces a character or story to a single story, rather than honoring complex intersections of identity” (p. 4). Laura anticipated Betsy’s inventory process to involve a close looking of printed text and visual images for authentic and complete representations of character(s), their voices, perspectives, and agentic actions, the setting(s), theme(s), and the real or imagined narrative event(s) vis-à-vis the replication of stereotypes and privileges. The third step of Koss and Paciga’s (2022) “diversity audit” involves a critical reflection on the findings, including consideration of the cultural groups among a school’s surrounding communities and of society at-large. Their fourth and final step is the development of an action plan to address observable gaps in curricular materials.

Applying Critical and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Critical literacy underlies this inventory process. Numerous literacy researchers have studied critical pedagogies in various contexts (Shannon & Labbo, 2002; Shor, 1999). Synthesizing 30-years of theoretical and practice-oriented definitions of critical literacy, Lewison et al. (2002) identified “four dimensions: (1) disrupting the commonplace, (2) interrogating multiple viewpoints, (3) focusing on sociopolitical issues, and (4) taking action and promoting social justice” (p. 382). To contravene the passive transmission of reproduced knowledge in curricular texts is to do more than resist the normative, dominant ways of viewing and structuring the world (Lewison et al., 2002; Luke, 2013). To Freire and Macedo (1987) “reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world” (p. 25). Texts are socially constructed, never ideologically neutral (McCallum & Stephens, 2011), thus, they are charged with the potential to become mirrors and windows to readers. An awareness of how a text or curricular text set positions readers emerges from an interrogation of the underlying assumptions about its design, production, and meaning-making processes (Leland et al., 2018; Vasquez et al., 2019). These embedded perspectives affect the meaning-making process. Critical literacy galvanizes readers who are capable of repositioning themselves and becoming agents of change (p. 12). Likewise, Laura positions reading as a social act; any curricular revisions need to anticipate critical conversations that students might engage in as they, in turn, interrogate multiple perspectives and examine sociopolitical issues of power within, through, and beyond a text (Beach et al., 2009; Harste et al., 2000; Lewison et al., 2002).

Critical literacy is linked to culturally relevant pedagogy. A legacy of Ladson-Billings’

work on culturally relevant pedagogy is an asset- or strengths-based approach that frames students as “subjects in the instructional process, not mere objects” (2014, p. 76; 1994; 1995). Culturally relevant pedagogy emphasizes the experiences and values of students’ home-community culture and “teaches to and through the strengths of ethnically diverse students” (Gay, 2000, p. 29). Above all, culturally relevant pedagogy aims to meet the academic and social needs of diverse learners. LadsonBillings (1994) explains the development of sociopolitical consciousness in realizing this practice. “Culturally relevant teaching is about questioning (and preparing students to question) the structural inequality, the racism, and the injustice that exists in society” (p. 140). A re-phrasing of this practice does more than amplify the descriptiveness of relevance to students; it underscores the teacher-student relationship as the transformative agent. Paris (2012) proposes that a culturally sustaining pedagogy more precisely reflects teachers’ support of students “in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence” (p. 95). This approach values and extends the cultural and linguistic resources of consistently marginalized students and their families and communities as the driving force of the curriculum. Paris (2012) asserts, “culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 25). A plurality of students’ social identities, discourses, and interests are appreciated and centered in the curriculum. If necessary, culturally sustaining teachers may even subvert the formal curriculum to incorporate noncanonical texts of which students become situated as the knowledgeable experts (Woodard et al., 2017). Ultimately, culturally sustaining pedagogy is an enactment of hope, a reimagining of what teaching and learning might be, but not yet are.

Engaging in Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry has been employed to deepen understanding of Betsy’s experience of inventorying her curriculum. An inquiry stance affords practitioners the space to envision curricular possibilities within an existing political and personal landscape (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Situating Betsy as the primary participant, this approach relies on her sharing a series of “lived stories” focused on her prior curriculum planning experiences, process of inventorying the curriculum, and her design and enactment of culturally sustaining curricular changes. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) explain narrative inquiry as a methodology: “a way of understanding experience. It is a collaboration between researchers and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus. . . . Simply stated . . . narrative inquiry is stories lived and told.” (p. 20)

An inquiry stance affords practitioners the space to envision curricular possibilities within an existing political and personal landscape (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009).

Betsy’s “lived stories” emerged from a space established by trust. Laura shifted her interactions with Betsy from that of course instructor to “co-learner through non-evaluative conversation” (Hollingsworth et al., 2009, p. 64). Though Laura was an integral participant in the inventory process during weekly Zoom-based conversations and occasional typed feedback that posed open-ended questions, she did not involve herself autobiographically in the narrative writing process. She suggested edits for clarity, a reorganization of paragraphs, and added transitions for ease of readability (Montero & Washington, 2021). Betsy had ownership of the translation of relational knowledge into narrative form. Hollingsworth et al. (2009) describe the concept of knowing as a relationship “involv[ing] both the instantiation (or generation of thought) and the reflection on what is currently known in social and political settings” (p. 67). With minimal revisions, Betsy’s subsequent narrative preserves her candid incorporation of experiential understandings gleaned from her inquiry stance into everyday language.

The power of this inquiry resides in Betsy’s self-narrating – her reflective insights about learning possibilities when middle-school students engage in critical readings of purposefully selected, diverse children’s literature. Her writings retell and relive this transformative process, her commitment to critical literacy and culturally sustaining pedagogy, and her embodiment of continuous questioning to evolve her practice. These “lived stories” relay three elements common to narrative inquiry spaces–(1) temporality, (2) sociality, and (3) place (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Directing attention to temporality throughout the narrative aims to contextualize her past, present, and future lived experiences. Beginning with sociality, Betsy shares her personal conditions, her salient social identities, and hopes for this narrative inquiry. Next, she recounts her curricular planning histories to shed light on how her past experiences with curriculum design and implementation influence her motivations to engage in this reflective work. Circling back to sociality, she then explores the social conditions of Laura’s mentoring and her current school curriculum that’ve factored into her plans to teach children’s literature. Her unique classroom is central to the concept of place. Lastly, she describes the inventory process and subsequent teaching and learning that unfold.

Betsy’s Narrative

I am a thirty-something, first-generation Salvadoran American who grew up in New York and Florida. I first received my B.A. in English and Textual Studies and then my M.S. in grades 7-12 English Education from Syracuse University. Presently, I am a middle-school literacy specialist in a suburb within the greater Boston metropolitan area. I am nearing completion of graduate-level coursework to obtain my professional reading specialist licensure. I write this narrative to share my inventory experience that had begun as a course assignment.

Revisiting Past Curricular Planning Experiences

I launched my teaching career in 2007 at a racially diverse public exam school

for grades 7-12 in the Boston metropolitan area. Enrollment was based on students’ performance on the Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE) and their school choice application. From year to year, my class sizes ranged from 25 to 31 eighth graders. Although investments had been made to maintain facilities, our school was notably under-resourced. I had outdated curricular materials in poor condition. Still, I felt privileged to have my own four walls, my own collection of middle- grade books, and complete autonomy over the curriculum. Though I powered through my first year with optimism and gratitude, I had been ill-prepared for the loneliness that came with developing an 8th-grade English curriculum while simultaneously teaching it. On my first professional development day, I was handed a grade-level English curriculum binder. It consisted of lists of books, of idioms, of literary terms, and of grade-level standards. I kept looking at the binder trying to find “the curriculum,” but it did not exist. It had not been unpacked. The only caveat was that I had to coordinate the instructional sequences with other grade-level teachers so we could take turns reading from our limited sets of books. That year, I taught a smattering of everything I loved from graduate school–fairytale explorations, i-search papers, the composition process, Socratic seminars, and texts by David Sedaris.

My reliance on a commercial reading program’s resources had been my attempt to reign in the curricular open-endedness. It was analogous to having a moderately stocked kitchen with a copy of the Joy of Cooking (Rombauer, 1931). I had a place to experiment and a guide to keep me grounded. With each passing year, I tried something new when I got bored, or when the stagnant curriculum needed a jolt of excitement. Once I had focused on journalism, and we published a middle-school yearbook with editorials ranging from fashion pieces to academic experiences. Once I had students blog about their everyday lives, and we shared our stories with another school in “pen pal” fashion. Once I wrote a Donors Choose grant to stock my room with art supplies so responses to literature incorporated visual art.

During this phase of my career, I had been surrounded by teacher confidantes who would support me, listen to me, and share their thoughts about my most pressing instructional dilemmas. Yet, I desperately needed guidance and support with regards to designing and implementing curriculum. At bi-monthly English Department meetings, we listed book titles and authors besides statewide standards. Even so, we lacked any protocol or evaluative process to systematically review and refine the effectiveness of our curriculum. At the end of each school year, I would reflect and make revisions on my own. The curriculum-in-use became haphazard, unstable, and constantly in flux.

As the years had passed by, we sporadically revisited the curriculum. We aligned the existing texts to the new English Language Arts and Literacy Framework (Framework; MA DESE, 2017) . We swapped books with other grades. Or we just culled out books that no one wanted to teach anymore. Frequent pleas to allocate money to purchase new titles became the norm at departmental meetings. I absolutely knew that my curriculum had flaws but remained

diligent to make fixes when the occasion arose. I would make spontaneous or in the moment curricular modifications with mental notes for more formal changes the following year. This had been enough to eke by as I awaited a better version of the curriculum. But those adjustments never added up to a comprehensive review. Each year was more of the same. I patched up gaps with a few band aids here and there. Only now do I admit that I had been reacting to a poorly designed curriculum by adjusting my behavior accordingly, rather than proactively engaging in an effective protocol to improve the design of the curriculum and then testing its effectiveness. I had wondered when a close look at the curriculum would happen, “When are they going to update this?” I never fully understood that “they” was actually me. And if I wanted to be an agent of change, I could not do this alone. I needed the support of a knowledgeable mentor.

Nearly a decade later, I started to feel the world changing around me and within me. With the new Framework, I became more pragmatic and less adventurous with my lesson planning. There were noticeable gaps in the taught curriculum. For example, although my students dabbled in creative writing, we never truly explored the role of the narrator’s perspective in storytelling, or how to create multiple perspectives within the same story. By the 2018-2019 school year, I had drastically revised my curriculum to better align to the Framework. I developed units that focused on the MCAS 2.0 writing tasks: informational writing, argumentative writing, and narrative writing. At the heart of each unit was a mentor text set. Students closely examined authors’ craft and purpose while composing their own writings. I selected mentor texts based on their similarity to the readings found in the previous year’s MCAS 2.0. Diverse titles were not necessarily on my radar. Rather, I incorporated only those authors names in Appendix B of Massachusetts’ Framework (e.g., Lois Lowry, John Steinbeck, Madeline L’Engle, Bruce Coville, Gary Paulsen, Gary Soto, Linda Sue Park, S.E. Hinton, Louis Sacher, Suzanne Collins, and Laurie Halse Anderson). Copies of their books were readily available, and I had familiarity with them. In due course, my students’ test scores improved dramatically, and I felt that I had done my professional best to improve student achievement. Although I managed to recalibrate my taught curriculum, my creativity, the heart and soul of my curriculum, had disappeared. When the pandemic happened, the curriculum unraveled as we shifted to online learning. Eventually, I decided that in order to grow my instructional practice, I would need to change my environment. In August 2021, I started my current position at a new district and school.

Finding a Thought-Partner

“Sometimes, when two souls find each other in the darkness, the darkness goes away.” -Dan Gemeinhart, The Midnight Children (2022)

For the summer of 2022, I planned to enroll in two graduate-level courses, workshops in children’s literature and writing. Unbeknownst to me, both courses would connect me to a long-awaited curricular thought-partner, Laura. This pairing happened at a time when I was

feeling most reluctant to evaluate my year-long curriculum, hone my pedagogical content knowledge, and reflect on my current literacy practice –the month of July Laura had tasked me with completing an inventory of the children’s literature that I had just taught in the 20212022 school year. This sounded completely logical; however, my seasonal teacher behavior had always reserved July for a complete mental escape from my reality of teaching. My motto had been “in July we rest, in August we plan.” Undoubtedly, my curriculum needed a push, and I was presented with an opportunity to refine my art of teaching through a 1-on-1 mentorship with a professor whom I respected and trusted. Plus, this work would count toward my graduate studies. It felt like a win-win, and if it meant giving up my summer veg out, so be it. I wanted to grow in my professional practice.

Unfortunately, inventorying does not induce any excitement in me. Many educators may revel in satisfaction when “all of our ducks are in a row.” The thought of rounding up metaphorical ducks when the sun is shining, the pool is beckoning, and all the summer pleasures are at my fingertips seemed completely daunting. To me, conducting an inventory lives somewhere in the realm of perfection, and I am only a perfectionist when I am completely stressed out. Inventorying is a strategy enlisted in an emergency. Tight on money? Let’s take an inventory of the budget. Frustrated from wasting food in the fridge? Inventory before the next grocery trip. Moving? Traveling? Starting something new? Inventory, inventory, inventory. In that process, I ask, what do we have versus what do we need? An inventory is a logical and useful tool, but I have only turned to it in moments of desperation.

So, here I was at the end of my first year in my new school district and instead of relaxing, I ended up going on this intense journey with Laura - inventorying and analyzing each text within my 7th-grade curriculum. At first, it seemed impossible but also potentially transformative. I recognized that my planning had become too binary–either I implemented a free-range English curriculum guided by the spirit of the Framework, or I implemented a rigid curriculum that stuck to the letter of the Framework. What Laura offered me was an opportunity for me to begin the reflective process to shift away from an “either/or” mindset to a “both/and” one. My curriculum could be both a reflection of my autonomous freedom and be nestled within the Framework and district/school expectations. I accepted her challenge and prepared myself for the work that this would require, both mentally and emotionally. I knew that if both my head and my heart were not fully on board with this task, it would all have been for naught. And so we began.

Recognizing Teacher Autonomy

Inventorying an entire year’s worth of grade-level texts might appear to be a straightforward process, I felt as though I was in an unusual position to be a critical evaluator of this curriculum simply because I had not written it. I was new to the school and grade-level team. I felt like an expatriate living abroad, and now I was asked to evaluate their constitution. Like our U.S. Constitution, my seventh-grade English curriculum is a living, breathing document.

It expands and contracts. It constantly mutates. It has the potential to become unwieldy when there are too many variables to consider. It may also go stale if educators neglect to breathe life into it. Similar to cultural practices, a curriculum can also fade away from memory if it only exists within the hearts and minds of the people enacting it. The rationale and history of its development disappears when its originating educators depart.

Continuing with this analogy, a curriculum is not simply a constitution but representative of an entire governmental system. It reflects shared values, the democratic purposes of education, and the potential of all learners to achieve. Most importantly, there exists freedom. At my current school, I have the autonomy to make curricular decisions about how to support my students’ in meeting the stated learning outcomes, that is, so long as I stay within the bounds of the Framework and my school’s stated mission. For this course assignment, I was intent to review the curriculum in its entirety by revisiting every title that I had taught in the previous year. Thankfully, my current colleagues similarly recognize that this curriculum evolves over time as new children’s literature is published, knowledge of teaching practices becomes refined, and students’ academic/social needs and interests are identified.

I belong to a grade-level team that collectively takes pride in a curriculum deemed inclusive on account of its unifying year-long theme that explores diverse social identities and cultural perspectives. Straddling this balance between non negotiables in the Framework and my teacher autonomy, I had forged ahead.

Inventorying Curricular Texts

In The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo (2014) discusses clutter. She proposes that if we put systems in place to declutter, it will transform our experience in the home and in our lives. When decluttering the items in your wardrobe, Kondo suggests that you empty out your closet completely, not one item left behind, and dump it all on the floor and bed. Psychologically, this allows you to fully process exactly how much stuff you have accumulated over the years. At first, this may seem counterintuitive. Rather than tidying up a space, a visible mess materializes. But the process of creating the so-called heap is transformative. Kondo recommends taking each individual item from the heap, holding it up, and asking, “Does this item spark joy within me?” The inventory process prompted me to “Marie Kondo” my existing curriculum, to spend time with each text, and ask myself “What exactly does this text do within the existing framework of my curriculum?” Some texts do spark joy within me. Others do not. Unlike my wardrobe, this curriculum does not solely belong to me but to my seventh graders.

I started this process with a chronological listing of titles experienced in the past year, followed by a subjective categorizing and description of featured content. The texts we had read with absolute passion in the past year were the easiest to inventory. For example, while reading “The Scholarship Jacket” by Marta Salinas (1993), my students hotly debated

the integrity of Martha’s principal and teachers. That memorable teaching moment will hopefully live with me for the rest of my life, for each of my special education students had entered my classroom that year with a negative mindset about their reading ability. That learning experience was magical. Not only did they use the text to foster such a mature conversation on morality, each student spoke and wrote at length on the many levels on how Martha had been wronged. When Martha’s heart broke, so had theirs.

Reflection on The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1951) was quite the opposite. It was brutal. Given each of my students’ Individualized Education Program (IEP) for language-based disabilities – their adversities with reading fluency, expanding vocabulary knowledge, and comprehension – this text posed a considerable challenge. Students often read sentence-by-sentence to check for understanding. I had recalled a lesson in which we came across this sentence describing Ponyboy’s world: “Mickey Mouse was a dark-gold buckskin, sassy and ornery, not much more than a colt. He’d come when Soda called him. He wouldn’t come for anyone else. That horse loved Soda. (Hinton, 1951, p. 39).”

Students had become lost in S. E. Hinton’s colloquial writing. To promote their comprehension, I had to fully stop the lesson; draw out visuals; and explain the meaning, context, and time period. By the end of this messy, drawn out process, my students were completely unimpressed with this tedious observation of Soda’s character. I had witnessed firsthand that this novel didn’t spark any joy in these student-readers.

Roald Dahl’s (1960) “The Landlady” was a text I had never previously taught. In my opinion, the titular character’s predatory behavior was questionable. See my synopsis of featured content in Figure 2. Like The Outsiders, this short story needed a contemporary replacement. In contrast Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor, 1976) remained at the heart of my inventory. Though it had taken six weeks for students to read, the text is beautifully written, just challenging enough to students, yet accessible in their meaning-making. I wanted to keep this text but I knew the curriculum unit needed more meaningful text pairings to further contextualize this historical fiction.

After this initial inventory process, I realized my curriculum had been traditional, unadventurous, and unoriginal. I see in the curricular collection of stories, poems, and texts

I started this process with a chronological listing of titles experienced in the past year, followed by a subjective categorizing and description of featured content. The texts we had read with absolute passion in the past year were the easiest to inventory.

decisions that erred on the side of cautious inclusion. Diverse authors had been limited to those highly regarded and/or long-established as part of twentieth-century literary canon, including Mildred Taylor, Langston Hughes, and Jacqueline Woodson. Also, poetry selections lacked continuity. They had been read independently of other texts rather than as a way to understand a plurality of voices centered around a common theme. Overall, the inventorying process of holding up each text to the light was at times monotonous but also cathartic.

TABLE 1

Excerpt from Betsy’s Inventory

TITLE (AUTHOR) DATE OF PUBLICATION GENRE & TEXT TYPE FEATURED CONTENT

“The Landlady” (Roald Dahl)

1959 Short Story; British Literature; Horror

Upper middle class, White, British characters and author; Billy is a young, able-bodied, good looking, well-dressed man who seeks lodgings at a bed and breakfast owned by a White, elderly woman who taxidermies animals and, horrifyingly, young men in their “prime.”. Stylistically, Dahl creates suspense through awkward interactions with mysterious people. The protagonist is a kind, curious young man who gives a stranger the benefit of the doubt.

Revising Curricular Texts

In place of The Outsiders, I wanted to find a highly engaging text that carried more culturally sustaining content–whose characters and plot authentically portray and uphold the customs, beliefs, and language of a specific cultural group that has been previously silenced in popular children’s literature and middle grades English curriculum. My reading of Nigerian-American Tomi Adeyemi’s (2018) debut young adult fantasy, Children of Blood and Bone, had been a powerful experience. So, I wanted to provide students with an opportunity to join Zelie as she traverses the mythical, West African-inspired continent of Orïsha with her companions. Their reading would examine the hero’s journey archetype but not be delegated to a White, cisgendered male hero. Adeyemi’s gift as a storyteller is her construction of suspenseful moments and elaborate, fast-paced action scenes. Her craft would appeal to my students’ enjoyment of plot-driven texts. In addition, her alternating points of view question characters’ understanding of truth as framed by their divergent upbringings. In numerous publicity interviews, Adeyemi

Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learnings |

explains, “It’s an allegory for the modern Black experience.” Her politically-driven theme explores race, social justice, and gender. In our discussions, Laura shared the title of a picture book, Sulwe, by Lupita Nyong’o (2019) as a possible pairing with Children of Blood and Bone. This picture book broaches the topic of colorism and would further contextualize discourse about skin color among the Orïshan characters and oppression. Sulwe is not only in print but is also read by the author on Netflix’s Bookmarks series. Such a read aloud format would be a welcome addition.

To amplify my unit on Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, I needed to create more depth in our historical study of Black sharecroppers during the Great Depression. Prior to the inventory process, Laura assigned Kwame Alexander’s (2020) award-winning picture book, The Undefeated His writing and Kadir Nelson’s painterly illustrations had been awe-inspiring. I decided to pair these titles. Instead of solely focusing on the historical context, I revised my lesson plans so as to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry through the lens of Alexander’s words that celebrate unsung heroes, namely those of the fictional Logan family. See Appendix 1 for my new lesson plan introducing unsung heroes in Black history. Soon the process of designing lesson plans that promote critical literacy had become joyful. And it had been a long time since I had felt that way. The inventory process afforded solutions to my many curricular quandaries. Instructional possibilities emerged from my pedagogical knowledge and experience alongside Laura’s guiding push. In turn, I rediscovered my creative process, while also honoring the Framework and my school’s expectations. I had achieved balance.

