All Together Now: Proposing Stances for Teachers as Readers

8/14/2019 All Together Now: Proposing Stances for Teachers as Readers

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C H A P T E R 1 8

All Together Now:Proposing Stances forTeachers as Readers

Michelle Commeyras, Betty Shockley Bisplinghoff,and Jennifer Olson

The International Reading Associations position statement on

Excellent Reading Teachers (2000) names six criticalqualities of the teachers knowledge and practice:

1. They understand reading and writing development, andbelieve all children can learn to read and write.

2. They continually assess childrens individual readingprogress and relate reading instruction to childrensprevious experiences.

3. They know a variety of ways to teach reading, when to useeach method, and how to combine the methods into aneffective instructional program.

4. They offer a variety of materials and texts for children to

read.

5. They use flexible grouping strategies to tailor instruction toindividual students.

6. They are good reading coaches (that is, they provide helpstrategically). (n.p.)

Our Readers as Teachers and Teachers as Readers collaborative

experience leads us (18 teachers) to propose additional qualitiesthat may matter with regard to what teachers bring with them toclasshow they pack their book bags, so to speak.

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Those who joined the seminar did so because they longed fora sanctioned time for reading whatever they wanted to read. Theseminar was a first-time offering. Never before had teachers at theUniversity of Georgia been able to take a course that countedtoward a graduate degree that allowed them to read whatever theychose. It seemed too good to be true. At the first seminar meeting,the teachers said they were waiting for a list of required academictexts on teachers as readers to surface. At the end of the first threehours of talk about what we had read recently or what we werecurrently reading, someone asked what the required reading was

for the next week. When Michelle said that it was up to eachperson to find what she wanted to read, there was a moment ofsilence, as if everyone were trying to finally absorb the potentialand responsibility of this real freedom to read.

After all our seminar discussions and after writing essays andreading and revising them, we feel bold enough to recommend anaddition to the Associations statement that excellent readingteachers share many of the characteristics of good teachers in

general (n.p.). We think excellent reading teachers share many ofthe characteristics of good readers in general. Good readers possesspositive habits and attitudes about reading. They focus on themeaning of what they read using a variety of strategies, includingconsidering any background knowledge that seems relevant. Goodreaders tend to read a variety of texts according to their specificindividual needs. It seems obvious to us that excellent teachers ofreading bring their reading lives to the teaching of reading and

language arts. We want to challenge the divide between who we areas readers and who we are as teachers. Each must inform the other,and through this enhanced literate living, professional developmentbecomes more organic. In addition, we propose that the language ofstandards for reading and language arts needs to incorporate theconcept of stances. Standards refer to a level of quality or excellencedesired or attained, whereas stances refer to attitudes or views thatpeople take about something. In studying ourselves as readers who

teach and teachers who read, we have realized how the stances wetake toward the habits of reading enhance our efforts to meeteducational standards with our students.

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What we find lacking in the current concern with standards isthe potential significance of the teacher coming out to his or herstudents as a reader. Perhaps this is because there is no researchthat shows a direct relationship between teachers sharing theirreading lives with students and students performances onachievement tests. The essays in this book explore the potential ofa teachers personal reading to enrich teaching in general andteaching reading and language arts specifically. Does this matter inregard to childrens achievement on reading tests? We do not havethe kind of scientific evidence that is being called for by the No

Child Left Behind legislation. What we do have is confirmation thatour students appreciate and respond to knowing us as readers. Wethink developing genuine reciprocal reading relationships withstudents around reading may be far more significant and longlasting in regard to quality of life than reading performancereported through test scores.

On December 4, 2001, we readers who teach gathered for thelast time. We spent our three hours together considering what we had

learned from our shared inquiry as readers who teach and teacherswho read. Below are the stances we identified as important in strivingto meet both teacher and student standards. We selected a fewexamples from our transcripts and essays to help illustrate the needfor adding new stances to the more rehearsed concept of standards.We hope that other teachers find these stances compelling enough tobring their reading selves into their classrooms.

