Blog: Why Kids Can’t Read
Chapters 1 – 3
Kristie Hofelich
October 19, 2006

This book is so refreshing after plowing through Bridging English! It has a very straight-forward, honest approach that I appreciate immensely. I love the insight and experience with which Beers writes, as it allows me to take a look into her world, and compare it with my own. For this reason, I would like to approach this blog in the following manner: I will show quotations that struck me as I read and explain why they had this effect upon me.

1. “Maybe that teacher already understood what I now understand – that when kids give up and drop out, they perpetuate the vicious cycle in which their offspring grow up in an a-literate environment and become the next generation of struggling readers whose teachers might chant: ‘These kids can’t read’” (Beers 7).
This passage resonated with me because I am a firm believer that in order to affect major change in our school and the world, as teachers we must work our hardest to break the chain of perpetual non-readers. We must work to help kids with their basic comprehension difficulties, whatever those might be, in order to get them up to grade level in their reading. However, we can’t stop there! This call for duty requires us to move beyond the basics and find interesting and engaging methods of instruction to reach all students once they are on grade level with their reading. If we do this, we can capture them and create life-long readers and learners who choose to engage in reading for pleasure, and are independent readers in all subject, genres, etc. This will help us reach students who can read, but choose not read (aliterate), students who have such difficulty reading that they give up, students who struggle but get through it, and proficient readers.

2. “I was beginning to learn that studying the process is far different than grading the product. That year, I found myself scribbling comments that students made on whatever sheet of paper I had handy – from the back of my grade book to someone’s spelling test. I loved capturing their words to read and reread later, not at all sure of what I was looking for, but positive that their thinking aloud was an indication of something important. I felt like an eavesdropper, and years later, was relieved to discover I could call these notes ‘anecdotal records’” (Beers 11).
I absolutely love the idea of recording students’ comments, insights, conversations and complaints because it gives you the chance to really stop and consider the thinking processes the student goes through while saying the things he/she says. I think that now technology can be used to make the paper trail less ominous, i.e. IPods, tape recorders, microphones, etc. Then, the things students say can be easily used for conferences or made into podcasts. As Beers constantly points out, we can find the answers to kids’ reading problems if we just listen to them – really listen to them. It must be so frustrating for students who repeatedly tell their teachers that they don’t understand what they read, only to get the standard answers back, or to be ignored completely. I have never been one of those students, so it is very beneficial to my teaching for me to read the accounts of those who do struggle with everyday reading.

3. I went through the Dependent Reading Behaviors list on pages 24 – 26 and checked off any examples that applied to my 14-year-old brother, who has struggles of his own with reading comprehension that I have not yet been able to help him conquer. I have been trying to explain to him that sometimes you simply need to approach reading in a different way in order to overcome your struggles, but now he wants to know how he can do that. He fits into several of the dependent reader behaviors, and I appreciate that Beers gives practical advice on how to approach helping students with these difficulties. I hope to put her theories to the test so that my brother can move forward with his reading, and not just skate by on his writing ability, which is much higher. I want him to have reading as an escape time for individual pleasure, and to excel in it through college. I don’t want him to be Beers’ George.

Chapter 15

“In every lucky life there is one teacher who places her finger upon our soul.”
William Gibson