Moving Forward

In September 2022, I taught Kwame Alexander’s “Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty-Nine Cents” as well as “Oranges” and “The Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto. I watched my students light up with discovery as they constructed meaning among the three texts penned by diverse authors. This trio of texts left me wondering about the portrayal of young girls. Are they simply objects desired by love sick boys? Does Alexander write a more empowering love interest in Angel Carter? Or does he simply give her more depth by making his narrator able to read her mind, therefore, giving her consciousness? How does this trio position readers? Successful in their comprehension, what meanings would my students construct had I selected different text(s) but applied the same interpretive process? Those texts I select for a seventh-grade curriculum have the potential to inform a student’s sense of belonging in the classroom and beyond. Providing them with texts that multi-perspectival view of the world may shape students’ social development while fine-tuning their own literate identities. Like the butterfly effect, a trivial flap of wings with consequential effects, had happened. What if I had read “The Seventh Grade” in isolation? What would happen if we focused on simply the character moving through this single plot–his choices, his setting, his relationships? How do I improve their experience? Owing to this inventory process, I read with a critical eye.

In “Why Teach with Children’s Literature” Hade (1999) reminds us that on our journey as readers, we may explore various paths – the positive, the negative, the creative, and the transformative. The curriculum I teach aspires to encompass all four, and I remain in continual search of texts and ways for my students to respond to them. I hope to transform reading “into compassionate, just action” (p. 6). Experiencing this inventory process and now teaching the very literature I inventoried, evaluated, and discovered over the summer months, I think of Laura’s role as my mentor and guide. She provided a framework within which I could not only evaluate the taught curriculum but also rethink my teaching of children’s literature. In my initial reflection submitted online I wrote, “My work in this course and my study of new and relevant children’s literature is pushing me to critically evaluate why it is that we select the texts we do for our children, and how do we frame these texts so that our children are making changes to the broken and fractured parts of our society?” There are parts of this process that cannot help but live within me now.

Concluding Remarks

Rawls’ (2022) TikTok video may be a metaphorical “canary in a coalmine” that forewarns of the consequences when pk-12 students are denied access to diverse books outside of pre-approved curriculum lists. Betsy’s detailed trials and triumphs reveal the encouraging possibilities of what an English language arts and literacy curriculum might be/come . Her narrative lends hope in an literacy landscape marred by book bans and challenges. The inventory process is driven by an inquiry stance anchored in self-reflection and critical literacy, thus, Betsy’s pedagogical practice of curriculum development evolved. She questioned if each text had sparked joy in her and, most importantly, in her seventh-grade readers. Joy might manifest as a motivation to read. Joy might pique readers’ interests. Joy might compel a page turn to find out what happens next. Joy might result in meaningful responses. Joy might heighten empathy. Or joy might give us the courage to reflect, interrogate, or change.

As a “thought-partner,” Laura respected Betsy’s transformative agency, her teacher autonomy, and supported her critical insights and divergent thinking that resisted the status quo of her existing grade-level curriculum (Teo, 2019). Taking deep dives into each title’s content, Betsy evaluated literary elements such as plot, theme, point of view, mood, author’s craft, linguistic style, pacing, textual and inferential evidence of the characters’ (and authors’) social identities, and intended learning outcomes (Young et al., 2019). She explored possible texts that students could read in place of or in addition to existing titles. Her selections have been oriented to contemporary values promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion whilst appreciating our literary heritage as per the Framework. Betsy foregrounded her students’ needs above her own predilections. She wondered how else her students could engage in and respond to chosen texts in critical ways, then re-designed lessons. In her search for “solutions’’ to “curricular quandaries,’’ Betsy constructed experiences for herself and her students to discover the joys of reading diverse and inclusive children’s literature. While the inventory

process offered Betsy an opportunity to take up critical literacy, she has since continued the practice of interrogating and resisting texts that perpetuate gender inequities. When educators like Betsy critically read their own curricular materials by examining relations of power within each text and across the text set in order to re-envision the learning possibilities, they are one step closer to implementing a culturally sustaining pedagogy.

References

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Children’s Literature Cited

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Laura Hudock, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Framingham State University, Framingham, Massachusetts. Dr. Hudock teaches undergraduate courses in elementary literacy methods, child and family studies, and practicum seminar as well as graduate courses in the Language and Literacy Education program. Her research focuses on twenty-first century literacies and children’s literature, namely critical content analysis of and child readers’ multimodal responses to picture books, graphic novels, early readers, and transitional chapter books.

Betsy Lazo is a seventh-grade English teacher, a school-based literacy leader, and a postmaster’s certificate graduate student pursuing her specialist license in reading at Framingham State University. Betsy completed a one-on-one online directed study of children’s literature with Laura during summer 2022. Laura engaged Betsy in a critical inventory of the diverse literature titles that anchor Betsy’s school’s seventh-grade English curriculum. Reflection of this project is shared in this article.

Example 7th-Grade Lesson Plan

PATTERNS IN MULTILINGUALS’

READING ERRORS:

MELISSA KEH

When I was working as a high school English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, I often asked my students to read text aloud. I became curious when I noticed that some of my students did not seem to sound out words that they were unfamiliar with as frequently as other students. It was this observation that prompted me to analyze my students’ oral reading errors, sometimes called miscues, to learn about whether their prior experiences reading and learning to read may have been associated with the way they approached reading in the English writing system.

Most models of reading development suggest that a) word reading is a function of interaction between three main components: phonology, orthography, and meaning (Coltheart et al., 2001; Seidenberg & McClelland, 1989); and b) that readers develop metalinguistic skills, such as awareness of phonemes and morphemes, as they learn to read. Cross-linguistic studies of reading suggest that metalinguistic skills are shaped by the orthography in which one learned to read and vary across languages (Holm & Dodd, 1996; Koda & Zehler, 2008). Koda’s (2008) Transfer Facilitation Model maintains that there are regularities in spoken language that writing systems capture, and children develop sensitivity to these regularities as they develop oral language. As we learn to read, we learn to map our spoken language onto graphic symbols, and our metalinguistic awareness aids us because we use it to recognize the smaller linguistic units (such as phonemes, syllables, and morphemes) in spoken words. With experience reading, our metalinguistic awareness increases, and it reflects the specific ways that our language is encoded in our writing system. In other words, there is some variation in the use of metalinguistic skills among readers of different languages because writing systems differ in how they encode language.

Some evidence that reading differs across languages is found in cross-linguistic research on reading. For example, readers of shallow orthographies, like Cyrillic, may approach letter strings as decodable and make more nonword errors than readers of deep orthographies, like English, who, by comparison, make more real word errors (Perfetti & Dunlap, 2008). English readers appear to rely more on phonological information than Chinese readers do (Li & Koda, 2022). And Chinese readers have been shown to make more semantic substitution errors than English readers, while English readers make more phonological errors than Chinese readers (Cheng & Caldwell-Harris, 2011). For bilinguals, reading subskills may play greater or lesser

What Can They Tell Us About the Influence of FirstLanguage Reading Experiences on Second-Language Reading?

roles in word reading comprehension in each of their languages (Li & Koda, 2022).

The high school students in my classroom had experience reading Cyrillic and Chinese and were in the process of acquiring English as an additional language in school. To learn more about their reading in English, I read about their first language writing systems and examined the oral reading errors they made when reading connected text in English. The analysis focused on patterns of real and nonword errors according to the readers’ first writing system background.

Background on English, Cyrillic, and Chinese Writing

Systems

Looking first at the participants’ first language writing systems will help illustrate what metalinguistic and reading skills readers of those writing systems may rely on. All writing systems represent the phonological qualities of words in written symbols (Holm & Dodd, 1996), and reading in any language activates phonology (Perfetti et al., 1992); but the way that writing systems encode language differs.

Cyrillic and English are both alphabets. Yet, while grapheme-phoneme correspondence is the basis for all alphabetic writing systems, alphabetic orthographies vary in the extent to which sounds and letters have one-to-one mappings. The English writing system is orthographically deep, in some cases, because it preserves and represents morphemes at the expense of consistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (Chomsky & Halle, 1968; Mahony et al., 2000; Templeton & Scarborough-Franks, 1985). In English, although words like cat, dog, and ant can be easily “sounded out” if the reader knows the sound each letter makes, other words like enough, physique, or circus have spellings less transparently linked to pronunciation. English-speaking children are sometimes taught to read with phonics lessons and decodable texts that have regular, predictable grapheme-to-phoneme mappings (Messmer, 2005). This instructional method develops their use of the letter-sound decoding strategy (Juel & Roper-Schneider, 1985). But Mora (2001) estimates that only 75% of written words in English can be decoded with phonics generalizations. Instruction to develop other metalinguistic skills, such as morphological awareness, also appears to support word reading and spelling skill development in English (Carlisle, 2010; Nunes et al., 2003). As English readers become more proficient, they use more than sound-symbol correspondence to decode, attending to larger phonological units, morphemes, and/or whole words (Treiman, et al., 1995),

As we learn to read, we learn to map our spoken language onto graphic symbols, and our metalinguistic awareness aids us because we use it to recognize the smaller linguistic units (such as phonemes, syllables, and morphemes) in spoken words. With experience reading, our metalinguistic awareness increases, and it reflects the specific ways that our language is encoded in our writing system.

and compared to readers of shallow orthographies, English readers may make more real word errors, an indication that English readers are less likely than readers of shallow orthographies to rely on letter-sound correspondences.

Cyrillic is an alphabetic writing system that is the official alphabet for a number of languages, including Bulgarian, Mongolian, and Russian. Each of these Cyrillic orthographies has some irregularities in grapheme-phoneme correspondence, but they are all shallower than English. Shallow (or transparent) orthographies have more regular letter-sound correspondences than opaque (or deep) orthographies such as English and lend themselves to a letter-by-letter decoding approach because of that more regular grapheme-phoneme correspondence. As a result, readers from shallow orthographies are more likely to sound out words that they don’t know letter-by-letter when compared to readers of deep orthographies, and readers of deep orthographies are more likely than readers of shallow orthographies to use some of the orthographic information to arrive at a real word (if not the printed one) (Perfetti & Dunlap, 2008). As noted above, this sublexical, sound-out approach may be evident in the share of non-word errors readers of shallow orthographies make in oral reading, compared to readers of deep orthographies (Frith et al., 1998; Landerl & Wimmer, 2000; Wimmer & Goswami, 1994).

Chinese is a logographic (or morpho-syllabic) writing system. A logographic writing system has characters rather than letters; the characters represent syllables, and they also carry semantic meaning. Each Chinese character is pronounced in Mandarin Chinese with a single syllable. Unlike an alphabet, which maps symbol to phoneme (e.g., the letter “b” maps to the sound /b/) and forms a word by combining a string of phonemes, Chinese maps symbol to syllable and word or morpheme (e.g., pronounced ma/3, means horse) (Perfetti & Dunlap, 2008). In an alphabet, an individual symbol, a letter such as “b” above, carries phonological information but no meaning by itself; letters of an alphabet map only to phonemes and must be combined into morphemic chunks to have meaning. On the other hand, Chinese characters map both to meaning and sound; a Chinese character does “not allow phoneme-level mappings to function in either learning to read or in skilled reading. Instead, “[it] allow[s] reading to proceed from graphic form to meaning and from graphic form to syllable” (Perfetti & Dunlap, 2008, p. 19). “[A]pproximately 89% of Chinese characters represent unique morphemes, [so] characters usually provide the reader with visually distinct and reliable cues for decomposing polymorphemic words (Ku & Anderson, 2003, p. 406). In Mainland China, children learn to read Chinese characters with the assistance of Pinyin, “a set of symbols used to transliterate Chinese characters and combine speech sounds of the common speech into syllables” (Beijing Languages Institute, 1989, p. 37), and a similar system, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, is used in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, characters have historically been learned through copying and memorization, without the accompaniment of Pinyin or Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hau (Huang & Hanley, 1995).

Cross-Linguistic Influences in Second-Language Reading

When it comes to reading in a second language, research suggests that metalinguistic skills developed in a first language transfer to reading in a second language. In a Connectionist framework “transfer can be defined as an automatic activation of well-established firstlanguage competencies, triggered by second-language input” (Koda, p. 78). Studies of transfer have suggested that Chinese readers transfer skills from their first language to reading in English. Compared to alphabet readers, they tend to rely more on orthographic knowledge and visual processing and less on phonological sensitivity to identify English words. Holm and Dodd (1996) found differences in phonological awareness between adult Chinese readers from Hong Kong (who had non-alphabetic first-language literacy experiences) and readers from Mainland China (where Pin-yin is used), Vietnam, and Australia. The Hong Kong Chinese participants in the study exhibited more difficulty in reading and spelling nonwords, and their errors were often tied to orthographic strategies; however, like all of the other participants in the study, they were highly literate and scored within 2% of each other on a real-word reading task. The observed differences between the group from Mainland China and the group from Hong Kong provide evidence of first-language reading skill transfer. The researchers conclude that “the development of phonemic awareness seems to be dependent upon alphabetic acquisition, or another form of explicit phonemic instruction” (Holm & Dodd, p. 139).

Koda (1998), on the other hand, found that adult Korean (alphabet readers) and Chinese students’ performance on phonemic awareness and decoding tasks were not significantly different; however, the two groups applied different strategies. Thirty percent of the Chinese subjects said they used visual strategies to picture the words, but only one Korean subject reported doing this. On the other hand, 12 Koreans reported use of phonological strategies to “sound out” the word, and only 3 Chinese subjects reported use of this strategy. Furthermore, although phonemic awareness and decoding correlated strongly with reading comprehension for Korean subjects, there was no clear connection between these variables and reading comprehension for the Chinese subjects.

Wang et al. (2003) found processing differences in intermediate and advanced Korean and Chinese adult ESL learners’ reading in English. Korean subjects erred more on homophone foils than spelling controls, but Chinese subjects were not significantly affected by homophone interference; rather, words spelled very similarly to the target category member resulted in more incorrect judgments. Because there was evidence of more interference from similarly spelled than less similarly spelled homophones in the Chinese participants’ reading of English, the researchers concluded that both transfer from the first language and the nature of the second language contribute to second-language reading and suggest that with time, phonology may have an increasing effect for the Chinese readers of English. Although these studies focused on adults, there is also evidence of first language transfer in young children.

Wang and Geva (2003) compared the spelling performance of second-grade Chinesespeaking ESL and native English-speaking students to investigate whether transfer of firstlanguage literacy skills to second-language literacy was evident early on. The Chinese-speaking children performed better than their English-speaking peers in remembering and spelling visually presented words, the same at spelling real words, and worse on spelling dictated pseudowords. The English-speaking children seemed most disadvantaged by tasks that made phonological recoding difficult (recalling illegitimate letter strings). The Chinese-speaking children did worse than English-speaking children on spelling dictated words that did not have meaning (the dictated pseudoword task). These results suggest that the Chinese-speaking children may have transferred visual skills and a whole-word strategy from their first-language literacy experience to learning the spellings of words in English. Leong, et al. (2005) found that older Chinese children also relied on orthographic knowledge more than phonological sensitivity to identify English words.

Taken together, these studies indicate that cross-linguistic transfer is evident in children as well as adults and occurs across languages in reading, even when the writing systems are different. Chinese readers may employ whole-word reading and visual processing skills more often than alphabet readers. Differences in the skills that second-language readers use in reading in their second language are not necessarily associated with differences in reading comprehension. And finally, the second-language writing system and exposure to that system needs to be considered in understanding second-language reading, as the second-language orthography may also influence the reader’s use of reading skills.

The Present Study

This analysis examines data from the errors multilingual students made during authentic oral reading of connected text. The specific research question was:

Do experienced Chinese (simplified) and Cyrillic readers demonstrate different error patterns from each other when reading connected, authentic text in English (a language they are acquiring)?

As Ellis and Hooper (2001) note, a lexical (or whole-word) reading strategy should result in more real word errors; whereas, a sublexical (or “sounding out” strategy) should result in more nonword errors. Compared to each other, I would expect that if first-language reading skills transfer to reading in English, Chinese readers would make more real-word errors, and Cyrillic readers would make more nonword errors because a “sounding out” strategy has been found to be more frequently used by readers of shallow orthographies than deep orthographies.

Methods

This study is a quantitative secondary analysis of oral reading data collected during a previous study that examined the outcomes of Retrospective Miscue Analysis (Goodman et al., 2014; Goodman & Marek, 1996) with adolescent, multilingual students, who were in the process of acquiring English in a U.S. public school setting. The data for the current analysis originate from a database of oral reading errors made by eight participants, four Cyrillic readers and four Chinese readers. I provide qualitative data primarily for illustration purposes.

Participants

The participants were multilinguals attending a suburban high school on the east coast of the United States. Their oral English language proficiency ranged from level 2 to level 4, as measured by the Massachusetts English Language Assessment – Oral (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary, 2010), which described1 five levels of English proficiency. All participants had arrived in the U.S. after age 10, and most had been in the U.S. for one year or less. None of the participants had experienced gaps in formal education, and all were literate in their native languages. None of the participants were known to have any exceptionalities. Four of the participants spoke Mandarin as a first language and were experienced Chinese (simplified) readers, and four spoke Mongolian, Russian or Bulgarian as a first language and were experienced readers of Mongolian, Russian or Bulgarian orthographies, which use the Cyrillic alphabet (see Table 1).

TABLE 1 Participants | Participants’ Demographic Information (N=8)

MEAN (SD)

Cyrillic (N=4) Age Sex Years in U.S. Oral English proficiency Chinese (N=4) Age Sex Years in U.S. Oral English proficiency

16.25 3 M, 1 F 1 3 15 1 M, 3 F 1.38 3.25

(1.26) (.41) (1.51) (1.41) (1.18) (.5)

1This assessment is no longer in use.

Data Sources

The oral reading error data was gathered while students were reading passages from the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (QRI-5) (Leslie & Caldwell, 2011), and when they were reading passages from instructional-level texts they had selected for Retrospective Miscue Analysis (Goodman et al., 2014; Goodman & Marek, 1996). The QRI-5 is a commercial, informal assessment instrument used to determine a student’s instructional reading level. It includes narrative and expository texts from the preprimer through high school level. The QRI-5 passages participants read ranged in length from 221 words to 707 words. The reading passages students read for Retrospective Miscue Analysis were from original or adapted versions of literature that matched students’ instructional reading levels. Since the participants were in the process of acquiring English, most read third- to sixth-grade texts in English at the instructional level. I felt the content of adapted classics would be both age-appropriate and reading-level appropriate and would allow participants to choose from a selection of texts so that they would feel invested. I provided a new section or chapter from the same text each week, so text selections remained similar but new. The participants were not reading these texts for any academic course at the time of the study. The passages ranged in length from 449 words to 2,359 words. I met with the participants individually in a classroom during or after the school day on a weekly basis for reading. I concurrently wrote students’ oral reading errors on a separate transcript as they read. In most cases, I audio-recorded sessions and played the recording back before the next session to check my written record.

Prior to data collection, the study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board at my university at the time of the study and by the school district where the research was conducted. Assent and informed consent forms were collected from all participants and their parents/guardians.

Data Analysis

Following data collection for the original study, all oral reading errors (N=3,562) were entered into an Excel file. I coded each oral reading error as a real word, a nonword, or an ambiguous error. For example, if a participant read /gɪnt/ for the printed word “giant,” this was coded as a nonword error, and if a participant read “of” for the printed word “for” or “all” for the printed word “right,” these were coded as a real-word errors. Ambiguous errors sounded like real words, but I was not confident that they were not the result of the student’s pronunciation in English or a decoding error. In most cases, words I coded as ambiguous were less frequently occurring than the target word (e.g., “heeded” for “headed,” “filing” for “filling”). I coded these as ambiguous because it was less likely that the student knew the less frequent word and substituted it for the more frequent one. I also took into account foreign accent. For example, one student often read “cod” for the word “could,” but her pronunciation of the vowel in “could” was influenced by foreign accent in spoken English. Furthermore, “cod” was a lower-frequency

word than “could,” and it did not seem likely that it would be in her vocabulary, in part because it was a poor substitute in the context, given that it was the wrong part of speech for the sentence she was reading aloud.

To determine whether error patterns were significantly different by writing system background (e.g., Chinese or Cyrillic), I conducted a chi-square test of independence in SPSS. Because the majority of oral reading errors were collected when the participants were reading different texts from each other, I also examined one text that both a Cyrillic and a Chinese reader had read, to see if the difference in error patterns was observable qualitatively. This also serves as an illustration of how I coded oral reading errors.

Results

Figure 1 shows oral reading error type totals by language. The bar graph shows that a similar number of real word and nonword errors were made by Cyrillic readers, and that roughly twice as many real word errors as nonword errors were made by Chinese readers. To better understand whether this difference was statistically significant, a chi-square test of independence was conducted.

FIGURE 1

Oral Reading Error Types by First Language Writing System Background

Data screening indicated that the oral reading error data met the assumptions for a chi-square test of independence. Both variables (language group and error type) are categorical. Oral reading errors received only one error type code, and each cell had more than five observations (see Table 2). It is also assumed that the observations are independent.