1. Teachers as Readers Let Their Students SeeThem Reading a Variety of Texts

It sounds so simple. Drop everything and read (DEAR) when youhave your students do so. Marybeth did not find it to be that simple.Could she relax and focus on her reading? Could she lose herself ina book? It took awhile, but her third-grade students learned not tointerrupt her reading during 15 minutes of sustained silent reading.

Rene, who teaches prekindergarten children, wondered howshe could share her adult reading life with those so young. Shebegan simply by letting her students see her reading each day.

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Rene wanted them to realize that she liked to read because sheread books that she did not even have to read. She let them see heras someone who reads for pleasure.

Sarah told us about something that happened during DEARtime in her classroom: I was reading and apparently making somefaces because afterward they were asking, What happened in yourbook? Michelles only comment was, They are watching you,indicating that sometimes the most influential teaching is donethrough example.

2. Teachers as Readers Talk With Students AboutTheir Reading Lives

Sharon asked her students, Did I ever tell you about the book that Istayed up all night reading that made me cry? That kind ofquestion got students attention. Sharon found that telling about thecharacter Bird inBefore Women Had Wings by Connie May Fowler(1996) was a powerful way to show that readers can identify with

characters and become fascinated with how authors use words.Sarah let her fifth-grade students know that she was requiredto read 20 minutes every night and to write about her reading forher university course. She turned in her reading homework to thestudents so they could question her. This impressed them becausethey, too, were required to read at home after school each day for20 minutes. The students loved being able to know their teacher asa reader who thinks about what she reads.

Lori anticipates her annual summer family vacation at thebeach. This is a time when she can read whatever books she wants.Even if summer is the only time a teacher gets to live his or her veryown reading life, it is still something that can be shared with students.We can come to a new school year ready to tell our students what wehave read during the summer and what it has meant to us.

Marybeth surprised her third graders when she began talkingabout what she was reading after DEAR. She found different ways

to share what she was reading. If the content seemed inappropriatefor her third graders, Marybeth talked more generally about heremotional responses to the story. After she talked about reading

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something that made her feel sad, other students began sharingevents in stories that made them sad.

Vicki recalled the time she read The Giving Tree (Silverstein,1986) on her last day of teaching fourth-grade students. She knewit was one of those stories she could not read without crying, andsure enough, the students saw her tears as she struggled to readaloud to the end. What mattered to her was that her studentsunderstood how the story could initiate such an overwhelmingresponse. Even more remarkable was her understanding that thisevent totally changed their perspective of her because she had hadthe courage to show that kind of emotion.

Renes prekindergarten students sometimes see her gigglingand other times see tears in her eyes while reading. She hasdecided not to hide from them that reading is an emotionalexperience for her.

Sarahs students noticed when her eyes filled with tears asshe read Cane River(Tademy, 2001). Sarah also told her studentsabout getting mad when she read about a sister telling her brotherinNumber the Stars (Lowry, 1998) that he probably could notstay alive without a woman to cook and clean for him.

3. Teachers as Readers Talk About How TheirReading Influences Their Writing

Marybeth read the following excerpt from Cane Riverto teach herthird graders that good stories usually have beginnings that grabreaders attention:

On the morning of her ninth birthday, the day after MadameFrancoise Derbanne slapped her, Suzette peed on therosebushes. Before the plantation bell sounded she hadstartled awake, tuned her ear to the careless breathing ofMamzelle above her in the four poster bed, listened for themovement from the rest of the sleeping household, and quietlypushed herself up from her straw pallet on the floor. (p. 3)

That got their attention, Marybeth told us. Thereafter, childrenwere coming to show her first sentences in their books when theythought them to be good attention-getters, which confirmed that

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Marybeth had successfully used a reading example to teach studentsa point about good writing. She added that sharing from her readinghad to be done with some kind of excitement and enthusiasm. Weagreed that if sharing ones reading to teach writing, or anything elsefor that matter, was done mechanically and without passion, it wouldlose what the students were responding to.

