Voices from the Middle - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2005

“I’ve said before that you have the toughest job there is: that of combining relationship with academics.” It is his respect for kids, for teachers, and for the balancing act they both perform that comes through in Chris Crutcher’s anecdote of being there for one child. There is wisdom for all of us in his words: “Most of the time you can’t fix it, but you can walk along and understand.”

Alvermann introduces us to a new metaphor for thinking about the ways in which teachers might intervene in their students’ reading lives: re/mediation. Ultimately, it involves fixing the conditions in which students learn rather than attempting to fix the students per se (remediation).

So much hinges on putting the right book in a students’ hands. Motivation to read is the foundation from which knowledge, reading competency, and comprehension grow. But how do we do it? Here, Hinton and Dickinson offer practical advice for how to reach kids through a partnership with library media specialists and a commitment to promoting books across subjects, locations, and seasons.

“Achieving academic excellence takes more than just inspiration. It requires teachers who know how to implement specific language learning strategies and administrators who help create a school community that provides cultural and social support needed for high achievement.” East Texas, home to a large ELL population, is the setting for a successful program that offers students support for both language development and subject-matter learning.

Cooper, president of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, dismisses the contention that some children are just not able to learn. His organization, in partnership with school districts, has studied the causes of and potential solutions to the achievement gap and has seen encouraging progress in several school districts where teachers and administrators have focused on five factors: Instruction, Leadership, Organization, Professional Development, and Community Engagement.

The authors outline a research study that explores the plight of students who direct so much effort into decoding that comprehension suffers. They make the case that difficulties in reading for older readers (intermediate, middle, and high school) could be due to reading fluency difficulties, and they offer strategies for helping these students improve comprehension, overall reading achievement, and content-area knowledge.

Many teachers find themselves working with ELLs in content-area classes without the arsenal of tools and training that will help them help their students. This is a recounting of how one teacher, with the help of thoughtful observers and a commitment to teaching all of her students, worked to create strategies that improved language learners’ English, science vocabulary, and content understanding.

If you were ever intimidated by word problems in math, imagine how it would feel to take a math test when you didn’t speak the language! Here, literacy specialists worked with classroom and ESL teachers to help ELLs recognize the critical components of math concepts and problems, and become familiar with math vocabulary. As a result, there were increases in scores, learning, and confidence.

Poverty is the single biggest factor in creating the achievement gap. Wilhelm advises three broad “fixes”: widen notions of text, help students become active learners, and provide contextualized assistance. Teachers, especially those who are getting the meaningful support they need, can make a difference right now.

Allen reminds us that there is a big difference between “defining a word” and “actually knowing the word in its forms and shades of meaning.” She offers several strategies for introducing words and reinforcing meaning.

Burke lists the features common to established (and local) academic success programs, organized around his “four C’s of academic literacy.

The gap exists, and is getting worse. That’s the bad news. The good news is, there are schools out there that are beating the odds. Daniels hits on 6 points that provide perspective and hope.

What possible use is literary vocabulary to someone on the wrong side of the achievement gap? Jago explains that being able to articulate your reaction to something you’ve read deepens understanding and broadens thinking. What more obvious requirements for narrowing that gap?

Perhaps, Probst posits, it would be smarter to let educators work to close the achievement gap and let the politicians do something else. With legislative blessing, test publishers rake in the money and school goals morph from “educated students” to “higher scores.” Our best hope—and the students’—is to stick with what we know, learn more, and find a way to fit it into our teaching.

Apathetic expressions. Excuses to leave the classroom. Students unprepared for class. Sound familiar? Even veteran teacher Linda Rief faces a few unmotivated students in her classes. She fights back by finding out their interests and matching them with the right book, by giving them choices about the kind and format of writing they’ll do, and by finding or creating an audience for their finished product. Finally, she advocates for capitalizing on students’ interests by offering vocational-technical classes for those who want them as early as eighth grade.

If you are among those interested in introducing your district to literacy coaches, you’ll find here the answers to commonly asked questions about the role and process of working with them.

The definition of “literate” continues to evolve as the expectations of society grow. Today, technological literacy is just as important as print literacy. Patterson encourages teachers to initiate conversation with parents, administrators, and policymakers about the importance of access to technology and its impact on learning.

Reviewed are: Bridging the Literacy Achievement Gap, Grades 4–12 edited by Dorothy Strickland and Donna Alvermann; The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (2nd ed.) by Stephen D. Krashen; Becoming One Community: Reading and Writing with English Language Learners by Kathleen Fay and Suzanne Whaley; Going Graphic: Comics at Work in a Multilingual Classroom by Stephen Cary.

Here’s a treat! Not only are 7 young adult novels that deal with censorship featured, but an interview with Chris Crutcher, author of the new The Sledding Hill, follows. It’s a fascinating peek into this therapist/author’s thought process as the book evolved.