TABLE 2

Oral Reading Error Type by Language

GROUP

Error Type

REAL WORD NONWORD AMBIGUOUS

Cyrillic 515 532 127

Chinese 1,426 732 230

χ2 (2) = 85.06, p <.001

The chi-square value of 85.06 is significant (p < .001), which suggests that there is an association between language and error type that is not likely due to chance. The standardized residuals for ambiguous errors were less than ± 1, so ambiguous errors were not a major contributor to the significant chi-square value. On the other hand, the standardized residuals for real word and nonword errors were all greater than ± 3. This indicates that the number of real and nonword errors made by Cyrillic and Chinese readers contributed to the significant chi-square value. The phi-coefficient was .16, indicating a small effect size (Cohen, 1988).

Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the oral reading errors made by a Cyrillic reader and a Chinese reader while reading the passage “Cats: Lions and Tigers in Your Home” from the Qualitative Reading Inventory-5 (Leslie & Caldwall, 2011). Oral reading errors that were coded as real words are in blue, nonword errors are in red, and ambiguous errors are in green.

FIGURE 2

Cyrillic Reader

FIGURE 3 Chinese Reader

Discussion

The results suggest that there were different patterns in oral reading errors in the data set according to language type. Specifically, the participants in the study who had experience reading languages that use the shallow Cyrillic alphabet made more nonword errors and fewer real word errors compared to the participants in the study who had experience reading Chinese. The data analyzed stem from students’ oral reading of school texts, which also highlights the fact that the differences noted here are observable in classroom contexts as part of routine classroom activities.

Previous studies suggest that readers of shallow orthographies make more nonword errors compared to readers of deep orthographies, who make more real word errors when reading in their first language (Frith et al., 1998; Landerl & Wimmer, 2000; Wimmer & Goswami, 1994). In this case, this pattern was observed in the secondlanguage writing system (English). This is interesting because English was an orthography that first- language readers were more likely to make real-word errors, according to the previous research. Yet here, we can see a difference according to first-language reading experience that results in varying amounts of real and nonword errors. The findings of this study seem to align with Li’s and Koda’s (2022) conclusion that “[t]he features of the [first language] writing system influence the formation of [second language] word formation analysis skills….[P]rior experience with a particular writing system has lasting impacts on the development of linguistic cognition” (p. 1418).

The pattern observed in these data may indicate that the readers transferred reading skills, which they had developed and relied on differently in their first languages, to reading in English. Although transfer cannot be determined empirically without measuring participants’ first language metalinguistic and reading skills, the different oral reading patterns seen here could be an indication that the participant readers’ reliance on such skills differed. Use of a sound-out strategy by Cyrillic readers is consistent with previous research findings that indicate that a sublexical approach is more common in readers of a shallow orthography (Perfetti & Dunlap, 2008). Likewise, previous research has shown that Chinese readers of English tend to rely more on orthographic information than phonological information when reading English and may use a visual whole-word strategy (Wang & Geva, 2003)

Although there is a large body of research that suggests differences in metalinguistic and reading skills across orthographies as well as transfer of first language reading skills to second language reading, it is possible that instruction and classroom experiences played a role as well.

Although there is a large body of research that suggests differences in metalinguistic and reading skills across orthographies as well as transfer of first-language reading skills to second language reading, it is possible that instruction and classroom experiences played a role as well. Instructional contexts for languages that have alphabetic writing systems may be more likely to include activities and games that build awareness of sub-syllabic units (Holm & Dodd, 1996), and phonics instruction tends to be used for shallow orthographies (Pefetti & Dunlap, 2008).

Reading is not universally taught in the same way, even in the same language.

Conclusions

It is important to acknowledge that although my initial analysis suggested that Retrospective Miscue Analysis had little to no influence on the nature or number of the participants’ oral reading errors, the protocol and/or the administration procedures of the QRI5 could have influenced participants’ error patterns. If this was the case, the influence should not have been different for Chinese and Cyrillic readers, since all participants experienced similar procedures. As noted above, I also did not measure first-language reading so there are limits as to which conclusions can be drawn about the source of the oral reading differences in the data. Furthermore, the sample of oral reading errors was large, but only eight participants were included in the study. Future research could investigate whether this pattern is evident in a larger group of participants.

Although the theories about the sources of observed differences are complex, the implications are important for all teachers. This inquiry started in my classroom when I sensed that something was different about the ways my students were reading. I wanted to better understand whether that difference was quantifiable, and if it was important for my teaching and my students’ learning. I realized in conducting this research that my students brought different linguistic funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) to the task of reading in English, and that using sounding-out strategies was not as universal as I had thought. This information helped me to implement teaching that bridged the orthographic differences between the writing systems they knew and English. For example, I taught Chinese students how to break polysyllabic words into syllables and use what they knew about letter sounds to pronounce the words. I also implemented word study with all students to increase their awareness of the small units of meaning found in the roots and affixes of words.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa Latham Keh , Ed.D., is an associate professor at Bridgewater State University, where she teaches courses on literacy development in multilingual contexts and assessment of multilingual learners. Prior to Bridgewater State University, she taught high school English Language Arts and English as a Second Language.

RE-ENVISIONING PRESERVICE TEACHER PREPARATION:

Integrating Literacy and Science Teaching Experiences

ADAM BRIESKE-ULENSKI AND NICOLE J. GLEN

Introduction

As two university professors, literacy and science education, at Bridgewater State University, we noticed overlap between the content and practices we were teaching to preservice teachers (PSTs). The science education professor invited the literacy professor to discuss this overlap, which resulted in the two of us working together to build connections between our courses for our shared PSTs. During our discussions, we talked about our own disciplinary knowledge, including our appreciation for subject integration. We realized that within our shared understandings, there could be numerous ways to maximize PST learning opportunities for content knowledge integration and the pedagogical practices aligned with each discipline. We achieved this by building upon each other’s disciplinary teaching in specific and meaningful ways across the semester.

Our collaboration resulted in redesigning our two courses to support each other with the goal of developing PST knowledge of how to plan and teach science content with integrated disciplinary literacy practices. Through co-planning, we mapped out a curriculum, where each course individually prepared PSTs to teach in that discipline for the first half of the semester. Together, we utilized the second half of the semester to co-teach lessons that helped the PSTs develop an integrated unit that taught science content through inquiry, while incorporating disciplinary literacy instruction and practices for students. Throughout the article, we use the initials PSTs to refer to elementary teacher candidates or elementary preservice teachers. We use the term “student” to refer to the elementary-age children with whom the PSTs worked during their prepracticum field placements. In this article, we discuss the design of our courses, our rationale for teaching an integrated unit, and the anticipated effects on the PSTs and their students.

Problem of Practice

Time spent on teaching and learning science in elementary classrooms tends to be significantly less than time spent on literacy, in terms of minutes per day (20 minutes on average for science versus 87 minutes on average for literacy) and days per week (with most teachers reporting teaching science three or fewer days per week or some weeks not at all)

(Plumley, 2019). Furthermore, teachers will often try to apply general reading and writing strategies to disciplinary teaching of science, only to find that students do not learn the content area as well as they would have hoped (Siffrinn & Lew, 2018). This can be remedied by preparing future teachers to use disciplinary literacy practices that reflect the reading and writing needs of each specific discipline. This requires teacher preparation programs to deliver linguistic and language instruction that supports PSTs in understanding the unique literacy practices within each discipline and providing opportunities to plan and deliver disciplinary literacy instruction that reflects the unique literacy skills of that discipline. Our goal as teacher educators is to help PSTs understand and practice integration strategies for literacy and science in order to: a) increase the time spent on science without taking time away from literacy; b) to have the knowledge and experience to share with future colleagues about the necessity of science and literacy integration; c) practice research-based, reform-oriented strategies for teaching science that meaningfully uses disciplinary literacy and is connected to the practices and standards of each subject area; and d) develop an understanding of the contextual use of language and linguistics within disciplines as a way of delivering disciplinary literacy instruction.

Conceptual Framework

As co-teachers, we spent time thinking about our use of terms to describe the connections between science and literacy that we were trying to foster. Calling our science and literacy teaching a “multidisciplinary” or “thematic” unit was inappropriate because these types of units tend to keep each discipline separate from the other and focus on using a science theme, like “outer space,” to teach reading and writing, with little regard for meeting science objectives and practices (Akerson & Young, 2008; Drake & Burns, 2004). Instead, we debated between the terms “integrated” and “interdisciplinary” teaching. The definitions vary depending on the researcher and discipline you examine, and we soon realized that either could be used to describe our work. During “interdisciplinary” teaching, the disciplines are identifiable, and the skills and concepts of each are present and used together to help students meet standards for each subject (Akerson & Young, 2008; Drake & Burns, 2004). For example, students might conduct an experiment to collect data during science and then use a text during reading with a cause-effect structure that they analyze to find supporting evidence for their findings from the science experiment. Thus, students are developing their skills in the science practices of

Time spent on teaching and learning science in elementary classrooms tends to be significantly less than time spent on literacy, in terms of minutes per day (20 minutes on average for science versus 87 minutes on average for literacy) and days per week (with most teachers reporting teaching science three or fewer days per week or some weeks not at all) (Plumley, 2019).

planning and carrying out investigations and constructing explanations, while also learning to comprehend and use nonfiction text structures. By focusing on this type of teaching, PSTs learn that different disciplines have different ways of communicating knowledge and require a unique set of literacy skills in order to read and write within that discipline (Siffrinn & Lew, 2018). Thus, interdisciplinary teaching and learning is what we currently advocate for and teach. However, we decided to use the term “integrated” unit to describe our work together because “integration” is a general term used to describe any kind of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary work (Drake & Burns, 2004; Jacobs, 1989), so that as our teaching or field placements allow, we might shift among types of integration as we need to do so.

We use the pedagogical content knowledge model called teacher professional knowledge and skill (TPK&S) from Gess-Newsome (2015). Specifically, our integrated unit experience attends to several concepts within TPK&S: a) teacher professional knowledge bases, particularly pedagogical, content, curricular, and assessment knowledge; b) topicspecific professional knowledge, particularly knowledge of instructional strategies and science practices; and c) classroom practice.

Teacher professional knowledge bases is a formal set of knowledge often provided to teachers from experts and researchers within a particular discipline or field of teaching (Gess-Newsome, 2015). In our work, this includes knowledge of inquiry science instruction, the science and engineering practices, the engineering design process, national and state standards for science and literacy, disciplinary literacy strategies, and pre, formative, and summative assessment strategies in science and literacy. Additionally, PSTs are immersed in understanding the language of the disciplines (Siffrinn & Lew, 2018). This calls for PSTs to understand that language use looks different based on the context (Gee, 1990). As such, our goal is to help PSTs understand how the linguistic and language practices within a discipline work together with teaching the content of the discipline (Schleppegrell, 2004) as a way of improving student literacy achievement and content knowledge (ILA & NCTE, 2017). Depending on the school or district where the PSTs complete their fieldwork, it may also include the curriculum offered there for teachers. Under this element of TPK&S, the PSTs in our courses learn research-based strategies for teaching and assessment that can be used across many topics with STEM and literacy.

Topic-specific professional knowledge (Gess-Newsome, 2015) means taking a deeper dive into the specific standard on which the PSTs focused when teaching for their integrated unit. They review adult- and children-level content knowledge for their standard, dissect science and literacy standards to determine disciplinary literacy instruction that is needed, examine the progression of standards before and after their grade level, research and determine through assessments their students’ funds of knowledge, and find appropriate texts and graphic organizers to support reading and writing.

Reflection on Action is part of the classroom practice through which pedagogical content knowledge develops (Gess-Newsome, 2015). Reflection on Action is when PSTs contemplate their rationale for teaching in particular ways, articulate their adjustments to practice, and consider how assessment data informs their decisions. This happens before they begin teaching as we work one-onone with them to provide feedback on their plans, while they are in the midst of teaching using videos, anecdotal notes, and observational feedback, and when they are finished teaching via a combined final exam for our courses. One reason we engage PSTs in a vast amount of Reflection on Action is to help dispel common traditional beliefs held by many teachers. For example, the National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (Plumley, 2019) found that 77% of teachers hold traditional beliefs about teaching and learning science, where science instruction should begin with definitions for new scientific vocabulary, and 56% of teachers hold traditional beliefs that hands-on activities should be used primarily to reinforce a science idea that students already learned. A second reason is to have PSTs gain and develop linguistic knowledge so they understand how to incorporate disciplinary literacy practices that are appropriate for their students and their literacy needs at specific points within a science unit. As professors, we understand the importance of breaking teachers from these cycles of inefficient science and content area literacy instruction and work to make the integrated unit an example of effective science and disciplinary literacy instruction.

Design of Our Courses

In 2017, the International Literacy Association (ILA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) released a research advisory that highlighted components of an effective teacher preparation program. The three major components in their research advisory are Knowledge Development, Applications of Knowledge within Authentic Contexts, and Ongoing Teacher Development (ILA & NCTE, 2017). The design of our undergraduate teacher preparation courses reflects the three major ILA and NCTE components by having PSTs learn the content and pedagogical skills in class through course readings, discussions, curriculum analysis, and lessons modeled by professors. PSTs apply their learning in an authentic context by practicing their teaching of each discipline with students under our and the host classroom teacher’s supervision in the beginning and middle of the semester. Toward the end of the semester, our courses overlap, and PSTs plan and reflect on student data collected from integrated science and literacy lessons and assessments as part of an integrated unit of study they teach to students. Our courses culminate with a final presentation and reflection,

Reflection on Action is when PSTs contemplate their rationale for teaching in particular ways, articulate their adjustments to practice, and consider how assessment data informs their decisions.

showcasing their integrated unit teaching using observations and student data as a combined final exam. It is this culminating reflection that sets PSTs up for success as they enter into student teaching and work on the goals they identified as part of their Reflection on Action from the integrated unit. Our courses reflect ILA and NCTE’s best practices for a teacher preparation program because each of our courses support one another in a single semester, and our courses prepare PSTs for the next semester in student teaching. Next, we describe our process of collaboration.

At our university, PSTs take several teaching methodology courses together as a cohort model, including science, literacy, history and social science, mathematics, and inclusive practices. Upon realizing that we were attending to correlating instructional practices in science and literacy at about the same time of the semester, and knowing that we also shared PSTs in our cohort model, it was a natural fit for us to co-plan and eventually co-teach our courses together. However, we recognize that teacher preparation programs vary in their design, and we encourage our readers and their colleagues to collaborate with one another, just as we did, to identify teaching skills, practices, and routines that might be shared across courses or build on each other from one semester to the next. This also helps to avoid duplicate instruction and to dig deeper into each discipline’s content and practices across a teacher preparation program. We provide suggestions for ways to accomplish this in the conclusion.

Separate Disciplinary Methodology Courses

The semester begins with the PSTs learning how to teach in each discipline by engaging in course content and practicing with students with supervision and feedback from us and their host teachers. In science, PSTs learn to conduct a read-aloud using an autobiography of a STEM specialist to promote participation in science by all populations and to practice the readaloud literacy strategy in STEM early in the semester. The PSTs teach a two-day engineering lesson to practice conducting hands-on STEM lessons. In literacy, PSTs learn the essential components of effective reading and writing lessons. For example, they learn about ways to activate and build background knowledge, teach vocabulary, set a purpose for reading, monitor reading comprehension, promote writing about reading, and deliver phonemic awareness and phonics instruction (Cooper et al., 2018). PSTs in this course learn about these literacy instructional concepts throughout the first half of the semester while teaching students two hours a week in two different classrooms. In class, the PSTs explore the theory and research behind the instructional practices they are using, review instructional tools such as graphic organizers that enhance a literacy lesson, observe and participate in lessons modeled by the literacy professor, and use feedback from the professor to plan literacy lessons for students. For more specific details on the first half of the literacy course, see Correia and BrieskeUlenski (2021).

Co-Teaching the Integrated Unit

We utilize the second half of the semester to prepare PSTs to enact a five-lesson integrated unit in a grade 1-5 classroom in a local school. To prepare, we co-teach our classes together for several sessions. Our first co-taught lesson is an overview of the integrated unit project, where we explain what it is, the components of the project, and provide examples. In another co-taught lesson, we teach about the role of language in science through a disciplinary literacy lens and help PSTs brainstorm ways for using reading and writing to support science learning among students. During additional co-taught lessons, we examine the structures of science informational texts, how to help students write like a scientist, and the connections between the 5E Instructional Model for teaching science and literacy instructional practices. Together, we also help PSTs identify key assessments in science and literacy that they can use to understand their students’ content knowledge throughout all stages of their unit implementation. At the end of our co-teaching sequence, we provide the PSTs with class time to work on developing and planning the lessons for their unit and we provide support and feedback.

Planning the integrated unit incorporates the following steps for the PSTs: a) research the science and literacy standards for their topic provided by their field placement; b) preassess students to determine their funds of knowledge (NSTA, 2017); c) draft their unit, using a storyline template, shown in Figure 1 (Windschitl et al., 2018; Zembal-Saul et al., 2013); d) determine how reading and writing can support explanation construction (Siffrinn & Lew, 2018); e) write science lesson plans following the 5E instructional model (Bybee, 2016); f) design reading and writing lesson plans appropriate for reading and producing informational texts (Akhondi et al., 2011); g) create and implement a curriculum map, shown in Table 1, that outlines the daily schedule of the unit in their field placement classroom (ILA & NCTE, 2017; NSTA 2017); h) reflect daily with their professors and peers (ILA & NCTE, 2017; NSTA, 2017); and i) present their work as part of a shared final exam in our courses, where PSTs showcase their professional learning and their students’ learning; and j) answer questions on an exit survey.

FIGURE 1

Integrated Unit Storyline Template

TABLE 1

Curriculum Map Template

Science Lesson Plans

PSTs develop a unit of instruction using the storyline sequencing structure. A storyline is an instructional sequence of lessons in science centered on understanding a natural phenomenon or solving a problem. Each lesson in a storyline helps the students figure out a piece of the science idea and then add to a developing explanation about the natural phenomenon or problem they are solving (Reiser et al., 2021). To accomplish this, the PSTs write a series of learning goals, which also helps them analyze the science standard with which they are working. Using prompts from Wiggins and McTighe (2011), PSTs write learning goals that say “Students will learn/understand that…”, breaking down one science standard into three to five goals. Alongside this, they conduct background knowledge research and seek out natural or human-made phenomena that connect with the learning goals and standard and that can be used as a foundation to their storyline. From here, PSTs use the 5E Instructional Model (Bybee, 2016) to formulate lesson plans. This structure means that PSTs have their students Explore first and conduct inquiries into science ideas prior to reading about and having vocabulary explained to them. This moves the PSTs away from front-loading vocabulary (Suarez et al., 2014-22) and instead places this component of learning within the Explain phase of the 5E Instructional Model. During the Explain phase, along with learning a few key scientific vocabulary words, PSTs use nonfiction texts as a way to connect with the exploration and learning of vocabulary and to find evidence that will support their initial exploration and ongoing explanation of the phenomenon (Windschitl et al., 2018). Any nonfiction texts used and vocabulary learned after the Explore and during the Explain phase of the 5E Instructional Model should connect closely to the storyline phenomenon and learning goals planned. Then, the 5E Instructional Model culminates in Elaborate, an opportunity for students to engage in additional inquiries or extend their learning via authentic writing tasks or meaningful projects.

Reading and Writing Lesson Plans

Reading Lesson Plan . PSTs develop one reading and one writing lesson plan for their integrated unit. Both lesson plans take more than one day to complete because of the pedagogical practices that are needed for teaching an entire lesson. For the reading lesson plan, PSTs review children’s informational literature to identify a text that would be appropriate for conducting an interactive read aloud that aligns with the science standard for expanding student content knowledge. The PSTs use the structure of the text to plan their read aloud lesson. They do this because it is necessary for students to know and understand informational text structure by third grade (Akhondi et al., 2011). The selected text must support and complement the information students are learning in their 5E Instructional Model lesson plans for science. In addition, the selected text and read aloud lesson should start after students have already completed the Explore phase of the 5E Instructional Model to avoid presenting information that may unravel the inquiry they are investigating. This is explained to the PSTs for proper sequencing of all lessons for the integrated unit. After PSTs select the

text, they review it with the literacy professor to identify the informational text structure the author used, identify a state standard that emphasizes the text structure, and select a graphic organizer that correlates to the text structure to facilitate comprehension questions during and after reading the text. The identification of the appropriate text structure, state standard, and graphic organizer is important because research demonstrates that using an appropriate graphic organizer that compliments the text structure facilitates comprehension (Akhondi et al., 2011) and has a positive impact on a student’s ability to recall information (Carrell, 1985).

The interactive read aloud lesson plan includes the following components as described by Cooper and colleagues (2018): activating prior knowledge, building background knowledge, pre-teaching vocabulary (Witherell & McMackin, 2013), making a prediction, setting a purpose for reading, asking comprehension questions during and after reading that align with an informational text structure graphic organizer, checking predictions, writing about reading, and administering a post-reading anticipation guide. This full read aloud lesson is spread across two days. On the first day, PSTs activate prior knowledge, engage students in a building background knowledge activity that extends the Explore, pre-teach vocabulary, make predictions, and set a purpose for reading with their class. These are considered prereading activities. On the second day, PSTs engage their students in the during- and post-reading activities that include reading aloud the text, stopping at identified spots to ask comprehension questions and fill in the text structure graphic organizer, checking their predictions, writing about what they read using the graphic organizer, and administering the post-reading anticipation guide.