I truly believe that without the focus on becoming a complete teacher, I will not be able to be this one teacher who places a “finger upon the soul” of my students. This chapter forced me to look inside myself and decide what I believe as a future educator, and what defines me as a person. Each of the categories presented, definition, motivation, goals, methods, epistemology, and philosophy are all things that I need to fully consider and have a solid answer for when it comes time to look for a full-time teaching position at the end of this year. Inevitably administrators will ask me questions about why I want to teach, how I am going to teach, and what I have to offer to their community of learners/faculty. We have been working on defining these things throughout the MAT program, and I feel confident that by the time I go for interviews, I will not have a problem telling anyone my philosophies on teaching.
The only problems I see with my being hired are that there may not be a job opening at the school in which I want to teach, and the fact that there is a lot of game playing that goes on when it comes to hiring/firing within the Public School System. This is not to say that my personality, my experience with the MAT Program, my content knowledge and my passion for teaching couldn’t stand alone as reasons for hiring me. This is to say that in most cases, who you know and the relationships you have built with administrators, faculty and students may be more important in the hiring decision than all the right answers to the interview questions. What I mean by this is that there is a very tricky system to hiring in the school system right now because retired teachers and transfers must be honored when a position comes open at a school before new teachers can even be considered as a candidate for hiring. This makes new teachers’ chances even slimmer as there are many transfer requests every year from veteran teachers. However, if you know people in high places that value the contribution you will make as a teacher, things can be shuffled to accommodate you. In other words, if a school wants me, there are ways to bypass transfers in order to get me. I am hoping that I have set the stage for this by being involved in the school that I want to work for, by always being professional, timely and responsible, and by building relationships with influential people/students.
The second part of this chapter that I love I the section on being involved with the parents and community as much as possible. As I have always said, parents can be your best allies or your worst enemies, and it is my job to make the necessary connections with them as soon as possible in order to make the relationship a good one. The book suggests many ways of making the connection to parents, but I have two that I have decided will help my first year of teaching go much more smoothly: I would like to implement a class website that allows parents to stay in constant communication with me and to stay abreast of what is going on in the classroom and I would like to utilize parent-teacher-conferences as fully as possible to help build those necessary relationships with parents. I also plan to participate in extra-curricular activities, such as a Book Club, committee meetings, etc. in order to be seen by parents outside of the classroom setting. Sometimes I think this helps to let parents know that I am a real person, too, who likes to have fun, and who has school spirit.

Chapter 14: Planning the Lesson

Yea! I am so glad that this chapter begins by telling us all: “We want to fill that gap by articulating the intermediate steps that we and others take to transform theories about English teaching into practice” (388). I needed the reassurance that I will have at least one resource ready to help me, in addition to the wide, wide world of the internet, in planning my lessons for student teaching. I have an entire semester to plan for and I have never really had experience making practical plans that I will actually implement in a classroom with real live kids. I have decided to take this chapter and let it be a guide for the planning of my HAT project for this class, and the basis for my lesson planning for student teaching.
My experience will begin this semester with the teaching of Huckleberry Finn to Juniors and a bit of Humanities to Seniors. I will be substitute teaching during this time for the teacher I am observing, and I have been given to opportunity to design my own lessons and teach them however I would like. I will definitely implement the six-step lesson plan, though not a rigid version of this, because it will give me the security of knowing that I have thought out the process of the lesson, considered my goals for the day, and not left out anything important. I say that I will not follow this model in a rigid manner because I am always open to discussion with the students, and I will allow for teachable moments should they come up at any time during my teaching. This is really a unique opportunity because I have been given free reign to try some new, exciting things for students with whom I have already become quite familiar. One of my ideas, which is borrowed from Sara Kadjer, is to create a map of the journey of Huck Finn, having students design the map and plotting the route throughout the novel. This will serve as a great tool in teaching for me, and also as a resource for the students in preparation for their assessments on the novel.
My favorite model for instruction that is presented in this chapter is the “Individualization, Interaction, and Integration” method. This reminds us as teachers to leave much of the work up to students by allowing them to take time to grasp individual meanings from the lessons we provide. It also reminds us to encourage the communication of new ideas and thoughts on the subjects at hand so that the students can show us what they have learned, and how we may need to improve the subsequent lessons to address areas with which the students had trouble. The last thing about this model, which is my absolute favorite idea, reminds us as teachers to relate the material we are teaching to issues outside the classroom, which will help answer the inevitable question: “Why are we doing this? What does it have to do with my life? When will I ever use this again?”
The next section tells me that I should always prepare and outline for teaching, everyday. I believe that this is totally necessary for a smooth lesson, and to help remind me not to forget key ideas. My greatest model for this so far has been Pam Jett, Assistant Principal at Oldham County High School. She was my instructor over the summer for General Methods, and she had an outline prepared everyday, which helped her to stay organized, and to flow from one item to the next without fail. I thought that she was just really proficient at teaching, and was not working from an outline because she never let on to our class that she was reading from it, or even referring to it. It was there, nonetheless, and she told me later that she wouldn’t feel prepared without it. Also, if certain lessons work for me, I can always save them for the next school year, and tweak them as necessary for the new students.
I appreciated the warning from the book also; this was an honest moment in the life of a teacher. The book advises us to go to experienced teachers to ask them what works when it comes to time management and dealing with the sheer number of papers that float around everywhere in a teacher’s life. It also tells us to realize that as new teachers we will make mistakes, plenty of them, but to use them as teaching tools to help refine our best practices. I think this is real, practical advice, and I will keep this chapter handy for the upcoming assignments we will have in class.