4. Teachers as Readers Talk About NewVocabulary in Their Reading and How They GoAbout Understanding It

Pedagogywas Sharons new vocabulary word. Sharon, who workswith elementary school children on their speech and language,began sharing that she, too, came across new words as a reader.Simply sharing that she was a learner about language, just as theywere, changed her teaching. Sharon found that the traditionaldivide between teacher and student became fuzzy when she joinedher students as yet another learner.

Another example is the time Barbara talked to her seventh-grade students about reading Crazy in Alabama (Childress, 1993).To teach the word antiseptic, she read an excerpt about an eyefalling out of a socket. Barbara said the boys were particularlyinterested and wanted to read the book. She refused to give thetitle because she thought parents might think the book wasinappropriate. Imagine the intrigue that Barbara created when shewould not reveal the title, and the book was right there in the

classroom in a book bag behind her desk.

5. Teachers as Readers Tell Students Aboutthe Reader Relationships They Form WithStudents, Family, and Friends and With Fictionand Nonfiction Characters

Debbie told us about how reading books that her daughter liked

had sustained their strained relationship during her daughtersadolescence. We asked her if she had told her seventh-gradestudents about this. Before being in a conversation about readers

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as teachers, it had not occurred to Debbie to do so. Possibly theenthusiasm of those in the seminar encouraged her to bring thatexperience to her teaching by having her students write to familymembers about the stories they were reading in school.

Tricia wrote about her teacher friend, Carolyn, an avid readerwith a home full of books. Tricia trusted Carolyns readingrecommendations, and Carolyn was generous about lending booksto her. Tricias admiration for Carolyn and her love of reading led tothe idea of having Tricias second-grade students interview peoplefrom the community about their love of reading. It was this

extended relationship between Tricia and Carolyn that gave rise tothis educational activity.Sometimes, Marybeth falls in love with characters in books.

She told her third-grade students that she admired Johnnie Mae inRiver, Cross My Heart (Clarke, 1999) because the characterfought back when someone insulted her little sister. The studentscheered for the character after Marybeth read out loud theparagraph in which the character stands up for herself.

Margret the daughter, the friend, the mother, the wife, and theteacher explored in her essay ways in which reading is inextricablyabout relationships. She wants reading to be a part of all her familyrelationships and friendships.

6. Teachers as Readers Tell Students Aboutthe Questions They Have While Reading

Jill wondered why she is so interested in reading memoirs and inexamining her personal history. She shared that wondering withher university students and read from the author bell hooks abouthookss awareness as a schoolgirl that she was not reading anyAfrican American writers. Jill also read from Virginia Woolf, whowrites about her realization that there were no books on thehistory of women on her bookshelf. Reading womens memoirs ledJill to know why she wants to write about her lifeher history.

Sarah, who often shared her reader response homework withfifth-grade students, provided them with a model of a reader whoquestions. On one occasion, she told students about how mad she

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got while reading Lois LowrysNumber the Stars (1998). Sarahwanted to discover how a few sentences about a man needing awoman to cook and clean for him made her so very angry. This typeof questioning by readers has been found to be a key dimension ofreading comprehension, and one way to teach this skill is byexample, which Sarah did by modeling the behavior for her students.

7. Teachers as Readers Tell Students How TheySelect Something to Read, Why TheySometimes Do Not Finish a Text, and WhyThey Sometimes Reread a Text

When teachers are readers, they develop their own ways of findingsomething to read. Jennifer wrote that she sometimes looks throughthe books in her personal library or goes to the library or bookstore.She, like many of us, also relies on recommendations from peopleshe knows who are reading. Some teachers enjoy rereading favorites,although others do not or do so infrequently. The texts that teachers

reread often become more comprehensible and greatly appreciated.For example, Jennifer wrote about realizing that as an adult sheunderstood Catch-22 (Heller, 1961) in ways that just were notpossible when she was an adolescent. Too often, rereading a text isrecommended by educators for comprehension solely during thestudents initial reading experience, rather than as an importantactivity the student should continue throughout his or her lifetime.The greater a teachers awareness of him- or herself as a reader

becomes, the more he or she will have to teach students about suchrealities of being a lifelong active reader.