Writing Lesson Plan. Once PSTs understand informational text structure and plan their read aloud and science lessons, they move into planning a two-day writing lesson that serves as the Elaborate phase of the 5E Instructional Model. The preplanning of the writing lesson plan involves using a state standard for writing informational text and using the same graphic organizer from the interactive read aloud lesson. The writing lesson plan includes the following components: introducing the activity and setting a purpose, activating prior knowledge, analyzing a written model, modeled writing by the teacher, shared writing, shared writing again, peer review, and publishing.

PSTs are taught that introducing the writing activity and setting its purpose is meant to generate excitement. It is here that the PSTs might connect to the natural phenomenon or problem by opening the writing lesson plan with a letter or request to the class for information on the topic they have been studying. Some PSTs do this as a letter from someone in the school, the local news, a community member, or a STEM specialist or organization, asking the class to write about what they learned and to share it with the world around them. This is when the students learn what type of informational writing they will be doing as a class: recount, report, procedure, explanation, or persuasion (Dreher & Kletzien, 2015). When activating prior knowledge, a text structure graphic organizer will be used three times to have

students recall information learned from all lessons in the unit. The graphic organizers help students categorize their learning into three main topics for the whole-class writing. The PSTs develop questions to ask the students to help them fill in three key details on each graphic organizer, while the main idea is already written for the students. PSTs are taught to do this so the class knows the topic and can focus on recalling the information learned from the unit.

When analyzing a written model, the PSTs identify an exemplar text of the informational writing they will be doing with students and lead them through a review of the text, using a writing checklist adapted from Writing Units of Study (Calkins, 2017) . The PSTs review the writing checklist with the students before going through the exemplar text. Afterwards, PSTs model how to take the information on the first graphic organizer and turn it into the first page or paragraph of the writing piece. They think aloud and ask themselves questions to model this process in front of their students. Then, they guide the students in writing the next two pages or paragraphs, using the next two graphic organizers in a shared writing modality.

Once the writing is completed, the PSTs engage the students in rereading their writing and using the checklist and graphic organizers to make sure their writing piece has all the information necessary and meets the requirements for informational writing. Then, the PSTs celebrate the publication of their writing by sending the piece to the intended audience from the lesson introduction.

Assessments

Before PSTs plan and implement their integrated unit, they learn about assessments in the disciplines. This includes their purpose, data that can be collected and interpreted, and how to administer them. As teacher educators, we feel it is important that PSTs understand these concepts about assessment before they practice using them with students.

For science, assessments are used to gauge conceptual understanding and vocabulary knowledge in relation to the learning goals PSTs have written. They create a pre-assessment test given two weeks ahead of the unit beginning; it includes the prereading questions from the anticipation guide (described in next paragraph). They formulate a pre-assessment class discussion to find out student conceptions about the phenomenon under study in the storyline and conduct this during the Engage step of the 5E Instructional Model. During the remainder of the 5E Instructional Model phases, PSTs learn to use and analyze data from quick, formative assessments and anecdotal observations of student conceptions during teaching to make necessary adjustments to the unit lessons as time goes on. The unit ends with a summative assessment, repeating the pre-assessment test but removing any questions pertaining to learning goals that did not make it into the final unit lesson plans.

In literacy, PSTs learn about anticipation guides as a pre- and post-reading assessment

to track student comprehension of science concepts presented in the read aloud. In addition, PSTs learn how to use graphic organizers, observations, and checklists as formative assessments to track student understanding of the science information in the read aloud and writing lessons.

We find that preparing PSTs to administer a variety of assessments allows them to accurately plan an integrated unit that advances student knowledge and understanding of the concepts in science and literacy. Furthermore, the formative assessments inform PSTs’ decision-making process by reteaching or modifying lessons as they progress through their unit. Ultimately, they are prepared to use data to inform their instruction.

Curriculum Map

PSTs are provided an empty curriculum map to plan with their classroom teacher. The curriculum map is used to show how different parts of the school day are planned to help students work toward the learning goals in the unit, thereby achieving true integration. In collaboration with the classroom teacher, the PSTs use language from their storyline and lesson plans to write brief notes for what is happening on specific days and times that outline their teaching sequence for the science and literacy lessons. Table 2 is an example of a completed curriculum map. PSTs add rows to each chart as needed to show where the lessons may occur during a school day for different disciplines. If their teaching extends beyond one week, the PSTs make a second chart that explains the teaching sequence in the second week.

TABLE 2 Completed Curriculum Map by Preservice Teachers

In planning out their teaching sequence, we explain to the PSTs that their lessons will typically take more than one day, and this should be reflected in their completed curriculum map. In addition, we remind them that it will take a series of lessons to fully address a standard, and that no one lesson can teach an entire standard in literacy or science. On the curriculum map, the PSTs begin with their pre-assessment one to two weeks ahead of the unit teaching, then launch the unit with the Engage and Explore phases of the 5E Instructional Model.

By day three, we suggest that the PSTs move into conducting the first half of the interactive read aloud lesson and follow it up with the Explain phase of the 5E Instructional Model. During day four, we recommend the PSTs complete the read aloud lesson plan with their class, begin the first half of the writing lesson plan, and begin the Elaborate phase of the 5E Instructional Model if it is separate from the writing lesson. On the fifth day, the PSTs should try to complete the writing lesson plan, Elaborate phase, and conduct their unit summative assessment.

Feedback and Reflections

During implementation of the integrated unit, PSTs collect student learning data via artifacts of work, anecdotal notes, and professor observational feedback. They use these sources of information for daily reflection regarding their science and literacy lessons. The purpose of our feedback and their reflections is to practice using the Massachusetts Candidate Assessment of Performance (CAP) elements (DESE, 2019) upon which they will be scored during their subsequent student teaching semester.

At the conclusion of the integrated unit, PSTs create a presentation that showcases their unit storyline, curriculum map, integration strategies, student work, and reflection on the CAP elements as a combined final exam for both college courses. During their presentation, PSTs provide evidence and explain how their teaching decisions and actions influenced student learning. Each PST adds another 5E Instructional Model to their curriculum map and storyline, helping to solidify the idea that each standard in science takes multiple lessons to accomplish and to help students understand a phenomenon. At the end of their presentation, each PST reflects on two CAP elements; an example is shown in Figure 2. They identify one CAP element with evidence they feel they are proficient in performing, and one that they need to work on during student teaching. To finish, PSTs state a professional goal they wish to advance further during student teaching based on the CAP element they identified as needing improvement. As a result, the PSTs are well prepared for the next semester as they work on their professional goal during student teaching.

Sample Student CAP Reflection

PSTs feel prepared for implementing integrated teaching. Anonymous exit survey data shows that 94% of surveyed PSTs feel very or somewhat confident in planning and implementing their own integrated unit in the future. Additionally, 94% of surveyed PSTs indicated that they are very likely or likely to implement an integrated unit on a different topic in their own classroom. As evidenced by this quote, PSTs’ noticed our goal of co-planning and co-teaching our teacher preparation courses,

Everything leading up to this has prepared me for the unit. Throughout the semester we worked on writing effective reading and writing lesson plans, so the transition into the unit was easy. In science, we did our own experiment first using the 5E model, and we could use this in our unit as well. The whole experience was definitely better because we had already done these things before, and it wasn’t all brand new.

Summary and Next Steps for College Professors

As professors who teach preservice teachers, we find that co-teaching and co-planning our courses together demonstrate to PSTs the importance of planning with colleagues and teaching a unit that incorporates multiple academic disciplines. We encourage our fellow professors to identify colleagues who have teaching philosophies and goals that align with theirs. This first step opens the door for collaboration and to understanding each other’s pedagogical practices. We suggest that professors ask questions that probe for understanding

of each other’s course content, examine ways in which you prepare PSTs, and discuss overlap between to courses. Further into your collaboration, it will be helpful to identify one way in which you can build upon each other’s courses and open the door for co-teaching and coplanning. This may eventually lead you down a path similar to ours in redesigning our courses in a way that advances PST understanding of interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

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Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learnings |

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The MRA Primer 2022 | www.massreading.org

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Adam Brieske-Ulenski is an Assistant Professor of Reading Education and chair of the Graduate Reading programs at Bridgewater State University in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department. Adam has presented with ILA and other literacy associations about the roles of literacy professionals, including classroom teachers.

Nicole J. Glen is a Professor of Science Education at Bridgewater State University in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department. Nicole has presented and published about the role of writing and disciplinary literacy within science and engineering education.

LIFE AND TIMES:

Oral History and Genre as Framework for Meaningful Educational Research

JOHN MICHAEL PABIAN

It is remarkable how much history has been written from the vantage point of those who have had the charge of running – or attempting to run other people’s lives, and how little from the real life experience of people themselves. (Samuel, 1975, p. xiii)

The October 22 cover of Educational Leadership (2022), published by the Association for Curriculum Development (ASCD), sets forth a timely and noteworthy call for action, headlined by a banner heralding: The Education Profession: CHANGING the Narrative (2022). In an age where rethinking and reimagining almost everything is everyday fare, the headline seems to make sense as teachers in classrooms find themselves and their students roiled and ricocheted players in turbulent landscapes where everything is questioned while solutions remain elusive. The Educational Leadership issue brings forth research and commentary from writers, administrators, and consultants, all calling for action on issues such as teacher shortages, low educator morale, teacher flight, and difficulty in recruiting and retaining teachers of color. There are calls to: modernize teaching, enhance the experiences of Black children in schools as a means for incentivizing those children to choose teaching as a profession, and even a suggestion to launch what would be the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for education, an “all-in” approach to redefining and supporting teachers and their work. Research supporting these efforts is foundational to the calls for change; however, the voices that remain absent from the conversation are those of the men and women who are undertaking the work of teaching students in classrooms.

Building on interview-based research for my doctoral dissertation, Elementary Voices of City Teachers, Historic Perspectives, and Contemporary Meanings (Pabian, 2014), this paper posits that teacher voice brought forward in an oral genre of history-telling, is illuminative for insight examining the Life AND Times of classroom teachers. The methodology and examples set forth in this paper demonstrate significant wattage for shining light upon and sharing the lived experiences of teachers and the work they do in meeting the needs of children. This proposed methodology strives to break the “historic silence” (Rousmaniere, 1997, p. 4) concerning teacher work. Teachers’ voices are and have always been conspicuously absent from investigations in the field of educational research; however, in this moment of profound concern, teachers need to be heard from as prime influencers for changing the narrative surrounding public education. No person or entity can or should plunder this task from those

performing the work. Deeper understanding of this moment in education requires listening with both ears to the people who have met the challenges and trials of recent history; they must be heard. And heeded. This paper provides a window into matters of oral history, genre, methodology, data presentation, and analysis as tools for gaining insight into the lives and experiences of public school teachers.

A Note on Method: Oral History as Qualitative Research

In choosing oral history as a qualitative method, there is a striving to learn from teachers the significance and meaning they take from their work with children. Having served as a school principal, I understand the appeal that quantitative data holds, as well as the data-driven impulse of looking at numbers as they inform practice. Studies reporting the success and failure of programs abound in the literature; however, the words of the people who implement those research-based initiatives are unheard. Valerie Yow (2005) endorses oral history as a qualitative research method. She posits that “The qualitative researcher learns about a way of life by studying the people who live it and by asking them what they think about their experiences” (p. 7). Addressing the operational definition of “meaning”, researcher Joseph Maxwell (1996) identifies qualitative research as an effective vehicle for establishing meaning, which he defined as “including cognition, affect, intentions, and anything else that can be included in what qualitative researchers often refer to as the “participants’ perspective” (p. 17). As a form of qualitative research, Berg (2009) notes that oral histories are “extremely dynamic” (p. 311), while pointing out that they lead to increased understanding of narrators’ lives, creating connections between past experience and the present. Delamont (2002) refers to a long qualitative tradition in social science related to collecting oral evidence and life histories on folk cultures, deviants, criminals, “elderly survivors of ‘proud old lineage’ and dying cultures such as the Kwakiutl or the Yanomano” (p. 128). Metz (1984) advances the case for qualitative study of teacher narratives as she writes, “Teachers’ life experiences and the cultural and structural demands of their work setting - the shape for their behavior – with fateful consequences for their students” (p. 199). Glesne (2006) endorses oral history, positing the usefulness of interviewing “in search of opinions, perceptions, and attitudes toward some topic” (p. 80). Extending this thought, Glesne invites interviewers to probe teacher memory with the purpose of learning about their perceptions and attitudes concerning legislative mandates on classroom practice and the impact of those initiatives on teachers and children. She concluded that by listening to narrators, researchers have “the opportunity to learn about

In choosing oral history as a qualitative method, there is a striving to learn from teachers the significance and meaning they take from their work with children. Having served as a school principal, I understand the appeal that quantitative data holds, as well as the datadriven impulse of looking at numbers as they inform practice.

what you cannot see and to explore alternative explanations of what you do see is the special strength of interviewing in qualitative inquiry” (p. 81).

Patton (1990) defines purposeful sampling as a strategy, where particular narrators and settings are chosen for information regarding events for which they hold particular knowledge. As research for my dissertation, I conducted three separate in-depth interviews with four female elementary school classroom teachers who worked in the same school district between the years of 1964-2014. At their request, I created pseudonyms for the narrators, while changing the name of the district where they worked. Maxwell (1996) writes that, “Selecting those times, settings, and individuals that can provide you with the information you need to answer your research questions is the most important consideration in qualitative sampling decisions” (p. 70). Narrators for this study provide eye-witness perspective for educational movements, initiatives, and legislative mandates, covering a period of almost half a century. I here will leave the definition of the term “city teacher” to the narrators whose recollections of long commitments to urban students will better define that term than other definitions put forward by those further from the scene. Furthermore, from this vantage point, these city teachers bear witness to the advent of federal initiatives, many aimed at remediating conditions prevalent in city schools. These initiatives include: Special Education, Bilingual Education, Title I, Title IX, “A Nation at Risk,” “Goals 2000,” The NCLB Act, and—most recently— ”Race to the Top.” These narrators also witnessed great changes at the state, district, and schoolhouse level. Yow (2005) pointed out the value of testimony from people at the scene. “Historians cannot stop with asking questions about how things are but must always concern themselves with the general question, how did things get to be the way they are?” (Yow, 2005, p. 9). The participants are well positioned to articulate this process of change as it played out in classrooms over a period of 50 years.

Oral History as Genre

Oral historian, Alessandro Portelli (1994) puts forward a notion of oral history as genre. More specifically, he identifies oral history as a genre of genres, where oral forms such as anecdote, poem, “war story,” or commonplace maintain in a process where “readers are always constantly reminded of the oral origins of the texts they are reading” (p. 25). In reporting data, I looked for support in Portelli’s definition of oral history as “a genre of discourse in which orality and writing have developed jointly in order to speak to each other about the past” (p. 25). This genre, according to Portelli, searches for a place where biography and history meet. Portelli understood, as did noted oral historian, Studs Terkel (1972), that oral history “expresses an awareness of the historicity of personal experience and of the individual’s role in the history of society (p. 26).” The genre of history telling becomes more than the clichéd term “life and times,” usually applied to biography; rather, oral history exists as a genre of Life AND Times with the “most important word being the one in the middle” (Terkel, 1972, p. 26).

Historically, teachers are hidden in plain sight. While unions bring awareness to issues of compensation and working conditions, the silence regarding classroom life and practice is resoundingly and deafeningly muted. Alessandro Portelli (1994), building on research regarding the importance of personal memory represented in historical context, identified oral history as a genre of “history-telling” (p. 26). He wrote that thematic focus distinguishes oral history from other interview-based approaches: He identified this focus as “the combination of the narrative form on the one hand, and the search for a connection between biography and history between individual experience and the transformation of society on the other” (p. 25). Portelli, disputing notions held by Nevins (1938) and other positivist critics, found that oral history is at its most authentic when it listens to narrators who are not “recognized protagonists in the public sphere” (p. 26). Teachers naturally fall into this context of unrecognized protagonists. Teachers indeed are prime actors in the lives of children and society at large; however, their work is largely unreported.

During the middle of the last century, noted sports columnist, Jimmy Cannon entertained and informed readers with columns beginning with the assertion: “Nobody Asked Me, But…” Here I extend Cannon’s lead to matters such as: “Nobody Asked Me, but I know distance learning does not work for 3rd graders”. Or “Nobody Asked Me, but my 2nd graders are losing ground with the new research-based math program”. And perhaps, “Nobody Asked Me, but the literacy coach has many bromides but few solutions for helping my students to read better”. Examined through the generic lens of Life AND Times, the stories and experiences brought forward in further discussions with teachers at the scene may incite investigation into computer-based learning; the effectiveness of standardized, publisher-created math programs; or the efficacy of models for classroom coaches.

The Power of Story: History Telling

I am reporting here the transcript of my first interview with retired educator, Linda Hodnett. When I arrived at Mrs. Hodnett’s home for our first interview, she offered me a seat in a small, comfortable living-room, appointed with soft chairs, several shaded lamps, an array of hung family photographs, and two whirring fans that presently held their own against the surging heat of a July morning. We were about to begin when a ringing phone intruded. “Let me shut that off,” she said. “I would like to get started” (L. Hodnett, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

“How did you become a teacher (J. M. Pabian, personal communication, July 30, 2013)?”

Teachers indeed are prime actors in the lives of children and society at large; however, their work is largely unreported.

My family was loaded with teachers. And my mother and father thought that was the job, because you’ve got summers off, and if you ever had a family, it’s the perfect job. That was my father’s answer to everything. My father was a cop. But he thought teachers…actually what else can a woman do? Basically, that was his thinking; and then it was true. You never thought about law school. You thought—there were three things available to me when I went to college. I could have been a teacher, a nurse, or typing—a secretary.

And it seemed like that’s what everybody was doing. Those that went to college went with me to a state college. There weren’t many and some of them went into nursing. And the rest….I’m not sure. My friends went to Boston State; a couple of them went to Salem State for teaching. But I think I went to Boston State with about five from my senior class. And….I was the only one who lasted. Maybe there was one other….there were just two of us who lasted. I graduated from college in 1965.

We all had to take a test—the National Teacher’s Exam. And after the National Teacher’s Exam, I had my scores sent to Schofield, and then I got a message to come to the school committee headquarters, and I was interviewed by the whole committee. They all sat there, and I sat in front of them, and they threw questions at me. Friends had told me at school, at Boston State, that there was a new bill out there—the Willis Harrington or something like that—a new education plan out there. I’m not too sure of that name, Maybe…Harrington something, I don’t know. So, they said at school, “You better read up on that, you know, because they’re going to throw some questions at you about that, and you have to be ready for it.” So, we all did. We all read up on it, and I came in front of the school committee and sat down, and they only asked one question: “How do you discipline? Do you yell at them?’ “You know, and I just looked at them, you know.” And, you know, naturally I said. “That’s not discipline.” That’s, you know… “‘Oh, good I agree, I agree.’” That was it. That was my interview. (L. Hodnett, personal communication, July 13, 2013)

“How old were you” (J. M. Pabian, personal communication, July 30, 2013)?

Twenty-one.

I drove down to the Putnam School after I got the job in the springtime to see what it looked like. I don’t think I had ever seen that school before. And so, I drove to the school and took a look, and the kids were out at recess, and I looked at the buildings, and I said, “Hmm….” The school was in the poorest area of Schofield. But anyway, I got a letter from the school committee saying I was assigned to the fourth grade. I said, “Oh good, I think I’d like fourth grade.” Then I got a telephone call from Dr. Howell [principal]. He reassigned me, because somebody else wanted the fourth grade. So

evidently I was low man on the totem pole, which is the way things were run years ago. And so he said, “Second—you’ve got second grade.” So, I said, “oh, alright,” you know. What can I do? I didn’t know anything about anything, so I figured I’m starting out fresh. First question—”When can I come in and get some books?” “What do you want books for?” Alright. And I said, “Well, you know, I’d just like to…” “Oh, don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it.” So, I got nothing. (L. Hodgett, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

“What about the first day of school” (J. M. Pabian, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

On the first day of school, we all sat around and, still, I wanted to see my classroom. No, they didn’t show me my room, no, you had to stay there for the meeting. The important thing that they put out was who got…who had to do milk money, who had to do, you know, all those jobs. Someone had to do bulletin boards for the whole school, Maybe it was monthly, I don’t know. And picture money, and whatever else teachers were responsible for….so, I got the milk money. (Sighs)

I don’t even think milk was a nickel. I think it was like three cents, four cents, something like that. The tough part about that is I had to collect the money from everyone, bring it to the bank myself during school hours. I had to go to the bank on Main Street. I had to leave school and get the money to the bank. I could not deposit— because I got pennies, and nickels, and dimes. I could not use that change. I had to transfer it all to bills. So, I used to go home with a pocket full of change. Anyway, every morning the milkman left the milk for 300 kids at my classroom door. You know, I almost always got the count right. My second graders distributed the milk to the classrooms, and when I was short, one of the kids in my room who had paid, gladly donated milk so the numbers matched. I complained about that job when I started to get my…..I complained about that. I think I had it for two years.

I finally saw my classroom. It was the auditorium with the stage up in the back, so during the year, anytime anybody wanted to do anything, I was at the front of the room; all rehearsals and performances were in the back of the room.

I knew nothing about the kids, had no information at that particular time. They hadn’t sorted records and sent anything down to me. And all of a sudden, I noticed, during the day, we were going out to recess, and I noticed going up the stairs, somebody having problems walking. Well, I found out later I had a student that had …I don’t think it was MD, (muscular dystrophy). I had no information about that. He and his brother were in the building together. He was put in my room because there’s no handicap entrances or anything for anyone. And I was downstairs, so he had to crawl up the stairs on his hands and knees. That frightened me. He was a wonderful young boy;

actually, he died five or six years later…. Awful…Very Sad.

