Literacy Limits
How do we raise expectations while still supporting readers, writers, and ourselves?
There was a discussion among teachers regarding how many minutes they should expect students to read: 20? 30? “Some teachers ask their students to read 50 minutes a day.”
I did not engage, for two reasons: First, I asked the same questions when I taught 5th and 6th grade. I never arrived at a firm answer. (I believe I expected 25 minutes.) Second, after observing many classrooms over thirteen years as an administrator, I have come to believe that it does not matter how many minutes a teacher expects their students to read independently. What matters is whether students want to read independently.
I am not against expectations. Accountability can be helpful. What I am wondering is, what good does it do to set an expectation if students do not desire to meet it? If students naturally read a lot, should they stop reading once they hit their 20 or 30 or 50 minutes? Related, do these expectations from school make reading, writing, etc. feel like homework?
I realize these questions have been addressed already in the literacy world. As an example, through chance encounters I was invited to join a group of educators to discuss literacy engagement with Dr. Gay Ivey in Madison, Wisconsin eight years ago. She was interested in approving grants to practitioners who would implement and replicate the research she and Dr. Peter Johnston had conducted, in which students were given considerable latitude to direct their own reading lives while limiting classroom mandates.
In response, we shifted our after school intervention from a computer-based reading program to an independent reading experience. The advisors conferred with students as they read and....that was about it. Yet students grew in their reading achievement and as readers.
After sharing our results and plans to further this program, Dr. Ivey declined our grant application. Her explanation: “If this is such a wonderful program, why not place it in the classrooms?” She had a point.
We had made efforts to co-create classroom libraries as well as connect reading and writing within the curriculum. Some teachers had shifted toward more authentic and less rigid literacy blocks. Yet artificial demands on readers and writers remained in classrooms, potentially limiting possibilities.
As educators, we operate from a set of beliefs. These beliefs are influenced by how we were taught as a K-12 student and in our college studies. For example, if we listened to our teachers read aloud as children, and we learned about the benefits of this activity as an undergraduate, we will likely employ reading aloud in their own classrooms. This is my story: I believe reading aloud is an effective practice. Yet I also believe we should continuously examine all aspects of our practices, especially in the context of our current classrooms and situations.
I know teachers often lack time to engage in any reasonable amount of professional study. They are scheduled from morning to afternoon, often driven by district policies as well as by outdated thinking of leaders about the nature of our knowledge work.
Thought leaders such as Regie Routman and Brian Cambourne offer two clear steps to interrupt this cycle of plan-do-act minus any reflection or adaptation for our students:
Examine Your Current Beliefs About Literacy
Introduce a More Effective Approach to Literacy Instruction
That’s it? you ask. Well, on paper yes, but in reality this is a multi-year initiative if thinking schoolwide. In fact, plan on five to seven years, with seven being the likely length of time.
Why does it take so long to collectively shift toward more authentic literacy practices? Because change takes time.
Think about a practice that you hold in high esteem and implement(ed) regularly in your classroom. Now imagine someone coming in and letting you know that another practice would potentially replace what you are currently using. You might perceive that this person is suggesting your previous instruction was subpar, that during all this time you were facilitating a literacy block that could have been better. It can be a body blow to the ego. In addition, how do we know this new practice is more effective than what is currently used? Because a few studies conducted found promising results?
This is the reality that teachers and leaders contend with when engaging in schoolwide literacy improvement. And if you were like me, you may be coming into a position with limited knowledge on the most promising practices for teaching readers and writers. All of this exists in the context of an educational community that still cannot find agreement on how to best build phonemic awareness, on how to utilize small group instruction to scaffold emerging readers, or on the number of minutes a student should be reading at home, or whether we should even be communicating these expectations at all.
Three years ago, after a deep dive into professional development around the foundations of literacy, teacher leaders requested more autonomy in professional learning. We decided to host a book study focused on reading instruction. Teachers could select the professional resource they wanted to read from many choices, which is how their groups were formed. Prior to starting the study, we examined our beliefs about reading instruction, similar to how we began our previous professional development initiative (the reading-writing connection).
I will admit I was uncomfortable with this more free-flowing approach. How would I know if teachers were learning?
In spite of my worries, the overall experience was productive. When we reconvened at the end of the school year to reexamine our beliefs about reading instruction, we found just as many more points of agreement as we had after our more directed study around the foundations of literacy. Success is also evident in my current conversations with teachers around their professional learning goals; promising practices from both PD experiences continue to surface and are reinforced.
To conclude, I think there is a place for both types of approaches to continuous improvement. Sometimes we have to learn specific strategies together to ensure equity. Sometimes we can release more of the responsibility to the students or teachers. What seems to matter most is that there is a belief in the process, that it will lead to whatever outcomes we desire to achieve. Simply setting an expectation is not enough; we have to fully commit to it in our daily efforts.