8. Teachers as Readers Talk to Students AboutWho Influences Them as ReadersWhoInspires Them

Often we take up a hobby or sport because we know someone who

enjoys it. Jennifer remembers having models for reading as ayoungster. She recalls titles of books that her sister read and thoseher parents read. Sharing those memories with students might lead

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them to notice and comment on readers they know and what theylike to read.

Jill wants to encourage her undergraduate university studentsto take risks as she strives to understand herself as a risky teacher.Sometimes she finds inspiration and support in her reading life. Jillwrote about the words of Helene Cixous that inspire her tocontinue taking risks.

9. Teachers as Readers Tell Students AboutTroubles They Have Had With Reading

Perhaps our students are surprised when we let them know thatsometimes we think we are reading and then realize we have noclue about what has been happening. When Sarah confessed thisto her fifth graders, it led the class to come up with the self-monitoring question, Huh, what was I reading?

Margret is a born-again reader. She does not recall finishingone book in high school. Now, she takes a book with hereverywhere just in case there is time to read. Margret also

remembers as a girl having a special friend who could read betterand faster. She did not mind this difference, as long as the friendread to her. These memories converge in Margret the teacher. Sherelies on her personal history to be a model to her students of thekind of readers she wants them to be, and in doing so, Margrethopes that none of her students will look back on their schoolyears and remember never having finished an entire book.

Someday, Rene may tell a child how she once struggled with

what she thought she should read in order to fit in. Her revelationmay reassure the child that everyone has a right to have readingpreferences. Readers often have favorite kinds of texts and authorsand genres.

10. Teachers as Readers Tell Students Aboutthe Strategies They Find Helpful as Readers

Sarah uses sticky notes to mark places in her texts that areimportant for her to return to. When her students saw this, theybegan doing it also.

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When Sharon told her students about readingRememberingBlue (Fowler, 2000), she let them know that in some parts, sheslowed down her reading rate so that she could visualize particularscenes. Sharon also told them that in other parts of the book, sheread quickly because she was so excited to find out what was goingto happen.

11. Teachers as Readers Tell Students About WhatThey Are Learning From Reading

Sarah told her fifth-grade students what she learned from readingthe essay Should We Burn Babar? Essays on Childrens

Literature and the Power of Stories (Kohl, 1995). She describedher sense of Aha! and Oh, no! from reading about how famousincidents, such as Rosa Parkss refusal to move to the back of thebus, may have been misrepresented so often that now the mythsare better known than the original facts. Students began referringto some authors writing as tricky texts. In sharing her reading,

Sarah was providing a critical reading lesson that resulted in a termthat students understood.Jill often refers to what shes read to communicate with

preservice teachers about what she has learned and is learningabout prejudice, racism, white privilege, and issues of power andoppression. Thus, it is through sharing her reading life that Jillshares her values with her students.

12. Teachers as Readers Find ConnectionsBetween Their Reading and Their Teachingof Students

Dawn finds in her reading a deeper understanding of the lives of herstudents. Although she may not have experienced poverty, she canlearn what living in poverty means by reading about those who do.

Vicki, who is expected to teach reading according to a

particular program, felt guilty whenever she took time at the end ofan instructional period to read aloud to first- and second-gradestudents just for the fun of it. Although Vicki found the mandated

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reading program beneficial in many ways, she realized that the

prohibition against rereading favorite selections was contrary to

her own life as a reader. She could not continue to insist that

students always bring a new book to read during their sessions.

Because of her own joy in rereading, she realized that allowing the

rereading of familiar and favorite stories was an important aspect of

teaching reading.