“No books?” “No books?” “They’re coming.” “No crayons?” “No pencils?” The Assistant Principal said, “I’ll get to it.” Carole Camuso (a more experienced teacher in the building) came into her classroom. She had a second-grade classroom the year before me; she had books and desks. I didn’t even have desks at the beginning. For a while, my class just sat around on the floor, and then they brought desks down from every classroom in the school. So, I had desks the first day, by the end of the day. Yeah. They brought desks for the classroom. So, what if they were fifth or sixth grade, and my second graders were sitting in them.

There’s…the first year. I was told I had 20 kids. Up to that point, they all had high student numbers. I was hired to bring the numbers down. Yeah. And quite frankly, it hasn’t veered from that much my whole time. That’s the good thing about Schofield (L. Hodgett, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

“Can you describe your relationship with the principal during that first year?” (J. M. Pabian, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

Dr. Howell wrote our evaluations; we never saw anything. He used to come and stand at my door. And, seems like I wore short skirts, so…that was on my evaluation. And it wasn’t a negative thing. And, again, that was my evaluation. He never saw a lesson. I never got copies of evaluations. If you wanted to see them, you had to go up to the main office. Yeah. That’s what he told me verbally.

Yeah. And then, he used to come in with a yardstick and measure my skirt to see if it got any shorter. But he was just kidding around. Education man… He was a nice, older man, let’s put it that way. I liked him, you know. He didn’t know what I did. I didn’t know what he did. I didn’t know what to expect at that time. If I walked into something like that now, I probably….but then I just figured, well, that’s the way, you know? I know what I’m doing. I’m doing my job.

If something bothered me, if I didn’t feel right about something…, I’d go to Carole Camuso or Paula Brodette….they were a year ahead of me, and they had a year’s more experience than me. And they were in the third grade at that point, so I used to say, “Well, I’m doing this with the second graders. Does this get them ready for your third grade?”That’s all we had years ago. And we made…, and I am still close friends with those people. And thank God there was a group of us like that because, if there wasn’t, it would have been a horrible job. (L. Hodnett, personal communication, Ju;y 30, 2013)

Historian, Richard Altenbaugh (1992) points out:

Students, and often administrators, were transient, but teachers likely remained “in their classrooms and school buildings year after year, sometimes decade after decade” (Altenbaugh, 1992a, p. 1). In that unique position, they witnessed continuity and change in school policies; pedagogical theories and practices; student attitudes and cultures; and family roles, values and structure. They seldom remained passive; as historical actors, they shaped schooling in many different ways (Altenbaugh, 1992a; Cuban, 1993; Johnson, 1984; Montgomery, 1981. (2)

Mrs. Hodnett was more than honest in noting that, “I can’t wait to get started.” Over the course of three interviews, she maintained a spirited focus as she catalyzed a nuanced dance between her experiences and the passage of time. She conducted an orchestra of memory as backstory, and personal testimony resounded against a backdrop of authenticity. We learn of a cascade of calamities, where preparation for teaching matters little in a workplace overseen by an administrator who utilizes fear, autocratic incompetence, and sexist behavior, shielded behind the curtain of a doctoral degree in oratory arts. Her phrases imply resignation and regret concerning her choice of profession, her role in the school, and her exposure to workplace culture and conditions at the school.

More from Mrs. Hodnett: Dads as Heroes

Our final portrait of Mrs. Linda Hodnett is one of an experienced, city teacher who has changed schools and forged a long and successful career working with children. Years of experience have brought her to a place at the turn of the 21st century, where her notions of family expand to include all people who come together to form a unit based on love and caring for one another. She speaks fondly of Rasheed.

I was able to observe Rasheed in the second grade before me, and he had a real difficult time with the classroom, with the teacher, and I guess it was easy for the teacher to send him out. I am usually very good with these kids, and my thought is when I found out I was getting Rasheed. He had missed a year of school. So, I thought to myself, wow, I’m going to have to not only watch the discipline but also make up for what he missed in the second grade. So, I don’t know whether I saw the father or one of the fathers the first day of school and, you know, he came up and was pleasant. Dressed very nicely. And I told him, I said, you know, “I’m going to need your support for Rasheed to make it through the third grade.” He said, “We’re willing to do anything.” So I said, “Thank you, I appreciate that.”

And…Yes. You know, again, the other teacher I just felt was a phony….she claimed he scared her. Rasheed had come a long way. When he entered the school,

he was put in the program for emotionally damaged children. He and his brother had been…you know, sexually abused and nearly starved to death by parents on drugs. So, these two young guys come along, and they save these kids. I don’t think they were used as a resource by the second-grade teacher except when Rasheed got into huge problems; then they had to come up. But anyway, you know, and starting right off at the very beginning, they were the best resources .Another great resource is having a phone in the room. I don’t use it to call parents; I have the children call their parents. Rasheed was willing to do anything except work, ok? And would use any excuse when it came to homework with dad at home, the dads at home. “We don’t have homework; we don’t have anything to do.” You know? I needed to hold him accountable for his work. So, and into school he comes, “Uhh, the dog ate my homework” or something like that. Likable, though and very, very smart. And he would hold on. I would say “the dog?” or whatever it was….”Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Till it came to the point where, “Better call your father.” “He’s not at work today.” “He’s not? Just call anyway so I can know.” He cried; he called the dad. I got on the telephone the last minute with the dad. He said “I’m sorry.” I said “Eh—I’ll send it home tonight. Tonight, he has two ‘homeworks to do.” Okay. So, and there was a homework book that went home every single night. I wrote in the homework book, the dad would write in the homework book, so I would know exactly what was going on. And I had the code. And I had sent the code home. And they wrote on the thing that they would be glad to help in any way. Please let them know if anything’s going on. And Rasheed…you know, his marks were Bs and Cs when he left and, quite frankly, he could have been As if he put a little effort into it. He got along well with the kids .Whenever he demonstrated mastery in something, I let him help other kids. He will be a politician someday, I suppose. (L. Hodnett, personal communication, July 30, 2013)

This excerpt is taken from the third interview with Mrs. Hodnett. I asked her to look back on students who stood out in her memory. Rasheed came to mind immediately. She places the story as taking place in either 2003 or 2004, 20 years after she was transferred from the Putnam to the Hawthorne School and occurring in her 40th year of teaching, She is a good storyteller, and her anecdotes are colored with crisp dialogue, ironic twists, and clichés that Portelli (1994) referred to as “a personal effort at composition in performance” (p. 24). She establishes for herself and her audience the dialogic manner in which she will make meaning from her experience with Rasheed and his family. She has told us about the professional pride she takes in teaching children who challenge other teachers. “I am usually very good with these kids, and my thought is when I found out I was getting Rasheed, he had missed a year of school” (L. Hodnett, personal communication, July 30, 2013).

It is evident that Mrs. Hodnett likes Rasheed and expects him to do well. However, she has more to say as she embraces a complex notion of personal courage. She tells us a story

about heroism as two fathers become life savers for two abused children. Mrs. Hodnett, whose career has spanned four decades, finds a moment when her personal view of family connects to the reality of Rasheed’s life with his two dads. She escapes the confines of her classroom, becoming in the narrative a protagonist who understands this transformational moment in social history. Utilizing the genre of history-telling, Hodnett provides readers with a vibrant, gritty, dialogue, connecting subject-related biography to theme-related testimony…her Life AND Times

Implications for Further Work

Having worked in and around public-school classrooms for over half a century, I certainly have my own recollections regarding meaningful moments working with students. Due to the pandemic, in my current role of program supervisor for teacher candidates at the Graduate School of Education, I was charged with observing teacher candidates and their students using ZOOM. The teacher candidate, demonstrating mastery of cooperative learning using break out rooms, had her 5th graders involved in a jigsaw focused on the Bill of Rights.

I was able to travel with the teacher into one of these rooms, where the kids were creating a poem based on their knowledge regarding Freedom of Speech. As the activity moved forward, a young man announced that he would be leaving the group because as he clearly stated, “I have been wanting to clean my room, so I’ll see you all later.” The work continued, but the world had changed or had it? For decades, students have in one way or another demonstrated their immunity to efforts at engaging them…that wasn’t new; however, with the click of a mouse, this fifth grader left the “building” to engage in a task loathed by most children his age.

This snapshot is pure anecdote. Educational researchers, Dougherty (1999) and Altenbaugh (1997), tell us that oral history holds promise as an effective method of inquiry for educational research. However, they cautioned researchers that oral history will remain merely a series of anecdotes until researchers develop a conceptual framework for analysis of oral data. I am betting on the power of story seen through a generic framework of Life AND Times to bring the lives of teachers and their work into high definition. Nobody asked me, but teachers earn the right to tell their own stories.

References

Altenbaugh, R. (1997). Oral history, American teachers and a social history of schooling: An emerging agenda. Cambridge Journal of Education, 3, 313-330. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxyles.flo.org/docview/206057105/ fulltextPDF/142002F010769AF58B2/3? Account id=12060

Berg, B. (2004). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. Pearson.

Delamont, S. (2002). Fieldwork in educational settings: Methods, pitfalls, and perspectives (2nd ed.).Routledge.

Dougherty, J. (1999). From anecdote to analysis: Oral interviews and new scholarship in educational history. The Journal of American History, 86(2), 712-723. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2567055

Glesne, C. (2006). Becoming qualitative researchers. Pearson.

Maxwell, J. (1996). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach. Sage.

Metz, M. H. (1984). Editors forward. In Sociology of Education, 57(4), Ethnographic Studies of Education (Oct., 1984), p. 199. Published by: American Sociological Association Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2112423

Nevins, A. (1938). The Gateway to History. Heath.

Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Sage.

Portelli, A. (1991). The death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and meaning in oral history. State University of New York Press.

Portelli, A. (2004). Oral history as genre. In M. C. Thompson (Ed.), Narrative and genre (pp. 23-46). Transaction Publication.

Rovagnoti, J. (2022, October) Cover. Educational Leadership, 9.

Ritchie, D. (1995). Doing oral history. Twayne.

Rousmaniere, K. (1997). City teachers: Teaching and school reform in historical perspective. City Teachers Press.

Samuel, R. (1975). Village life and labor. Routledge.

Terkel, S. (1972). Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do Pantheon.

Thomson, A. (2006). Four paradigms in considering oral history. The Oral History Review, 4970

Yow, V. (2005). Recording oral history. Alta Mira Press.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. John Michael “Mike” Pabian is a career educator, who, after graduating from Boston College in 1972, served 34 years as a teacher, athletic coach, assistant principal, and principal in the Somerville, Massachusetts School District. Mike entered the field of higher education in 2004 as an instructor at the Lesley University School of Education, where he also earned a doctoral degree in 2014. Mike’s dissertation, Elementary Voices of City Teachers, examined, through the lens of oral history, the lives and careers of four female classroom teachers, who worked in urban schools between the years of 1964 and 2014. Beyond his work as an educator, Mike has served as a consultant in the fields of curriculum design and media literacy for the A&E television network, Time Warner Cable, and Turner Learning. A winner of three Crystal Apples and the A&E Network’s National Teacher award, he has won acclaim for his work on integrating technology into middle school classrooms. Mike has also been the recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his study of the Negro Baseball Leagues. While at Lesley, Mike has developed and taught both online and face-to-face courses in social studies integration, practicum/seminar, and baseball and the American experience. More recently, he has presented his research on philosophy and baseball at the Cooperstown Symposium for Baseball and American Culture. He resides in Bedford, Massachusetts with his wife, Clare.

A Professional and Personal Journey

NANCY L. WITHERELL

In the days of Dick and Jane, schools were using a Look-Say method of instruction for reading, in which students read text with repeated words and memorized the whole word. For example, students would read something similar to: “See Spot, See Spot run, Run, Spot, Run” According to Rudolph Flesch’s (1955) book, Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It, it’s a wonder that those of us, of a certain age, who grew up with Dick, Jane, and Spot can even read. What was the miracle message in this book that was on the best seller list for 35 weeks? Simplified in Flesch’s own words, “Teach the child what each letter stands for and he can read. Ah, no you say, it can’t be that simple. But it is” (1955, p. 3). Incidentally, in 1983, Readers’ Digest wrote a new forward to this book, which is still marketed today. Which brings us into the ongoing “Reading War,” another war, that should never have happened.

According to James S. Kim (2008), the “reading war” controversy surrounding the instruction of beginning readers began with Horace Mann, who was a proponent of not only free education but whole word reading. Mann was against teaching the alphabetic code, as he felt it was an impediment to teaching reading for meaning. The scientific basis for this was an eye movement study done by Cattell that showed adults perceived words faster than letters (Kim, 2008). Hence, science had shown the way. Unfortunately, the interpreter of that scientific study, in this case, Horace Mann, did not seem to take into consideration the variables within the study, that children learning to read do not replicate adult readers. Whether this was the actual beginning of the “reading war” may be debatable, but that the war still exists is not.

My brother, born in 1946, started kindergarten in 1951, four years prior to Flesch’s publication. Although he now seems to read well enough, he struggled for many years, quit high school at 16, entered the Navy, and eventually went to Vietnam. Although many of us loved Dick and Jane, they did not help him. In his later years, he was diagnosed as dyslexic. On the other hand, I began kindergarten in 1957, when Flesch’s book had made its mark in education and his message became a popular consensus. My mother related a story of my own education. Although I was doing well with my second-grade reading, I voiced concern about my ability to do my spelling work. When consulting with the teacher, my mother was informed that second graders did not have spelling but phonics. (My hearing impairment was first diagnosed when I was 30 years old. I remember going into my adult life wondering why

CAN THE SCIENCE OF READING GET JOHNNY TO READ?

we called the people who lived next to us, “next store neighbors.”) So, the public and political pressure had influenced the direction of reading instruction, and phonics was once again prevalent in schools. My husband, Peter, who went to school during the same time period began his education at a British school in Pakistan, where his father was stationed as he worked for the Foreign Service. My husband begin reading books, from the British school he attended, that we still have, used systematic phonics. Although I can’t recall how I was taught phonics, the books from my husband’s early education focus on phonics. Each story has a letter sound, eventually word families, and lists of words that students were to sound out from the letter sounds they had been taught. The instruction appeared to be very explicit. The letters were each given a picture for sound such as an elephant bending in the shape of the letter E. He attended first grade in Massachusetts for one day and was then promoted to grade two. Although what comprehension skills he gleaned from sentences like “Pat patted the hen. Pat fell in the pen,” is something to question.

When I began teaching in the mid-1970s, reading basals were prevalent in elementary education. They were sequenced by level as Preprimer; to Primer; to Grade 1, first semester (what we called a 1-1); to Grade 1 second semester (what we called 1-2); going up through the years. The basals told teachers exactly what to say and what to teach in both phonics and comprehension. The stories were broken up into guided reading sections, and questions, mostly literal, were in bold for teachers to ask and students to answer. The stories were written in vocabulary deemed appropriately leveled for each book. Discussion was not promoted, although students would chime in with a personal connection. We taught in leveled reading groups, and students advanced when they ended the book, having passed all the end of the section assessments. In my grade-three classroom, I would usually begin with a 1-2 group, a 2-2 group and a 3-1 group. My goal as their teacher was to get these students to a year’s growth. Notice, there was no group above grade level. The principal at this particular school would not allow that. (Ironically, when I had two students reading two to three grades above grade level, after a series of tests, they were promoted to grade 4 within the first month of school.) By grade 3, the basals were supplemented with a phonics-based spelling program. It was not a matter of memorizing the words, that were mostly word families or groups of words that followed a particular phonics rule but working through a series of tasks that allowed students to use the focused phonics rule. Therefore, students had phonics in two curriculum areas, reading and spelling.

But… in another part of the U.S., namely, Troy, Illinois, my sister was dealing with a different type of situation. Her youngest daughter was being taught with a newly adopted reading program called the Initial Teaching Alphabet, a program designed to teach beginning readers through a phonetic system. Students would learn to read texts with unconventional phonetic spelling and make the transition to standard spelling in grade three. The program publishes books which use made up symbols for different sounds, as you can see from the following figure.

It looks a bit like old English, and some of the symbols with different sounds look very similar to one another. When looking up information for this article, I found this program is still active, as seen at: http://itafoundation.org/ about-us/what-is-i-t-a/ . My niece, who is now a 50-year-old registered nurse, laments that her trouble with spelling stems from this program. The ITA website states that it is researchbased and offers this phonetic alphabet as a resource for remediation of dyslexia.

Ironically, around this same time, the importance of reading to young children became widely known. Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook (now in the 8th edition) was first selfpublished in 1979. This book encourages parents to read aloud to their children. Most likely as children listen to the story, they are looking at the pictures and the words. Some of those children are memorizing sentences as they are read. These children are memorizing words written with conventional spelling.

Research is so strong about reading to young children that many pediatric doctors have the question on their checklist, “Do you read to your child?” Not only is reading to your child beneficial, but what is read is also important. Trelease states, “The eventual strength of our vocabulary is determined not by the ten thousand common words but by how many rare words we understand” (1979, p. 8). He then advocates for parents to read books to help their children build vocabulary, citing research that showed professional families’ children enter school having heard 30 million more words compared to students from a lower socioeconomic status that had not been read to by their parents (Trelease, 1979, p. 7). The news was out: Read to your child from birth. Prior to entering kindergarten, where at that time, letters and numbers were taught, my niece, being taught with ITA for beginning readers, had been read to almost daily from books printed with conventional spelling. She did not go into school knowing how to read but was very familiar with the picture books her parents were reading to her. Yet, in school, she was to learn a written language that did not use conventional spelling.

It seems that, for the most part, reading kept its status quo during the 70s and 80s, although literature-based reading was making waves. The reading war, with Dr. Jeanne Chall as its general, continued in full swing as the nation was still in a national crisis in children’s literacy during the “look-say” period of the 50s. Then along came Whole Language. According to the Harvard website (n.d.), “Chall’s support of phonics instruction over the whole-language approach pushed back against popular beliefs” (para 2). Chall not only advocated for using

systematic phonics but also the use of challenging literature–perhaps a precursor to the Language Arts Standards–and having children read more complex text.

Whole Language, which in a very simple explanation incorporated trade books, writing, and deductive phonics was mostly a teacher driven incentive. The goal was to let children read real books known as trade books, not watered-down basal versions. Students began to write in journals, for reading responses, and creative stories using the writing process. Spelling and letter sounds were reinforced through reading and writing as writing products were brought up to final draft. Phonics was taught both explicitly and deductively by having students analyze words, For example, a teacher would have a group categorize words with the letter “c” so children could analyze the pattern and discover that the hard “c” sound /k/ is pronounced when “c” is followed by an “o,” “a,” or “u,” and the soft “c” sound /s/ happens when the c is followed by an “i” or “e”. During this time, book discussions occurred using flexible grouping. What was termed “grand conversations” took place, which allowed children to think about what they read and to learn that some questions had more than one correct answer.

Then, around the late 90s, along came another federal report card stating that our children could not read, so it seems education or educators kept failing. There was the public outcry that teachers were not teaching phonics, which was not exactly the case, although there is some basis for this outcry. Some reading programs published during the Whole Language Era had eliminated a great amount of phonics instruction as they began to publish complete story books within their textbooks instead of the previously watered-down versions. The National Reading Panel was formed that resulted in the Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction (2000), published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This report analyzed research results and findings from experimental and quasi-experimental research studies. The findings and determinations for the area of phonics states: “The meta-analysis revealed that systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulty learning to read” (National Reading Panel, 2000). On text comprehension, the findings and determinations state, “In general, the evidence suggests that teaching a combination of reading comprehension techniques is the most effective. When students use them appropriately, they assist in recall, question answering, question generation, and summarization of texts” (National Reading Panel, 2000). There is a disclaimer on the website at the top of the report that states “the publication was accurate at the time it was published, but is not being updated. The item is provided for historical purposes only” (https://www.nichd.nih. gov/publications/pubs/nrp/smallbook ). Does that mean it is to be considered inaccurate?

This report was followed up four years later by the book, The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research (2004), which was written by the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Health and Human Services This book provided evidenceCan the Science of Reading get Johnny to Read?

based practices for the teaching of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, all of which I’m sure sound familiar, as they are the foundation of teaching reading in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

With the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), research-based instruction became the norm. Once again, the focus was on research-based phonics instruction. When walking the IRA (now ILA) booths at the annual conference in the early 2000s, companies publishing reading programs would display huge signs describing their research-based reading programs. During the Bush administration (the 2nd Bush-George W.), it was rumored that Open Court was the only acceptable research-based reading program. (It was also rumored that Bush played golf with the company’s CEO.) Needless to say, after the report of the National Reading Panel and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, systematically and explicitly taught phonics once again took the forefront in beginning reading instruction.

Systematically and explicitly taught phonics is not a bad idea, but this teaching has to include effective instruction done by knowledgeable teachers. Going back in time, my youngest son began kindergarten in the fall of 1993, the year I was hired as a tenure-track professor at Bridgewater State University. Knowing the hours needed to gain tenure, a decision was made to keep him in his private preschool, where kindergarten would take place from 8 to 2 daily. It made sense, I would not have to deal with the year switch from morning to afternoon kindergarten (an old-fashioned way of making things equal for parents, but those in the know would request afternoon the first half of the year, so their child would get morning instruction time when the curriculum became a bit more complex). My son had a wonderful year in kindergarten, where social activities were mixed with letter and sound learning, handson activities, and themed instruction.

