The Magical Magic Tree House

I now have a second child who is completely captivated by Mary Pope Osborne's incredibly popular and well-written Magic Tree House book series. Several years ago, my son and his friends were introduced to the series at school, and they devoured them in a near manic race to finish "the next book." Now my daughter is in first grade and she is equally enamored. I can literally not buy and/or check them out of the library fast enough, and I am thrilled to see her so engaged in reading.

While my son turned into a rabid reader early - and to this day reads everything, including the ingredients on the cereal box - my daughter was a little slower to get engaged. She was reading EasyReader books such as Fancy Nancy pretty quickly. But she was never really motivated to read them often, regularly, and independently. Thus, I wondered if she would become "a reader." So, when we introduced the Magic Tree House and she began reading them in a single setting, I knew there was something truly "magical" about these books.

In addition to reading the books, cover to cover in a single setting, my daughter loves to talk about the books and the adventures. Clearly, she is engaged and meta-cognitive when entranced in the world of the Magic Tree House. I am incredibly impressed with and thankful for the work of Mary Pope Osborne. For the ability to engage children in the written word is a special gift, and it is unavailable to far too many.

English Class - Business or Pleasure

Recent comments from a reader, as well as curricular discussions with colleagues, have led me to recently ponder the English classroom and the phrase "life long lovers of reading."

That phrase has always bothered me, especially when it is used in reference to the job of an English teacher and the role of the English classroom. There is a clear line between reading for pleasure and the study of literature, and no English class/curriculum should be designed with the goal of "creating life-long lovers of reading." We can, and should, teach them to "appreciate literature," but not to love it. No math teacher is tasked with making students "love" the "joy" of a "wonderful algorithm." No social studies teachers is expected to pursue the goal of "loving" the timeline of the Civil War. No science teacher is expecting "love" for the beauty of a graph or chemical reaction. We don't expect for schools to create life long lovers of jazz music or basketball or writing or texting or nursing or fixing pipes or installing software or filing or calculating or .... or anything.

English classes are about developing literacy and critical thinking skills - not developing hobbies. Simply because there is an "artistic quality" to the content, does not mean that "loving" the art is the purpose of the class. Literary analysis is not about discovering the joy of a wonderful book, though that can certainly happen -it's about understanding important societal themes and appreciating effective use of language. And no author ever wrote a novel or poem with the intention of it being assigned to students to read and deconstruct. It just so happens that great literature is the perfect content for students to practice the higher level thinking skills of rhetorical analysis. And the themes of great literature also allows schools to be purveyors of culture and sources of character instructions as the stories allow students to understand literature as a "record of the human experience."

But loving reading? You can't teach anyone to like something. And you shouldn't try.

It's the Literacy

A recent blog posting posed the following idea: "It can't be a good thing when your child's math homework requires more writing than use of numbers."

I'm not sure I agree.

If you have followed one of the bigger stories in reform these days - the successful turnaround of Brockton High School in Massachusetts - you might consider the impact of improved literacy on all classes. This teacher-led reform centered around the basic concept of literacy in all classrooms.

If literacy skills are low, nothing else matters. And too many teachers in the content areas simply assign reading rather than teach it. English teachers in lower grades teach how to decode, then read. After that it becomes about content. Thus, at the upper levels, they teach the kids how to read various genres. Social studies teachers should do the same. And same with math and science. Once students have memorized the times tables and the formulas for basic math, it's about problem solving. That's why story problems matter - it's application of the abstract concept.

There is much to consider in reforming schools, and no single issue or reform is the panacea. However, the importance of all teachers "teaching reading" in all classes is pretty high on my list.

Knowledge is the Key

People may logically assume that learning leads to the acquisition of knowledge. However, the converse may, in fact, be true. It appears that knowledge is the key to learning. I've have been intrigued in the past week by all the talk of "knowledge" as the fundamental component of learning. From op-eds in the New York Times to the education blogs, there has been an exciting degree of discussion about the importance of knowing information. This is intriguing, as I've often noted the importance of background knowledge as the key to accessing new material. It first impacted me after reading I Read It, But I Don't Get It by a Denver-area teacher and researcher Cris Tovani. The insights I gained from Tovani's book were revolutionary in my teaching career, as the epiphany about knowledge impacted the way I taught reading, writing, and critical thinking.