Lori felt the character Ellen Fosters words as a wake-up slap

in the face. Foster (Gibbons, 1987) could hardly tolerate what she

and the other students had to read in school because it was too

happytoo perfectand her life was not that way. Reading thatbook led Lori to ask herself many questions. She also began asking

her elementary school students what they wanted to read, instead

of always choosing for them.

Rene loves to read, but she ran into something unexpected

in our Readers as Teachers and Teachers as Readers seminar. Her

reading choices seemed far different from the choices of the other

teachers. In comparing her reading to that of others, she began

feeling inadequate. Fortunately, she talked about this with us andwas able to reassure herself that what mattered was the joy she got

from reading. Having this experience brought home to Rene and

all of us the possibility that students might end up feeling

inadequate among their peers because of what they like to read.

The possibility of peer pressure, whether real or imagined, with

regard to reading choices was yet another insight gained from

Renes exploration of her reading life.Sometimes a character in something we read becomes a

touchstone to understanding one of our students. Jill talked about

how Lyra in The Golden Compass (Pullman, 1996) came to mind

when she tried to understand a university teaching interns fear

about doing something different in her mentor teachers

classroom. In the book, Lyra has a spirit guide and sometimes finds

herself in conflict between what others expect of her and what her

spirit advises. Jill recalled this text because she thought that herteaching intern was experiencing a similar tension between what

the mentor teacher expected and what Jill advised.

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Aimee grew up loving to read without the extrinsicmotivation of earning points. Now she works in a school wherechildren read, take a test, and earn points if they pass. BecauseAimee remembers vividly learning to love reading without pointmotivations, she now strives to get her elementary school studentsto feel the joy of a good story without any talk of testing andearning points. She knows what that joy feels like, and she willnever give up trying to bring that into the lives of her students.

Barbara decided to pass along the thrill she experienced whenshe could read whatever she wanted for a graduate course. Until theseminar on readers as teachers, it had not occurred to Barbara togrant more reading autonomy to her students. Sometimes, thesimplest things elude us until we have direct experience with them.Barbara wanted her students to experience the same sense ofpleasure and joy she did when she was given the freedom to read.

13. Teachers as Readers Teach PassionatelyDuring our seminar, there was plenty of passion expressed for being

readers and for bringing our reading selves to our teaching ofreading. Michelle, Betty B., and Jennifer wondered what wouldhappen to that passion once we were dispersed and back into otherschool and educational cultures. So we sent the following e-mail tothe teachers nine months after the seminar ended when a newschool year had just begun:

Dear Readers Who Teach,

Today, we met to move forward on the book manuscript.We were wondering about something that seems really, reallyimportant. We want to know what each of you thinks aboutthe following: What is happening to your being a teacherwhose reading life comes into her teaching life, given thecurrent climate of testing, No Child Left Behind, andmandates that affect teaching reading and writing? Are youfinding ways to continue being readers who bring yourreading lives into your teaching lives? Do you have any advicefor teachers who might say, Hey, bringing my reading life tothe teaching of reading doesnt matter because all thatmatters is children passing tests? We are hearing stories

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about life in schools that seem very discouraging to teacherswho view themselves as professionals and want to make theimportant decisions about how best to teach children. Please

reply to the group!

Thanks, Michelle, Betty, and Jennifer

Barbara replied,

I came across a description of what I do to avoid all of thejunk in my school, and in education in general inPhonics

Exposed: Understanding and Resisting Systematic Direct

Intense Phonics Instruction (Meyer, 2002). Its a descriptionof the research by Lortie on p. 57. While it probably isnt thebest survival strategy, it certainly works for me, and obviouslyothers. How sad. I had no idea there were so many otherslike me.

Dan Lorties (1975) research found schools to be cellular,which resulted in teachers feeling alone. This isolation is why fewteachers talk back to mandates. It feels too risky. Many teachers

make a choice to close their doors and take refuge and safety insilence. It is poignant to realize that Lorties research from the1970s rang so true for Barbara teaching in the new millennium. Itis sad, indeed, to think of how many other teachers might notrealize what Barbara has, that there were so many others like me.