Then he entered the public school system, which had (against my warning to the then superintendent during an informal conversation) adopted Rose Bradley’s “Won Way”, which later became known as Rose Bradley’s Reading as there was no “one way.” This program was extremely systematic. The students were to have approximately 45 minutes of phonics instruction daily, which included teaching letter-sound correspondence, dictation, and simple sentence writing. The program was inexpensive for the district, easy for teachers to follow, and spanned from kindergarten to grade two. In this program, children were taught the different sounds of the vowels such as “a” and “e” and learned a number for each sound the vowel could represent (supposedly 6 sounds of “e,” but some phonics programs promote as many as 9 sounds of “e.”). When the students wrote their sentences, they were to put the correct number of that sound by the written vowel. Since my son entered grade 1 from a private school, where this instruction had not occurred, he was behind in reading instruction. The program was both systematic and explicit. The teachers mentioned that teaching the students to fold their paper into 16 squares was one of the most difficult lessons, as students had to encode into each box what the teacher said. Once the initial group of students advanced to third grade, the teachers

were wondering why students were writing numbers on top of the letters in their sentences. I’m not sure how long this program was around, or how far it went. I know it was used in Taunton. The trainer asked if she could train my student teachers, at which point I said, “please don’t”. My nephew, who lived on Cape Cod was taught with this program in the year 2000.

Around this time, “No Child Left Behind,” which emphasized the 5 anchors of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, became the forefront of beginning reading. This federally-based initiative gave funds to states accepting this program, and “phonemic awareness” became the new buzzword and catch phrase for what beginning readers needed to have. Professors of reading began expounding upon the differences between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. Prospective teachers still needed to learn that phonemic awareness is sound only; a child can have phonemic awareness without knowing letters exist. But, in the primary years, do we teach it in that isolated form? I have heard from two of my third-grade students from the 70s (thanks, social media). They are both successful Black adults: one is a professor of theology in the South; the other is the principal of a middle school near where I taught in Maryland. Not sure how they became so successful, as I had never heard of the term phonemic awareness. But, the kindergarten and grade-one teachers did do word play with sounds, and, in hindsight, we were automatically teaching it in combination with letter sounds.

Of course, there were other happenings going on in reading instruction… Mosaic of Thought (Keene & Zimmermann, 1997) made waves with various comprehension strategies. Then along came the two sisters, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (2006), and the Daily 5; differentiated instruction; programs such as Orton-Gillingham and Wilson’s Reading, which have been used successfully with developing readers. Somewhere in this push for phonics came the term, “a balanced reading approach,” which was to make the public aware that the school system was using a reading curriculum that included a balance of instruction in both phonics and reading comprehension (not sure what happened to writing). At some point it became more popular to say a school district was using the “comprehensive approach” to reading instruction, which included the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

As I retired in the spring of 2019, I somehow missed the initial wave of the Science of Reading movement, which is now in the forefront of reading instruction for beginning readers. This initiative comes with new knowledge from brain research, and all we have learned through current medically-based technology yet, is based on research we have known for years. As education is always moving forward, we are now in the throes of the Science of Reading. The need for research-based instruction and systematic phonics remains in the forefront, extended beyond the beginning years. In some corners, it seems to be a consensus among a few that a reading instructor is either for or against the Science of Reading, which is fodder for the reading war. Ironically, there is no research-based evidence to support this train of thought.

Can the Science of Reading get Johnny to Read?

Effective teachers of beginning readers or developing readers have always, even during the height of whole language, taught letter-sound correspondence.

According to an informative booklet put out by The Reading League (Science-ofReading-eBook-2022.pdf ), we are assured that the Science of Reading is not another fad of reading instruction (p. 9) that will disappear as was the case with Whole Language, and maybe Bradley’s Reading. In some cases, the “fads” don’t necessary disappear, but the best pieces of each remain for the next sequencer. Whole language helped to put deductive instruction, literature-based reading, journal writing, and written reading responses into today’s reading curriculum. Individualized instruction morphed into differentiated instruction, allowing more students to gain tailored instruction. The best pieces remain as teachers use their knowledge of instruction assessment and judgment to design instruction.

The Science of Reading, like the Report of the National Reading Panel (2000), gleans its instruction from scientifically-based research through experimental or quasi-experimental studies. It also relies on brain research and “how the brain processes multiple sources of information while reading” (Science of Reading Defining Guide, p. 13). The research discusses pathways that are connected as students learn to read. Some of you may remember the MRA conference about 20 years ago, where Kathy Collins Block did a presentation on vocabulary learning. During that presentation, she shared a video of the brain circuits at work and the audience could see squiggly line pathways connect when a word was learned. It was fascinating to watch. At the time, Dr. Block stated that it took an average of six exposures to a new word before the pathways connected. This was an eye opener to the operations of the brain, and so much more has been learned about brain functioning since that presentation. The Science of Reading posits that these neural connections, which become networks, are built with explicit instruction and focused practice.

The basis for the Science of Reading includes the Simple View of Reading, which proposes that reading comprehension derives from two components: word recognition and language comprehension. The Simple View of Reading, which is attributed to Gough & Tunmer (1986), has evolved over time and began with the two components of decoding and listening comprehension. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (n.d.) states that the decoding side (word recognition) may be referred to as fluent word reading and proposes the formula:

fluent word reading X language comprehension = reading comprehension. (MA DESE, 2022)

Duke and Cartwright (2021) state that scientific evidence has shown that three key advances have emerged since the 1986 Simple View of Reading model. Duke and Cartwright propose the following understandings be incorporated into the Simple View of Reading:

• That reading difficulties have many causes within and beyond word recognition and language comprehension

• Word recognition and language comprehension are not entirely separate and are bridged by important processes

• The reader’s active self-regulation is central to reading. (p. 26)

Duke and Cartwright propose as “Active View of Reading”, which combines the Simple View of Reading with these three understandings (p. 33).

How can we not have an active view of reading? Good comprehension does not come from passive reading. How many of you have read orally and fluently to your classroom, while thinking about something happening later in the day? We know that for readers to maximize comprehension, they must engage and interact with the text. This could be by making connections, figuring out a new word by using context, using close reading techniques, or in a variety of other ways.

Recent research has added greatly to the knowledge of reading instruction, but the Science of Reading is not new (Share, 2021; Terry, 2021). According to Semingson and Kerns (2021), the Science of Reading is defined as a compilation of two parts: “(1) instruction that prioritizes phonics as central to the development of literacy skills, and (2) research that supports the prioritization of phonics in the development of literacy skills” (p. 158). It should be noted that research suggests it is not working for all children, not because it can’t, but because of racial and social economic disparity (Terry, 2021). Terry (2021), citing research, states, “Despite its promise, the science of reading is not benefiting Black and Brown children at scale, and there appear to be no clear solutions to solve this problem” (p. 86).

Furthermore, according to Paige et al. (2021), teachers must go beyond the knowledge of the Science of Reading (SOR), bringing into place effective research and evidenced based instruction that encompasses more than phonics instruction. Paige, et al. state, “The art of teaching acknowledges teachers’ judgment and its role in the critical decisions made by teachers regarding the SOR and the selection, preparation, delivery, and assessment of literacy activities within the social interactions of the classroom” (2021, p. 346). The authors identify three areas of the teaching craft needed for effective teacher judgement: teacher effectiveness (knowledge, time for learning, classroom social climate, etc.); literacy instruction (individual student needs and the ability to meet those needs); and teacher quality (use of instructional time, setting, activities, etc.) They suggest these qualities be incorporated in conjunction with SOR for effective reading instruction to occur.

To answer the question in this article’s title, “Can the Science of Reading get Johnny to Read?” Of course, it can. The history of reading research discussed in this article repeatedly tells us the importance of systematic phonics instruction for beginning readers. There should be no debate over this. The recent research and compilation of research shared in this article

Can the Science of Reading get Johnny to Read?

does not disagree with the teachings of SOR but implies that the Science of Reading is not enough.

In conclusion, instructors of beginning reading should have knowledge of the Science of Reading but should not put aside effective strategies, comprehension instruction, or their valuable judgment about instruction needed by their students. As the saying goes, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”. Our little readers make connections to their reading on a daily basis. It is recommended that we teach ELL students with texts to which they can connect to aid in comprehension. First and second graders can state text-based evidence for the answers to questions but often need the instruction to do this well. As we light the way for inclusive teaching and learning, research shows that most words students read are learned through wide reading and the use of inferential skills, as they discover the meaning of unknown words. We need to help them learn these skills. Our students deserve a balanced, comprehensive, structured, all encompassing, what-ever-you-want-to-call-it, path for their instruction of reading, which most certainly includes systematic phonics.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

Although I am currently president of MRA, the opinions voiced in this article are my own.

References

Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2006). The daily 5: Fostering literacy independence in the elementary grades. Stenhouse.

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 25-44.

Flesch, R. (1955) Why Johnny can’t read and what to do about it. Harper & Row.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Harvard University Graduate School of Education. (n.d.). 100 stories of impact, a literacy pioneer (Jeanne Chall). https://www.gse.harvard.edu/hgse100/story/literacy-pioneer

Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation, Inc. (2019). Research-based intervention guide ITA-Foundation-2019-White-Paper.pdf (itafoundation.org).

Keene, E. O., & Zimmermann, S. (1997). Mosaic of Thought: Teaching comprehension in reader’s workshop. Heinemann.

Kim, J. S. (2008). Research and the reading wars. In F. M. Hess F. M. (ED,). When research

Matters: How scholarship influences education policy pp. 89-111). Harvard Education Press.

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) (n.d.). What is the simple view of reading? https://www.doe.mass.edu/massliteracy/skilled-reading/simple-view.html

McCardle, P., & Chhabra, V. (Eds.) (2004) The voice of evidence in reading research. Child development and behavioral branch, National Institute of child health and human development, National Institute of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the national Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature and its implications reading instruction. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/ findings.

Paige, D., Young, C., Rasinski, T., Rupley, W., Nichols, W., & Valerio, M. (2021). Teaching reading is more than a science: It’s also an art. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 339-350. doi: 10.1002/rrq.405.2021.International Literacy Association

Semingson, P., & Kerns, W. (2021). Where is the evidence? Looking back to Jeanne Chall and enduring debates about the science of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 157 169. doi: 10.1002/rrq.405.2021.International Literacy Association

Share, D. (2021). Is the science of reading just the science of reading English? Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 391-402. doi: 10.1002/rrq.401.2021.International Literacy Association.

Terry, N. (2021). Delivering on the promise of the science of reading for all children. The Reading Teacher, 75(1), 83-90.

The Reading League. (n.d.). Science of reading defining guide. Science-of-Reading-eBook-2022.pdf, www.thereadingleague.org

Trelease, J. (2019). Jim Trelease’s read-aloud handbook, (8th ed.). Penguin Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nancy Witherell is a professor of reading, emerita from Bridgewater State University, where she still teaches part time. Nancy has written and co-written several books and articles and has given local, state, and national presentations. She is a past president and current president of MRA.

Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learnings |

Can the Science of Reading get Johnny to Read?

BOOK REVIEWS FROM THE READERS OF MRA

Pink and Say

Polacco, P. (1994). Pink and Say. Philomel Books.

Pink and Say (Polacco, 1994) is a beautifully written and beautifully illustrated picture book that tells a story of friendship, resilience, perseverance, war, slavery, literacy, and illiteracy. Although this book was published 28 years ago, its powerful message still resonates with readers today.

Pinkus Aylee (Pink) and Sheldon Russell Curtis (Say) meet on a blood-soaked pasture somewhere in Georgia and sometime during the United States Civil War. Both young soldiers are fighting with the Union Army: Pink, with the 48th Colored and Say with the Ohio Twenty-fourth. Say was shot in the leg by a Union bullet when, as we later learn, he was running away from his unit. Say lays in this blood-soaked pasture for two days, drifting in and out of consciousness. Pink rescues Say and half-drags, half-carries him home to Master Aylee’s plantation, where Pink and his family are slaves. This journey is dangerous as Pink and Say have to avoid being captured by Confederate marauders, who are dragging the area, looking for soldiers who are wounded and still alive.

When Pink and Say arrive at Master Aylee’s plantation, they are welcomed by Moe Moe Bay, Pink’s mother. Moe Moe Bay cares for Pink and Say, helping Say regain his health and strength. When Say is healed enough to walk with Pink’s help, Pink shows Say the ruins of Master Aylee’s house. This house holds bittersweet memories for Pink: the “bitter” as Pink is a slave owned by Master Aylee; the “sweet” as Master Aylee taught Pink to read. This is a magical experience for Pink as words seem to come alive on the page. He promises to teach Say to read one day. Pink knows being able to read is dangerous as it is against the law for a slave holder to teach a slave to read and punishable by death for the slave.

As the plot continues, Pink and Say prepare to go back to fight with their Union units. Pink relishes this as this is the only way he can right the injustices of slavery. Say is very reluctant to go back to battle but does this despite his fears. As Pink and Say are ready to leave, they and Moe Moe Bay hear Confederate marauders approaching. Moe Moe Bay hides Pink and Say in the root cellar, but to no avail. The marauders raid Moe Moe Bay’s shack and shoot her dead. After Pink and Say bury her, they seek out to join their Union units. They are captured by Confederate marauders and brought to Andersonville, one of the worse Confederate prison camps, built to hold only 10 thousand prisoners. Yet, by the end of the war, it held 33 thousand prisoners. Conditions were dire: There was no shelter, no food, and no fresh water. Thirteen thousand Union soldiers died of starvation and dysentery at Andersonville.

The ending to this book is sadly very predictable for this period in United States history. Pink was hanged upon arrival at Andersonville; his body was thrown into a lime pit. Say survived and was held as a prisoner at Andersonville for several months, weighing only 78 pounds when he was released. He returned home and had a very happy and successful life. He was a father of seven children, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather when he died a very old man in 1924. Patricia Polacco is his great-granddaughter.

On the last few pages of Pink and Say (Polacco, 1994) is a personal message from the author. In this message, she offers hope from Pink’s and Say’s story that in spite of the injustices of race and slavery, Pink’s memory and his friendship with Say will always continue.

This book has special importance to me. Like Patricia Polacco, six members of my father’s family fought in the United States Civil War: three family members for the Confederate Army of Virginia and three family members for the Union Army, the Ohio Twenty-fourth (the same unit as Sheldon Russell Curtis). I often include my family history in the literacy courses I teach. When Pink and Say (Polacco) was published in 1994, one of the students in my graduate literacy class at Lesley College worked at the Brattle Street Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She gave this book to me at our last course session, saying this book reminded her of our relationship as a teacher and a student. We are of different races, and it was so important to her that I imparted literacy lessons to her that she could later impart to her own students. I treasure this book, and since 1994, it has had a special place on my desk in my home office.

READER BIO: Elaine Shaw Bukowiecki, Ed.D. is a recently appointed professor emeritus at the College of Education and Health Sciences at Bridgewater State University, where she taught (and still teaches part time) courses in the graduate programs in reading, was coordinator of the graduate programs in reading for eight years, and was chairperson of the Department of Counselor Education for seven years. Elaine was also the editor of The Graduate Review,

a Graduate Journal of Research and Creative Scholarship, for seven years. Elaine is past president of MRA and MACURE and is currently the co-editor with Valerie Harlow Shinas of MRA’s publications and treasurer of MACURE. Elaine treasures the beautiful picture books her students have given her throughout her years as an elementary school, classroom teacher; a district-wide language arts coordinator; and a university.

Courageous Conversations

Singleton, G. E. (2022). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in schools and beyond. Corwin Press.

How do we engage our colleagues in the critical conversations necessary to make lasting change? First, we must educate ourselves and discover the tools and protocols that allow us to have candid conversations about the racial inequities in our schools and organizations. To challenge and disrupt these persistent and systemic barriers to learning for many students, we must begin with ourselves.

In the third edition of Glenn Singleton’s (2022) Courageous Conversations about Race, we are invited to learn the language, knowledge, and tools that allow education professionals to question and discuss race and racial inequities in frank and productive ways. This updated volume is filled with protocols and implementation exercises to support change-oriented discussions amongst educators at all levels.

This volume is the resource many of us need to bring our colleagues into the discussion. Last summer, I used this edition of Singleton’s important work in my graduate classes – it sparked important and often difficult conversations that challenged each one of us in different ways. We grappled with the protocols, and how to have discussions of race in majority White, suburban schools. The text provided prompts and structures to support these important conversations among graduate students. It can become an important tool for your equity conversations!

READER BIO: Valerie Harlow Shinas , Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Ph.D. in the Educational Studies Department in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University.

A former middle school teacher and reading specialist, she has a keen interest in bridging the divide between research and practice in literacy and teacher education. Valerie is deeply committed to the mission and work of MRA – she is the Immediate Past President of the Massachusetts Reading Association (MRA) and Greater Boston Reading Council, Secretary of MACURE, and a member of the Executive Board of the Nobscot Reading Council.

To Night Owl from Dogfish

Sloan, H. G., & Wolitzer, M. (2019). To Night Owl from Dogfish Dial Books for Young Readers.

If you’re like me and love a romcom, this is one with a twist. The two main characters, both young teens, could not be more different from each other. Avery Bloom (Night Owl) is basically a nerd: serious, bookish, and timid. Bett Devlin (Dogfish) is daring, loves to surf, outgoing, and an animal lover. Bett, who seems to be able to crack her father’s code for all electronics, finds out that Avery’s father and her father are in a relationship and are planning to marry. To get the girls to know each other, the fathers plan to send them to the same summer camp, while the two of them have a great time exploring China.

As with any romcom, things just don’t go right for the girls or their fathers. When their fathers split, the girls devise plans to reunite the two men, and trouble ensues. As the girls travel through one disaster after another (usually caused by Bett), they become extremely close. In the mix, Avery’s biological mother appears, adding to the storyline. The question the reader asks throughout most of this book is “Will the girls become sisters?”

READER BIO: Nancy Witherell, Ed.D. is a second-term President of the Massachusetts Reading Association and a professor emerita from Bridgewater State University; she remains there part time. Nancy has authored and co-authored numerous professional books and is currently president of MRA.

Literacy is Liberation: Working Toward Justice Through Culturally Relevant Teaching

Parker, K. N. (2022). Literacy is liberation: Working toward justice through culturally relevant teaching. ASCD.

I was immediately drawn to the title, Literacy is Liberation: Working Toward Justice Through Culturally Relevant Teaching, when ASCD released this wonderful book in February 2022. The intent of this recent publication is to share the why and how we can teach literacy to all students. The text is an important contribution to the literacy field, calling for socially just practices, belief in our students’ brilliance, and a collective goal of liberation.

I was especially delighted when I noticed the author is Dr. Kimberly N. Parker! I am so proud that this award-winning educator is a fellow MRA member. We know her for her work in developing teachers committed to reaching and teaching all students. We know her for her scholarship-disrupting inequities. We know her for advocating for literacy for all students, especially of Black and Latinx students. And now, we know her for introducing us to culturally relevant intentional literacy communities.

Kimberly fills the pages of this practitioners’ book with wisdom, takeaways, tools, and resources. Every word chosen in this book is intentional. Students are valued as multidimensional and seen through a ability and possibility. As with students, Kimberly shares her belief in us as teachers, and our ability to create culturally relevant literacy communities. After exploring culturally relevant teaching, Dr. Parker defines culturally relevant, intentional literacy communities (CRILCs) and details a process to co-construct them with students, in support of their brilliance.

Each research-based chapter is a call to action. First, we are urged to eliminate barriers, to address curriculum violence, and to heal reading trauma. Then, we are guided in developing transformative practices, predictable routines, and conditions for critical dialogue. I was especially captivated with Chapter 6, “Putting It All Together: Toward Transformative CRILC Practice.” I will immediately implement the protocols shared for critical dialogues, prepare to address issues of racism, and practice the recommendations for focused feedback. In this

chapter, Dr. Parker centers student voice and shares how to address harm when it inevitably happens.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Literacy is Liberation: Working Toward Justice Through Culturally Relevant Teaching for all educators. This scholarship supports a disruption of the opportunity gaps and inequitable outcomes. I am confident that teachers interested in building their capacities and culturally relevant practices will use this text as a yearlong guide. If you are ready to reflect on literacy practices, establish inclusive literacy communities, and pursue liberation - then this book is for you!

READER BIO: Patricia Crain de Galarce , Ed.D. directs the Center for Inclusive and Special Education at Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education. Her heart is in the classroom, teaching in special, elementary, graduate, and international education. For 12 amazing years, Patricia led a trilingual immersion PreK–6 school. Her scholarship contributes to teacher development, trauma and resilience, inclusive school cultures, and equitable school practices.

We Are Okay

LaCour, N. (2017). We are okay. Dutton Books.

The intended audience is high school and college students, but the story appeals to adult readers as well. The protagonist, Marin, moves from California to New York to attend college. The book starts out with Marin being alone in her dorm and on campus, during winter break. There’s a mystery about why she’s alone and didn’t go home. Her best friend comes to visit, but Marin is wary instead of excited. Flashbacks and their conversations drive the plot. It’s a short book, but highly emotional. There’s not much action, just a lot of emotions and characters processing various feelings and their past. I loved the characters so much and cried with them and for them! I also love that there are queer characters, but it’s not a coming out story.

Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learnings |

Book Reviews from the Readers of MRA

Little and Lion

Colbert, B. (2018). Little and Lion. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Suzette and Lionel’s parents marry, and they become good friends. They affectionately call each other Little and Lion. Lion is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and their parents send Little to boarding school for a year so they can focus on him. The plot picks up when Little returns for the summer. Lion asks her to not tell their parents that he’s going to stop taking his medication. She wrestles with wanting to be his best friend but worries about his safety. I think teenagers and adults alike will sympathize with her turmoil. The author flawlessly weaves in diverse characters in terms of race and sexual orientation without it being the focus of the novel.