That discussion of background knowledge in reading was accented by E.D. Hirsch this week in his New York Times piece "Reading Test Dummies." Hirsch argues very effectively about the importance of background knowledge in students interpreting passages on standardized reading tests. The disconnect between the focus of knowledge in the classroom and the obscure passages in reading tests negatively impacts the validity of the tests. Hirsch notes some impressive research from 1988 about the performance of weak and strong readers based on previous knowledge, where weaker readers performed better on tests than skilled readers if the weaker ones had an interest in and knowledge about the subject. I've often noted to people the significant differences in academic performance between kids of lower and higher socioeconomic status, simply based on background cultural knowledge, especially vocabulary. Poorer kids who arrive in kindergarten with roughly one-third the vocabulary of middle-class kids face a disadvantage in learning from which most will never recover. Until this gap is acknowledged and closed, there will be no fundamental change in reading scores, literacy rates, or achievement gaps.

Hirsch's arguments are even more intriguing as I ran across Joanne Jacob's entries on both Hirsch and Dan Willingham of the Core Knowledge Blog. Willingham, a psyche professor at Virginia, added to the knowledge discussion by explaining how important "knowing facts" is, and how integral it is to learning and understanding. The "very processes that teachers care about most-critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving-are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment)". Learning "new ideas" is fundamentally linked to having the correct understanding of the relevant "old ideas." There is no more clear explanation of the problems in literacy rates, reading scores, college readiness, and the achievement gap. It's all about a knowledge gap. According to Willingham, "understanding is remembering in disguise."

Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School is my next purchase, and I expect it will have a similar effect on my teaching that Tovani's book did. His discussion of "cognitive science" is integral to understanding how we can more effectively educate. The discussion reminds me of my questions about why students lose the ability to "wonder." However, it's clear they actually don't. Kids do like learning; they love acquiring new information; they become quite engaged in many activities, including some very philosophical discussions. They don't have an inability to focus - they have an inability to focus on much of what they encounter in the classroom. It reminds me of the "flow experience" described by authors Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm in their book Going With the Flow which was a follow-up to Reading Don't Fix No Chevies. I encountered this book and concept in a great staff development class on adolescent male literacy, and it inspired me to seek more ways to engage all my students with knowledge and learning.

Clearly, the concept of factual knowledge as a key to learning is an important component of the education game, and any serious discussion of reform must take into account the ideas put forth by all these authors and researchers.

Oprah's Book Club

Oprah is ducking me. While I’m a fan of her book club, and while I believe she may be, other than J.K. Rowling, the greatest proponent of reading in the last fifty years, there is one key issue she's missing. I've emailed countless times with a book recommendation to address this. Yet, she’s ducking me. Before Oprah does another Book Club episode, she needs to address basic literacy and the fact that as much 50% of her audience is "dys-fluent" in reading. Realistically, that means many people in the country, and in her audience, can’t read. They’re not illiterate, but they can’t truly read. In the field of reading instruction we’d say they’re “fake readers.” Their eyes may be able to skim the words and their brains can pronounce them, but they don’t truly comprehend what they are reading.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I encountered the phenomenon of “fake reading.” And, I’ve been teaching English for fifteen years. Sadly, there has been little discussion of the need to teach reading throughout high school and even college. In reality, most school systems teach students to "decode" in first and second grade. After that schools simply assign reading. The problem is as texts get harder and material becomes more complex, students need assistance in how to tackle the more challenging texts. Especially at the upper levels, all teachers need to teach students how to read for their class. Reading is a learning skill, not an English skill. However, most teachers simply tell students they need to “read it again” or “read it more carefully.”

Each time Oprah chooses another literary saga by an accomplished author, I groan. Not because I am opposed to the choice, but because I know statistically half of her audience will not understand the book, and many won’t finish it. That’s because they can’t read. Thus, the one book she needs to ask people in America to read is by a local Denver teacher and educational researcher named Cris Tovani. The book, based on her efforts to work with struggling readers, is called “I Read It, but I Don’t Get It.” It literally changed my life as a teacher, moving me from assigning reading to teaching it.

According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), 44% of high school students are “dys-fluent” in reading even when encountering grade-level, familiar text. 80% of the colleges in the United States have courses in remedial reading. That includes the Ivy League. Is it any wonder that half the kids who go to college after high school don’t finish? Currently, we are approaching a point where three quarters of high school graduates go on college. Yet, no more than 45% actually earn a degree. Thus, we have twice as many kids going on to college as we did in 1950, though the degree rates haven’t changed. Clearly, many kids are unprepared for the rigors of college, especially reading and writing. If you’re a teacher, if you’re a student, if you’re a parent, heck, if you’re a citizen of the United States who cares about the state of public education, you owe it to yourself to read Tovani’s book.

And when you’re done, do me a favor and call Oprah. She’s been ducking me.