Sharon replied that the Breakfast Bunche Book Club createdfor her third-grade students would be a part of the new school year.In fact, the media specialist and a lead teacher were launching new

clubs for grades 4 and 5. In regard to her own teaching, Sharonreported that she had not yet shared much of her reading. She wasfeeling torn between presenting students with instruction incritical areas that they will be tested on and larger issues ofcomprehension and expression.

Marybeth reported that the teacher book club she began theprevious winter was growing. At least one new person was goingeach month, and several teachers ordered the books that were

being read, even though they could not attend meetings. Theywanted to read the selections anyway. Marybeth was optimisticbecause she sensed that the attitudes about testing at her school

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were changing for the better. She saw two reasons for this. The first

was a new principal who placed less emphasis on testing, and the

second was that the results of the previous years tests were good.

Regarding reading in the classroom and sharing books, Marybeth

had talked a little about a book she was reading, but she wanted to

do more of that.

Annette wrote that she was reading a lotfor fun, for school,

and just because. But she admitted that she had not yet brought

her reading life into teaching reading. She was encouraged, though,

when she read Sarahs response. We also were excited to hear from

Sarah, who was now a second-year teacher of fifth-grade studentsin a school with 90% free and reduced lunchesa statistic all too

often used as a marker for struggling students.

Sarah wrote,

My advice is that we can never even dream of all of the

influence our reading lives have on the children we teach. Mystudents and I wrote letters over the summer, and in everyletter I received, students asked me what I was reading and

told me that they had been reading, too. This year, I continueto talk about my reading life. Constantly. I still read each nightand turn in my homework to my students. I have also joined afew book talk groups that are going on in my classroom. The

students keep asking me questions like, Are you really goingto read what we read tonight? I talk about my reading inminilessons, and we recently had a share day where we alltalked about our favorite books. Just yesterday, I brought in an

article fromNewsweek and shared it during our ReadersWorkshop. We were talking about reading for different purposes,and I was sharing an article about arthritis that I had read lastyear as a way of understanding my condition with my knee.

As far as testing is concerned, what can I say? Arent weleaving children behind if we arent sharing what readersreally do when they read? Sure they must have the skills forthe tests, but they also need the skills for life as a reader. I am

not sure there is a way to convince teachers that their readingis important. I think we only need to convince teachers to try,just a few times, to bring in their own reading lives, and I dontsee how they cannot make time for it.

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During one brief semester together, we have remembered andrenewed our commitment to be passionate readers who teach. It isstill not easy for all of us to stand with our students as engaged andengaging readers, but we each have found more authentic ways tomake our reading lives matter in our teaching lives. We challengeourselves and you, our readers, to find out how these and otherstances can enrich any reading program or instructional method.

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REFERENCES

International Reading Association. (2000).Excellent reading teachers. Aposition statement of the International Reading Association. Newark, DE:Author.

Kohl, H. (1995). Should we burn Babar? Essays on childrens literatureand the power of stories. New York: New Press.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Meyer, R.J. (2002).Phonics exposed: Understanding and resistingsystematic direct intense phonics instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

LITERATURE CITEDChildress, M. (1993). Crazy in Alabama. New York: Putnam.Clarke, B. (1999).River, cross my heart. Boston: Little, Brown.Fowler, C.M. (1996).Before women had wings. New York: Putnam.Fowler, C.M. (2000).Remembering Blue. New York: Doubleday.Gibbons, K. (1987).Ellen Foster. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.Heller, J. (1961). Catch-22. New York: Simon & Schuster.Lowry, L. (1998).Number the stars. New York: Dell.Pullman, P. (1996). The golden compass. New York: Knopf.Silverstein, S. (1986). The giving tree. New York: HarperCollins.

Tademy, L. (2001). Cane river. New York: Warner Books.

All Together Now: Proposing Stances for Teachers as Readers

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