READER BIO: Shantel Schonour is the secretary of the Massachusetts Reading Association and a high school literacy specialist and English teacher at Minuteman High School in Lexington. She loves reading YA books her students recommend.

Stamped from the Beginning

Kendi, I. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books.

As an educator teaching and living in 2020, I had the opportunity to learn more about the history of racism in the United States when Spotify offered the audiobook version of Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi for free. It was an intense read, and I am glad I listened to it.

This book is the most in-depth history of where

people’s racist ideas originated, and how they were able to proliferate throughout the country. Kendi’s research begins with the first slaves who were kidnapped and brought to our country and ends in modern times. It highlights people who were influencers of racist or anti-racist ideas, including Thomas Jefferson and Angela Davis. It also highlights events that may not have been considered racist at the time, such as President Woodrow Wilson hosting the first movie at the White House. The movie they showed? Birth of a Nation. I spent a lot of time listening to this book, rewinding to certain parts to hear them again, either for clarification, or because I did not believe what I heard the first time. This book helped me to understand racism on an entirely different level than I ever had before and truly helped me to see why it is so important that we continue to say “Black Lives Matter.”

READER BIO: Sarah Fennelly, M.Ed, is a reading skills teacher, adjunct faculty, doctoral student, and member of the executive board of the Massachusetts Reading Association. She is always open to learning more and loves to do so through reading.

Tucky-Jo and Little Heart

Polacco, P. (2015). Tucky-Jo and Little Heart Simon & Schuster.

I admit it…I’m a sucker for longer picture books—storybooks with complex plots and character development that draw me into the narrative…enticing me to read them again and again. Tucky Jo and Little Heart, written and illustrated by Patricia Polacco (2015), is one such book.

The story is based on a real event experienced by Johnnie Wallen, who as a boy living in rural Kentucky enlisted in the army soon after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He was deployed to the Philippines with the Sixth Infantry. While clearing the jungle to build an airstrip, he encountered a little Filipino girl. She’d clearly been traumatized by the war, and his heart melted.

The two of them developed a friendship that eased the pain of war for both. She Book Reviews from the Readers of MRA

called him “Tucky Jo,” short for “Kentucky Johnnie,” which she couldn’t pronounce. And he nicknamed her “Little Heart” for the heart-shaped birthmark on her arm. He became friends with the people in her village, as well, and helped provide them with food as they struggled for survival. When Johnnie learned that the area was to be firebombed, he convinced his sergeant to evacuate the villagers along with his unit, thereby saving many Filipino lives, including his young friend. Sixty-five years later, in a truly heartwarming scene, Tucky Jo and Little Heart are reunited.

Polacco shows the horrors of war, but in a way that a child can accept and relate. The reader experiences from Johnnie’s perspective the first-hand suffering of both civilians and soldiers. A timely topic given the war in Ukraine. But it also shows how compassion can prevail during wartime. Tormented by the misery of jungle combat and the sight of Little Heart’s emotional fragility, Johnnie realizes the truth of war. The emotional connection between such seemingly different people is a reminder that, at core, we are all the same and that friendship can reach across different cultures, language, age, and gender.

The publisher lists the reading age for Tucky Jo and Little Heart as 4 to 8 years (preschool to third grade). Younger children, however, might find it difficult to read independently and benefit more from hearing it read by an adult. Older children, those in upper elementary through high school studying World War II, can benefit from the story as well. Discussion might center around war with Japan in the Pacific, for example, versus war with Germany in Europe. The Philippines was a colony of the U.S. for nearly fifty years—from 1898 until 1946. Japan’s invasion wasn’t an attack on the islands as an independent nation. It was a direct attack on the U.S. Why, then, especially in view of Pearl Harbor’s bombing, did the United States focus on the war in Europe first? Such discussion could lead to better understanding of how politics impacts war and its victims.

Writing children’s stories about war is difficult, but Patricia Polacco nailed it. Selected by the National Council for the Social Studies as one of the 2016 Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young Children, Tucky Jo and Little Heart is a treasure to be read repeatedly whether used in the classroom as part of the curriculum or read simply for the beauty of its heartwarming story. Don’t be surprised if you cry during its most touching scenes.

I do…every time I read them.

READER BIO: After receiving her degree in elementary education, Jean Woodbury accepted a job at a school on an army base in Hawaii and later at a Filipino community on a pineapple plantation nearby. She eventually moved to New England, where she earned a Ph.D., taught college courses, and served as an academic dean. Jean writes picture books for ages seven

and up and focuses primarily on historical fiction. Soon after she began writing for children, her short story, “Marion P. Shadd, Freeborn Child of the American Civil War,” was selected by Lee and Low Books as the winner of its contest for biographical profiles and published on the company’s website. More recently, her story, The Tree in Dock Square, won first place in a picture book contest sponsored by the public libraries of Cape Ann in conjunction with the Cape Ann Museum. The Grand Prize was a first edition hardcover publication released in 2022.

EDITORS’ NOTE: It is pure coincidence that “Book Reviews from the Readers of MRA” begin and end with a review of a book by the same author. Yet, these two books and their reviews connect so perfectly to the 2002 MRA Primer theme: “Lighting the Way for Inclusive Teaching and Learning.” Both books take place during a time of war and tell a story of a strong friendship between each book’s two main characters, who become friends despite differences in race and culture. The powerful messages in Pink and Say (Polacco, 1994) and Tucky-Jo and Little Heart (Polacco, 2015) are still valuable for readers to learn in today’s world.

Book Reviews from the Readers of MRA

CHILDREN’S BOOKS COLUMN

Lighting

Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learning Through Children’s Books

MARLENE CORREIA

Reflecting on the theme of this Primer edition, “Lighting the Way to Inclusive Teaching and Learning,” I thought about the many ways diversity represents itself in our classrooms: identities, names, families, physical features, cultural and family traditions, histories, and physical and other disabilities, just to name a few. The books I selected for this column are ones I have witnessed being used by classroom communities to spark conversation and inspire students to learn more about and appreciate the diversity among them.

In Black is a Rainbow Color, Angela Joy (2020) reveals that black is not just a color, but a culture, too. She came to the realization that this topic was a needed reality after a conversation with her own young child who questioned why she would be called black if she was brown. Through the reflections of a child character, she shows the beauty, strength, and love that black represents even if it’s not a rainbow color. The book is filled with meaningful metaphors like “black is side-walking in spit-shined shoes” and “black is the robe on Thurgood’s back” (Joy, 2020, pp. 8-10). These and several other metaphors are explained at the end of the book with references to the history and people behind them. Reading this book aloud can spark conversations and answer students’ questions about black being a color, but also someone’s race. It ties in history and all its complexities. Best of all, this book affirms that black is beautiful, and it is a rainbow color.

Many students know the story of Helen Keller or more recently Stephen Hawking, and how they did not let their physical disabilities limit their goals and achievements. But there are many less known individuals who live with disabilities, achieve success, and advocate for others. Emmanuel’s Dream (Thompson, 2015) is one such inspirational true story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah who overcame many challenges to spread the message that “disability does not mean inability” (Thompson, 2015, book jacket). This story grabs the reader’s attention immediately as we are introduced to baby Emmanuel, born in Ghana, West Africa with only one leg. The challenges aren’t only physical though, as Emmanuel’s father leaves, Emmanuel wishes to be included with the kids at school, his mom falls ill, and Emmanuel struggles to support his family. When reading the story of Emmanuel’s trials and triumphs I found myself cheering on this courageous, persistent, and brilliant boy! In the end, Emmanuel’s dream is realized as he cycles four-hundred miles across Ghana to spread the message of inclusivity for people with disabilities. Emmanuel is a true activist whose work influenced the passing of the Persons with

the

Disability Act in Ghana in 2006. The book contains an author’s note that shares the continued work and legacy Emmanuel is building for others like himself.

There are more and more places where refugees are part of our classroom communities. But how do we help all students understand the often-treacherous journeys refugees had to make to get to the safety of America? Doug Kuntz and Amy Shrodes (2017) share a beautifully written message as told through the true story of the journey of a cat called Kunkush in Lost and Found Cat. Kunkush is smuggled out of Iraq with his family and travels in and out of dangerous situations, trying to stay hidden and safe. But when Kunkush is lost, the family is devastated. In a miraculous turn of events, the authors, who are volunteers with the refugee crisis, discover the cat and are determined to reunite him with his owners. A worldwide search ensues and Kunkush is reunited with his family after four months and thousands of miles. This is a heartwarming, true story that reveals the hardships of the refugees, and the power of the Internet to bring people (and pets) together. This book also has an author’s note and actual photographs from when Kunkush and her family were reunited.

Sometimes there is a book that just sticks with you for long after you first read it! Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting (1991) is one of those books for me. Although it was written in 1991, the prevalence of homelessness in our society is still something we cannot ignore. Bunting shares the story of a father and son living in an airport as they plan to someday get an apartment again “like it was before mom died” (Bunting, 1991, p. 25). Homelessness and housing insecurity takes many forms, and Bunting presents the complex situation in a respectful context. One of the things I both love and hate about this book is that there is no fairy tale ending. As much as you wish for it as the reader, it would not be realistic for many families. But the author uses the symbolism of a trapped bird in the airport who eventually finds freedom to fill the reader (and our students) with a sense of hope.

“Just because you don’t remember a place doesn’t mean it’s not in you” (Diaz, 2018, p. 18). The captivating narrative of Islandborn will resonate especially with those students who emigrated to America with their families when they were too young to remember. The main character, Dominican-American Lola, and her diverse classmates are tasked by their teacher to depict where they came from in a drawing. Everyone is excited to draw representations of their first homes, and Lola wants desperately to recall the Island from where she came, but she was just a baby when they emigrated. Lola sets out to learn more about her place of birth from her family and community through their shared memories. In the process, author, Junot Diaz not only depicts the beauty and culture of the Island but also its trauma. A “monster” emerges in the memories, one that is defeated by “heroes who rose up” (Diaz, 2018, p.27). The “monster” is somewhat ambiguous, but in an interview for the Harvard Crimson (2018), Diaz comments the monster depicts, “traumatic histories from which many of us immigrants emerge—a history that is often erased or silenced within our communities and inside of the community in which we find ourselves” (para. 3). Lola’s finished project is one that impresses her teacher and classmates and affirms her identity as Islandborn.

Have you heard of Ibtihaj Muhammad? She was the first Muslim American woman to compete and medal for the United States as a fencer in the Olympic games while wearing a hijab. She is an activist who broke barriers and knew what it was like as a child to be bullied for showing her faith by wearing the hijab. She wanted to tell her story so students who look like her could see themselves in a children’s book. She and co-author, S.K. Ali (2018) wrote The Proudest Blue, an uplifting and eye-catching book (illustrated by Hatem Aly) that describes two sisters on the first day of school, one of whom is experiencing her first day of hijab. This text holds so many starters for meaningful conversations around differences in cultural clothing, rites of passage, sibling relationships, pride, bullying, acceptance, advocacy, and so much more. The authors include personal notes at the end of the book and a nod to the beauty of all the girls who proudly wear their hijabs.

Creating a classroom community of inclusiveness and respect begins with students’ names. Families take great pride in choosing a name for their child. Many teachers read Kevin Henkes’ (2008) Chrysanthemum, a common favorite about appreciating the name you were given. But there’s a more recent picture book that addresses the value of our names while also explaining the challenges some students have assimilating to the American culture. In the touching story, The Name Jar, author and illustrator Yangsook Choi presents an anxious young Korean girl, Unhei, preparing to go to school in America for the first time. Unhei is worried her classmates won’t be able to pronounce her name and decides it would be easier to take an American name. The story unfolds as Unhei, along with her friends, tries to find just the right new name. In the process, Unhei learns that her name has meaning, and the names of her classmates do, too. She willingly shares the red wooden stamp with Korean characters that spells out her name. It’s a story of culture, identity, family, friendship, and assimilation that will encourage discussion about the power of our names to represent who we are and the meanings behind them.

This column would not be complete without the addition of Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson’s (2019) The Undefeated. Winner of a Caldecott Medal, Coretta Scott King Award, and Newbery Honor, this book is extraordinary. Written in verse as a love letter to America, Kwame uses vivid language and incorporates powerful words to remind us that so much of history has been left out of texts or forgotten. He was inspired to write this poem after the birth of his second child and the election of Barack Obama. The poem is full of common figures (i.e., Wilma Rudolph), less-known figures (i.e., Althea Gibson), and more recent figures (i.e., Trayvon Martin) in Black history, all who are explained in a summary at the back of the book. It is not only a beautiful read aloud (especially for older students) but a history text in itself. Throughout the book, there is a push and pull of hardships versus resilience and advocacy. Kwame emphasizes that this “letter” is for the undefeated but also for YOU (Alexander & Nelson, 2019, p.32). This is a powerful text to exhibit how students’ histories matter, and how important it is to persevere.

References

Alexander, K. (2019). The undefeated Illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Nonfiction - Elementary/ Middle

Bunting, E. (1991). Fly away home Illustrated by Ronald Himler. Clarion Books. Fiction - Elementary Choi, Y. (2001). The name jar Dragonfly Books. Fiction- Primary/Elementary Diaz, J. (2018). Islandborn. Illustrated by Leo Espinosa. Penguin Random House. Fiction - Primary/Elementary

Henkes, K. (2008). Chrysanthemum. Mulberry Books. Fiction – Primary/Elementary Joy, A. (2020). Black is a rainbow color. Illustrated by Ekua Holmes. Roaring Book Press. Fiction - Primary/Elementary Kuntz, D., & Shrodes, A. (2017). Lost and found cat. Illustrated by Sue Cornelison. Dragonfly Books. Nonfiction - Primary/Elementary

Li, G. (2018, March 6). Junot Diaz on the monster of Islandborn. The Harvard Crimson.

Muhammad, I, & Ali, S.K. (2019). The proudest blue. Illustrated by Hatem Aly. Little, Brown, and Company. Fiction - Primary/Elementary

Thompson, L. (2015). Emmanuel’s’ dream: The true story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah. Illustrated by Sean Qualls. Schwartz and Wade Books. Nonfiction – Elementary/Upper Elementary

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Marlene Correia is an assistant professor of literacy at Bridgewater State University. Marlene has 30 years of experience in education in various teaching and administrative roles. She is a past-president and current board member of the Massachusetts Reading Association as well as president of the MA Association of College and University Reading Educators (MACURE). Marlene is co-author of 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books.

Making School Connections BLAST: BRINGING LIBRARIES AND SCHOOLS TOGETHER

MARY COTILLO AND ERIN O’LEARY

Introduction

Let us introduce you to our public library collaborative. We call it BLAST: Bringing Libraries and Schools Together.

For over a decade, our suburban, MetroWest school district has suffered the loss of librarians. Sure, our middle school boasts a big, beautiful library space - we even have a decent budget for books – but, there is no librarian to cull the collection, to staff library time, or to help students select the books that will make them fall in love with reading. We know the science, and we know what a tragedy this is. According to the book School Libraries Work!, “A school library program that is adequately staffed, resourced, and funded can lead to higher student achievement regardless of the socio-economic or educational levels of the community” (Scholastic Library Publishing, 2008, para. 1). A case study through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (2022) reveals a correlation between higher standardized testing scores and better-staffed libraries.

We are The Crazy Reading Ladies. (If you’d like to learn more about what we’ve done to put the right book in the right hands at the right time, check out our blog http:// crazyreadingladies.blogspot.com/). We know adolescents, and we know good books. We read young adult (YA) and middle-grade literature almost exclusively. We’re cool! (I mean, we have literary t-shirts!) We follow the right Twitter accounts like the American Library Association (ALA), Penguin Random House, and those of our favorite authors. We know how to use the Internet. We can talk books all day long; in fact, we love nothing more than spending time with students and matching them to books. We also know that, as wonderful as we are, we are not librarians, nor do we have access to the thousands of books and online resources that await public library patrons. Our students need more than we can give them. Libraries are the answer. The public library is a wealth of resources; ours offers everything from books; to apps; to clubs; to social opportunities; and safe, gathering spaces.

So, how do we get our kids to the library? Field trips are expensive and can’t happen very often. Not all students live within walking distance of the library, and not all parents work hours that will enable them to drive there. Nor will folks prioritize a library trip on a busy

Saturday morning. “ If Mohammad won’t go to the mountain,” then teachers must move the mountain to Mohammad.

The Beginning of BLAST

After getting the appropriate administrative approval from both our building and district administrations, BLAST began. The schools work with students to collect book requests. Those requests are sent to the town youth librarian who then brings books into the school. Mohammad, meet the mountain. Here’s how we do it:

1. Library Card Sign Up. We sent communication home to parents and invited them to sign their children up for library cards. In the beginning, we did this using old fashioned paperwork, but now we’ve simplified it. Parents can find a link to the library card form on the school home page. Physical library cards are delivered to the schools and placed into the hands of eager readers.

2. Advertise! We included information about BLAST in school and teacher newsletters, on morning announcements, and on posters in the cafeteria. We brought homerooms up for guided tours. We tried to entice students using the term “concierge service,” but the kids were more impressed when we told them, “It’s like DoorDash for books!”

3. Collect book requests. Just like DoorDash, BLAST comes with an order form. Students complete a simple Google form providing the following information: Name, grade, homeroom, and book requests. They can ask for a particular title, or they can say they’re in the mood for new releases, mysteries, fantasy, manga, audiobooks, etc.

4. Deliver the magic. The town youth librarian, who has live access to this shared form, pulls books to meet student requests.

5. Designate a time and space for students to access BLAST. We use our existing library space that otherwise is terribly underutilized. Students who made requests are notified to pick up their orders, but many students choose to drop in and browse.

That’s BLAST in a nutshell. Now let’s get into the details.

Details About BLAST

During each week of school, the students complete a library book request form. One hundred nine students completed the most recent form. Their choices are summarized below.

What are they requesting? Weird but True books; Girl Stolen by April Henry (2012); graphic novels about sports; and Scythe by Neal Shusterman (2016) are just a few. One young reader wrote, “I love any cat or dog or even guinea pig book. Any animal. It doesn’t have to be a story. A book about dogs I would love.” Miss Bree, our town youth librarian, brought her a stack of nonfiction volumes and a few audiobook options: Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin (2014) and Secondhand Dogs by Carolyn Crimi (2021) were top choices. After talking over the possibilities and giving serious consideration to each, Secondhand Dogs (Crimi, 2021) was the winner.

What makes BLAST so special is how beautifully simple it is. We allot one hour for BLAST each Wednesday; staggering the students by grade level makes it manageable and encourages conversation. We make every effort to be in attendance ourselves, but because Miss Bree is a town employee and cleared to work with students, supervision isn’t a concern. Teachers don’t have to worry about adding another duty to their plates; they can send students to BLAST and know they’re in safe hands.

When the students enter the library, they are greeted by the cheery town youth librarian with her mobile scanner and the sight of multiple conference tables loaded with novels, graphic novels, Playaway audiobooks, and more. Browsers head to the tables to explore, but repeat customers know to expect a more personalized experience. If they requested a specific title or genre, the librarian has a stack of books with their name on it (literally, on a sticky note). Kids can take all or none of the books she’s curated for them. Some are hits. Some are misses. All of them come with wonderful conversation and connection. The child presents their library card, the librarian scans the book, and “beep!” - Instant happiness.

Teachers use BLAST too. One 8th-grade math teacher is a regular, bringing her entire homeroom up to the library to pick out new books. The adults are especially appreciative of the convenience of BLAST. One teacher proudly told us she was the envy of her book club, crowing, “They didn’t know how I got a copy of this. The wait is four months long!” Book club boasting aside, BLAST supports teachers with academic ventures as well. If a teacher wants to do an author study, needs extra books for literature circles, or wants to offer “read alike” titles to satiate the students whose literary appetites were just whetted by The Giver (Lowry, 1993), BLAST “comes to the rescue.”

There is always one student who asks, “How much does it cost?” and is shocked when told that the library offers books free of charge. These kids live in the world of subscription services and streaming apps; surely, this kind of access comes at a cost. Nope, the library is free. Imagine that!

We have not only solved the access issue, but we have connected our students to a public resource they may not have encountered on their own. Though we don’t have colorful survey data to share, the public librarian recently told us that the participation in their summer programming doubled thanks to BLAST. New families showed up to story hour, scavenger hunts, and other events. Children who met Miss Bree at BLAST were able to introduce her to their families. Some of our students have joined the library’s teen advisory board or now attend monthly book clubs.

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. When we purge our classroom collections, we donate to the library’s used book sale. When we need to stock a new teacher’s classroom, we head back to that very same sale and fill bags with beautiful, high-interest literature for next to nothing.

BLAST has also influenced the ordering practices of our local public library. Playaways individual, non-internet devices for audiobooks - are a huge hit among our middle school readers, so the library increased their collection. The public librarians are among the first to know when we’ve selected a new core novel or booked a visiting author. They want to be sure their collections are bulked up and ready for the ravenous readers that come their way. We reach out to our librarian friends when we have Back to School Night (library card sign

ups!) and other family-focused events. Town librarians have attended evening school events for four years running, allowing families to check out books on site. Parents are spread thin already. If the library can meet them where they are - band concerts, conferences, art showsthen it removes one more barrier between children and books.

After four years, BLAST is in five of our district’s schools and is spreading to neighboring towns. The youth librarian two towns over has a son who attends our school. She observed BLAST in action and is talking with the middle school administration in the town where she works. “Good news travels fast!”

Sometimes, “the best things in life are free!”

Final Thoughts

Now, we want to be clear. We know BLAST doesn’t replace a well-qualified school librarian. We still strongly advocate for full-time library media specialists in every school in Massachusetts. But we also know that we aren’t there yet. Since “perfect is the enemy of good,” we’re going to go with everything good that BLAST gives us. It’s not everything, but it’s a good thing.

References

School Library Publishing. (2008). School libraries work (2nd ed.). Scholastic. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2022, October 14). Case study. https://www.dpi.wi.gov/

Children’s Literature Cited

Crimi, C. (2021). Secondhand dogs. Balzer & Bray.

Henry, A. (2012). Girl stolen. St. Martins Press.

Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Martin, A. M. (2014). Rain reign. Feiwel and Friends. National Geographic Kids. (varied dates). Weird but true books. National Geographic Kids. Shusterman, N. (2016). Scythe. Simon & Schuster.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mary Cotillo and Erin O’Leary met while teaching together at a middle school in Massachusetts. It was there they earned both a reputation and title: “The Crazy Reading Ladies.” This reading specialist and ELA teacher-turned-principal stop at nothing to motivate adolescents to read. Their passion is putting the right books in the right hands at the right time and empowering teachers to be champions of literacy. Over the last decade, their schoolwide reading initiative, All In!™ has been implemented in schools in Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Florida. In 2017, they authored the young adult (YA) version of Battle of the Books for Random House Publishing, Co. In their ongoing efforts to match today’s students with high quality literature, they’ve worked with a wide variety of authors including Brigid Kemmerer, Kekla Magoon, Ellen Hopkins, Jack Gantos, Ruta Sepetys, Jewell Parker Rhodes, and R. J. Palacio. Sought-after presenters and teacher-trainers, they have been featured at local and international conferences. Ms. Cotillo is the principal of Frederick W. Hartnett Middle School in Blackstone, Massachusetts, and Ms. O’Leary is the reading specialist at Horace Mann Middle School in Franklin, Massachusetts. Follow their trials and triumphs at crazyreadingladies. blogspot.com and @allinreading.

Making School Connections STUDENT AGENCY SAVED MY SPRING 2022 SEMESTER: POST-PANDEMIC TEACHING KAREN HAVENER-RUIZ

Introduction

This study discusses student agency, and how strategies for building student agency support teachers and students during the problematic adjustments of returning to school after the pandemic. COVID-19 altered the educational structure as parents tried to provide learning environments for students at home. In addition, many parents, mainly minority and low-income families, who were less likely to have the opportunity to work remotely, experienced financial hardship (Yung-Chi et al., 2021). Fulfilling the educational home structure was difficult, as expressed by high-income families. This information suggests that possibly low-income families were focused on the financial system and dealing with hardships rather than education.

In addition, students were struggling emotionally. During COVID-19, mental health issues were a significant concern. Many students experienced poor health, persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts (Jones et al., 2022). Therefore, students often had difficulty completing academic assignments in their home settings. Many students returned to school with learning gaps and incomplete areas of knowledge expected for a student’s grade level, for which students did not show competency. Students’ negative emotional experiences during COVID-19 may have contributed to behavior problems brought to the classroom when returning from COVID-19.

According to many of my colleagues, the 2021-2022 school year was challenging. Inattentive students and frustrating learning gaps interfered with instruction. Teachers were frustrated with negative student behavior and a sense that the administration was not supporting their efforts to control students. Anecdotally, teachers mentioned concerns about apparent lack of action they witnessed in the classroom - students would interrupt learning with chatter and have disagreements that monopolized teacher time. Similarly, I noticed an increase in arguments and fights among students. That spring, my colleagues and I were counting down the days to summer vacation.

After the return to classrooms and pre-pandemic formats in 2021, many students gave up quickly, often abandoning their writing after the first attempts, particularly when writing essays. Of course, giving up does not serve students well or prepare them for the future, as they

miss out on opportunities to learn. Moreover, it is arduous for teachers to help students who are unwilling to try as learning is stalled when students disengage. Interestingly, Duckworth (2016) considers perseverance more valuable than talent in the classroom. An individual can succeed with persistent effort, but talent is unreliable. Persistence is essential to success.

Many teachers may have found the school year 2021-2022 difficult due to concerns over the pandemic, catching students up, and filling learning gaps. This may be particularly true for populations of students at risk for learning such as at the Title I school where I teach inclusion classes. The school is in central Massachusetts and houses grades 5-7. Some of my colleagues called our school a war zone during the 2021-2022 year because it had been thick with stress– even the students were emitting stress. It may have seemed appropriate to administrators and stakeholders to require teachers to deliver copious amounts of material to students in a frantic concern over learning gaps, utilizing a teacher-centered learning environment, but this did not always serve students well.

During the 2021-2022 school year, I noticed students passively completing assignments, while some were not completing tasks. I observed a distrust of the school among my eighth graders, such as disinterest and a sense that they could do without it. After all, they may have thought that since we were without school during the pandemic, school held little value. This attitude resulted in behaviors that interfered with learning even further, such as altercations in the hallways, vacant stares in the classroom, conversations that interfered with learning, and the appearance of video games students tried to sneak onto their computers. In short, my students seemed unhappy and not learning.

Case Study

In the spring of 2022, I recognized the urgent need for change. To begin, I used Deci & Ryan (2008) as a guide, focusing on belongingness, competency, and autonomy. I needed my students to have the comfort of belonging to a group with which they were familiar. I asked the students to share three names of students with whom they preferred to work and created groups using this information. I set up a project that allowed a variety of approaches. Students worked well when their group preferences were honored. It was more fun to work with friends, and the groups completed the project despite our fear they would goof around. For this project, students were to create television shows with commercials. They read a short story and found a justifiable theme with the option of using this theme in their performance. They had practiced theme as a class many times, so there was competency. We studied demographics and products related to the demographics of certain shows we watched together. The practice supported competency. I gave students the autonomy to make their shows out of any topic; some were uncomfortable with the freedom. Students would ask permission to try a creative idea, and I would tell them to discuss it with their teams to help the project remain student-centered.

Although autonomy for this project allowed students to create any television show they desired, there were guidelines, such as requirements for show length and procedures for commercial advertising. I gave students job titles to help them work well together. Students organized the work together with rules and procedures. Student-centered learning is not complete freedom but helps students become independent.

Student Agency

According to Poon (2018), the concept of student agency can be confusing, as many people have different definitions of student agency. I will use the definition of agency defined by Zeiser et al. (2018):

1. Self-efficacy, which is the belief to succeed

2. Self-regulated learning, which involves planning a task, executing it, and reflecting on the outcome

3. Perseverance or the ability to struggle with a problem without quitting

Building student agency involves passing the responsibility of learning onto the students. Students with agency become willing to improve their work after receiving feedback (Dweck, 2017; Ruiz, 2020). Instruction aimed at building agency is necessary because students with a strong sense of agency do not give up in facing challenges - they don’t quit.

This inclination to persist is crucial because it helps students grow and succeed. Teachers may provide students with opportunities to gain self-efficacy by helping adolescents recognize their effectiveness and efforts (Dweck, 2017; Ruiz, 2020). Self-regulation is a valuable part of agency and provides long-term benefits by instilling habits for students to accept feedback and take ownership of their work.

Understanding motivation is essential to promoting student agency. According to Deci & Ryan (2008), there are two types of motivation. First, Autonomous Motivation, which is a motivation that provides choice and the chance to own the task. Autonomous motivation is composed of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that individuals have internalized (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Teachers can accomplish autonomous motivation by providing choices with assignments. Projects or tasks have guidelines and expectations, as it is not complete freedom for students.

However, autonomous motivation allows an individual to personalize the outcome of the task. For example, students may have a project to complete with a team with several options for possible products to create inclusion to the learning. Students may be making an artistic response to a novel, such as a video response to the theme, or write and recite a speech, or create art that applies. The project has guidance and requirements, and students

have a personal investment in their work that drives their motivation. When students have choices in their tasks, they can invest in learning by personally contributing to a project or assignment (Ruiz, 2020). A student involved with an assignment that allows for a personal touch and a sense of autonomy often experiences autonomous motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Students own their learning, which leads to self-efficacy, determination, and the ability to self-regulate, which deepens knowledge. Autonomous motivation usually leaves the student motivated long after completing the task, and students remain interested indefinitely after the event (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Autonomous motivation is a practical part of student agency (Deci & Ryan, 2008). These motivational strategies may affect students’ ability to deal with obstacles, such as a pandemic or simply the difficulty of paying attention in class. Autonomous motivation may increase the optimism for students’ overall feelings and their adaptability to the changes in school practices. For example, autonomous motivation provides an opportunity to give the student a chance to own their assignment personally and intrinsically remain motivated to learn.

Second, Controlled Motivation allows individuals to work for a test or teacher-centered lesson when individuals have extrinsic rewards for their work. With controlled motivation, individuals engage and focus on completing the required task. For example, the student could take a state-mandated or teacher-created test or participate in a teacher-centered lesson. Little autonomy is involved, making it difficult for students to become personally involved. Although students can become motivated by these controlled tasks, such as a teacher-centered activity, a controlled type of motivation often causes students to focus on extrinsic values, such as grades or teacher praise. Thus, the inspiration usually ends with the task, such as when the exam is over (Deci & Ryan; Ruiz, 2020).

In addition to these two types of motivations, are an individual’s three basic needs to maintain motivation: relatedness, competency, and autonomy. Relatedness is a sense of belonging, with students feeling comfortable among peers and teachers and safe to take academic risks. Competency involves having the skills and knowledge necessary to do the task. Autonomy involves an individual having choices and opportunities to personalize and own the task (Deci & Ryan, 2008). These components of motivation are requirements for all individuals, including students and teachers. For example, students need to connect with their peers and the teacher for relatedness, and a teacher needs to feel a connection with other teachers. A sense of belongingness for teachers would appear as solid relationships with staff and administration. Such connections help teachers’ morale and prevent teacher burnout (Aguilar, 2018).

Students must understand the material to work with it, and teachers must be comfortable teaching the material. Autonomy allows the teacher to teach a class the best way and to give students a chance to make their work personal (Deci & Ryan, 2008; Havener-Ruiz, 2020). When teachers acquire their motivational needs, especially if they have autonomy, they

Student Agency Saved My Spring 2022 Semester

are likely to provide students with independence that improves their motivation and promotes agency (Daniels, 2017). Teachers may dislike relinquishing some authority while allowing the class to be student-centered; however, student-centered learning does not mean students have a chaotic, rule-breaking time without guidelines, procedures, or boundaries.

Results

Throughout implementation of this project, my classroom felt different as students were active instead of passive. Students discussed plans with their groups and looked at computer screens together, gathering ideas. The tension and passivity were gone, and I could observe their project ideas and discussions without making judgmental statements. I could ask students what was needed, and how they would plan to solve problems, and I encouraged them by not providing qualitative remarks and suggesting they could accomplish the work. Seeing students active, and teachers and students experiencing reduced stress was exciting.

John (students’ names changed for protection) struggled most of the year, blaming his ADHD for his forgetfulness and inattention. During this project, he designed a television show he found hilarious and video-taped the performance. John’s demeanor changed from passive to active, and he showed more enthusiasm while working with friends.

Laura, a special education student who had difficulty keeping up in class all year, became the leader of her group. She helped create the plot. Laura video-taped her group’s performance. When group needed to edit and add music, Laura researched free applications to help with this. Laura was taking the initiative.

A Latino special education student, Juan, spent the class period directing practice versions of his show. He “hired” classmates to perform for him. His directing approach was authoritative, as he yelled “cut” when he wanted to redirect students. Typically, Juan failed to finish assignments throughout the year and tried to sneak his air buds on, so he was half listening or not listening at all.

The project also positively affected students who were not special education students. Emily said she worked harder on this project than anything else, and she thought it was fun and challenging. These students made elaborate commercials that impressed their classmates. While we worked, it did look a little like controlled chaos. Students were acting out their scenes in various locations in the hallway. I allowed them to use their cell phones to record their shows, and I noticed that they did not abuse the privilege.

Sometimes students read through a scene loudly, and I needed to call my fellow teachers to let them know what the students were doing and ask them to let me know if we were too loud. Students created murder mystery shows and dragged students by the legs down

the hallway as if collecting the dead. Students made plans to meet outside of school to put the finishing touches on shows. The idea of students meeting in their free time to complete assignments surprised me and was not the norm throughout the school year. What did students learn? They gained a review of finding a theme in literature. Students learned to work on a team to create an original show; they faced the challenge of performing in front of the class. The students looked proud and relieved when we watched shows.

The pride was self-efficacy as students independently finished a task, and the activity reminded them of what they could do in the future. A teacher does not need to set up a daily project as I described. That might be exhausting and not practical. However, such projects help students learn and make a valuable contribution to education.

Conclusion

Since autonomous motivation supports academic drive long after the task, selfefficacy, perseverance, and self-regulation support student learning and may help students past K-12. Student agency supports college students and prevents them from dropping out. According to Duckworth (2016), the two- and four-year college dropout rate in the United States is among the highest in the world. For a focus on autonomy, competency, and relatedness, students worked with their favorite peers to complete a television project of their invention while gaining knowledge about demographics. The result is that students own the learning and become more involved in the process. When we support student agency, students absorb education and become successful. The television project emphasized competency, belongingness, and autonomy, which creates students’ self-efficacy, persistence, and self-regulation.

References

Aguilar, E. (2018). Onward: Cultivating emotional resilience in educators. Jossey-Bass.

Daniels, E. (2017). Curricular factors in middle school teachers’ motivation to become and remain effective. Research in Middle Level Education, 40. http://dx.doi.org./11080/19404476.2017.1300854

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M, (August 2008). Self-determination theory: A macro theory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology, 49(3), 182-185. DOI: 10.1037/a0012801

Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. Simon and Schuster. Dweck, C. S. (2017). Summary of mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Havener-Ruiz, K (2020). Perceptions of New England public middle school teachers: A qualitative study of teacher motivation and student agency. Dissertation, American International College.

Jones, S. E., Ethier, K. A., Hertz, M., DeGue, S., Le, V. D., Thornton, J., Lim, C., Dittus, P. J., & Geda, S. (2022). Mental health, suicidality, and connectedness among high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021. MMWR supplements, 71(3), 16. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su7103a3

McTigue, E., & Liew, J. (2011). Principles and practices for building academic self-efficacy in middle grades language arts classrooms. The Clearing House, 84, 114-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2010.543191

Poon, J. D. (2018). Part 1: What do you mean when you say “student agency”. Retrieved from https://education-reimagined.org/what-do-you-mean-when-you-say-student-agency/ Yung-Chi Chen, C. (2022). Educational and community programs. Queens College of the City. University of New York, 43(3), 719-740. https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X21994153

Zeiser, K., Scholz, C., & Cirks, V. (2018). Maximizing student agency: Implementing and measuring student-centered learning practices. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServle t?accno=ED592081

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In her more than 20 years of teaching, Dr. Karen Havener-Ruiz has primarily taught at the middle school level. Her first three years of teaching experience were for court-appointed youth in a locked facility, which sparked a curiosity for motivating students and encouraging student agency. Dr. Ruiz has taught in a variety of suburban and urban settings and continues to teach at Oxford Middle School. She earned her doctorate at American International College, where she explored student agency and became interested in sharing this knowledge with colleagues.

MRA Primer 2022 | www.massreading.org

Making School Connections FIND THAT LIGHT, BE THAT LIGHT

When walking down a dark hallway, you use a flashlight or a cell phone to guide the way. That is the light that guides you down a path to your destination. Imagine if you had more than one light. Imagine if you had seven or more lights that guided you, or if you had one big flood light. Ask yourself, would that help you to your destination? Who or what is the light that guides all our young diverse learners? Within this article, I explore the many facets including who or what that can be the guiding light to students’ progress: teachers, staff, custodians, lunch workers, volunteers, substitutes, administration, support staff, specialists, families, administrative assistants, books, culture in the building, and more. Who will light the way for inclusive teaching and learning?

In order to find the light, we need to understand how inclusive learning and teaching are defined. According to the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell University, 2022, inclusive teaching strategies refer to any number of teaching approaches that address the needs of students with a variety of backgrounds, learning modalities, and abilities. These strategies contribute to an overall inclusive learning environment in which all students are perceived to be valued and are able to succeed. Many people are confused by the word inclusive and immediately think it is about students with disabilities, and that is not the case. We need to first understand that inclusive is for all students, and the practices included in it, even by making the smallest of changes, can help all students regardless of abilities.

The culture within your building, classroom, and environment is essential. Working in a small suburb, it has been difficult to recruit and hire people of color. We are continuing to work on this as a district and group of districts in the area. This has a tremendous impact on students of color, and schools must include resources such as books, bulletin boards, videos, and much more to reach all students, but especially the small ratio of students considered to be high risk or students of color. How do we do this in a building and classroom? This is not something that can happen quickly. Staff have to build up their classroom libraries, by looking at and analyzing what they have. Becoming aware of diverse literature, and the lack of it, can then spark what is lacking for all students. This cannot just come from the classroom teacher. It is included in music class, health class, PE, library, and art. Inclusive practices start with how the teacher presents materials through read alouds, books, or YouTube videos. We live in a world where we can learn about diverse topics that may not be present in your school through the internet.

LISA KING

One simple example could include updating your read alouds with picture books about names. Instead of Chrysanthemum (Henkes, 1991), how about Calvin (Ford & Ford, 2022); Becoming Vanessa (Brantley-Newton, 2021); Always Anjali (Sheth, 2018); or My Name is Aviva (Newman, 2015)? According to the Wisconsin-Madison College (2015) that researches and creates a bi-yearly data chart to acknowledge where diversity in children’s books is, and how far we still need to go with student literature for diverse main characters, in 2015, .9% were American Indians/First Native, 2.4% were Latinx, 3.3% were Asian Pacific/Asian Pacific Americans, 7.6% were African/African Americans, and 73.3 % White. In 2018, small gains were made according to the data with 1 % American Indians/First Native, 5% Latinx, 7% Asian Pacific/ Asian Pacific Americans, 10% African/African Americans, and 50% White. As you can see from these data, more work needs to be done with filling our classrooms, libraries, and hallways with inclusive and diverse literature. All students should be able to look at a book like they are looking in a mirror and see someone relatable. Data on books by and about Black, Indigenous and people of color published for children and teens has been compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison (n.d.).

I have uncovered one area of light. Shine the light on inclusive and diverse literature that students can see themselves in as a mirror, and literature that students cannot see themselves in to learn about others.

Not only are the books important, but what about the hallways and the offices? The décor in your buildings matters. It matters not just for inclusive purposes for students but for staff as well. Everyone needs to spread that light through bulletin boards, classroom libraries, videos, and book displays. This should not be just during holidays or celebrations but all year through. Exploring the concept that all stakeholders take a part in being that light has to start with the mindset that all individuals in your building can make a difference. It starts with an understanding of inclusive practices, what that means, and how understanding where we are and who our population is is the first step. For example, the administrative assistant when making fliers, posting on Twitter, or on a communication screen can make a difference by acknowledging and choosing pictures/topics that are inclusive. Handbooks and paperwork from the main office should be available in other languages or with the option to have them translated. Newsletters from the office or principal can be sent via email with an option to listen to the person speak or with a QR code and translation. These are things that only take a few minutes and can become a habit that is worth maintaining.

The cafeteria is a great way to work in inclusive practices. The lunch workers can be your lunch heroes and will rise up to the challenge by supporting students with English as a second language. Having picture cues by the food and celebrating different cultures can help. In the cafeteria, where everyone is, can be a great place for a bulletin board that celebrates diversity. One idea is creating a map on the wall and having push pins to indicate students’ and staff’s cultures. Another idea is incorporating an art theme and decorating the cafeteria by sharing student work.

Parents and guardians will join in on supporting inclusive practices, if you can invite them. Find a catch and go with it. Parents will begin to see the culture of the building by the way in which you communicate and send information home, and by the images you share on social media. When considering messaging, think of parents/guardians and families and students. They all process information differently and may need a different approach to messaging. Meeting them where they are will shine a light for them to engage with the school community and contribute.

Find the light, be the light. There are many ways to be that flashlight for staff, students, and families. The more flashlights you have, the bigger the shine will be to light the way to inclusive learning. It is not going to happen quickly but start with one light at a time.

References

Cornell University Center for Teaching & Learning. (n.d.). Inclusive teaching strategies https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/assessment-evaluation/inclusionaccessibility-accommodation/building-inclusive-4

Cooperative Children’s Book Center. School of Education. University of Wisconsin-Madison. (n.d.). Books by and/or about Black, Indigenous, and people of color (all years) https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-byabout-poc-fnn/

Children’s Literature Cited

Brantley-Newton, V. (2021). Becoming Vanessa. Random House Children’s Books. Ford, JR, & Ford, V. (2021). Calvin. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Henkes, K. (1991). Chrysanthemum. Greenwillow Books.

Newman, L. (2015). My name is Aviva. Lerner Publishing Group.

Sheth, S. (2018). Always Anjali. Bharat Babies. www.bharatbabies.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa King has been an educator for over 25 years, and during this time, she taught first grade and special education. After several years of teaching, Lisa went into administration as an assistant principal for 5 years and has been the Principal at the Shawsheen Elementary School in Wilmington, MA for 10 years. Lisa has her BA in early childhood education and psychology from Bridgewater State University. After receiving her BA, Lisa continued on to receive her Clinical Master’s Degree in Education at Bridgewater State University, and then her CAGS in Educational Leadership at Salem State University.