Engaging Adolescents in Academic Literacy: Realities and Possibilities Catchy, descriptive title

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1 Engaging Adolescents in Academic Literacy: Realities and Possibilities Catchy, descriptive title Brilliant Student Seattle University LITC 525 Summer 2008 Begins with a glimpse into a classroom, which engages the reader and grounds the article in the real world It was my students least favorite assignment, the one they always left for the very end. Choose a book from the classroom bookshelves, read it, and then write an essay about it. They had to do it in order to get language arts credit, but they made me jump through hoops to get them started. Here, try this book it s good, I promise, and Just do it to get it over with, my colleagues and I would say. They would say, I hate reading, and This is stupid. And so I believed they didn t like to read, that reading was difficult for them, and that maybe they just couldn t do it. For some, these statements were the truth but not for all. Then came the day when one young woman looked up at me from her desk and asked, rather plaintively, Why can t I read my own book? Her own book? She liked to read? It wasn t that I didn t understand how that could be true I love to read, after all but why then the struggle? So I said, Yes, you can use your own book. Then we started to ask students what they liked to read and we actually got answers. They liked Sister Souljah s Coldest Winter Ever (2006) and Erick Jerome Dickey s Milk in My Coffee (2000). The boys were interested in reading Tupac s The Rose that Grew from Concrete (1999) and anything that talked about thug life. I looked at our bookshelves with its copies of Huckleberry Finn and Romeo and Juliet. So I bought new books, the ones they suggested, and others from similar genres. These were books that reflected their interests and their lives. They were also books that addressed complex issues and challenged students to think about larger themes and applications to their experience of the world. In essence, they were books a teacher could work with. This change did not turn all of the students into avid readers overnight. Those who truly were struggling readers were still intimidated by anything longer than a short story, and there were many who still resisted. However, it was much easier to generate that initial spark of interest with a Tupac name drop than with Shakespeare. It opened the door a little wider. The students in this story were attending a credit retrieval program they often had more failing grades on their transcripts than passing ones. If these students had inner-reading lives we knew nothing about, what about your average middle or high school student? More importantly, how can we use what we find out about that inner-reading life to enhance their academic experience? As school psychologists, we are student advocates and teaching consultants. We can be a bridge between students and their teachers, generating new ideas about how teachers can use students existing skills and interests to the best effect in the classroom. The goal of this article is to explore what the research tells us about the literate lives of adolescents and to look at some creative ways to harness that information in the classroom. Also, I aim to challenge us as school

2 Engaging Adolescents 2 psychologists to consider what this information means to us as we assess students, make recommendations for IEPs, and interact with students on a more personal level. What role can we play in closing the gap between the literacies that students engage in for themselves and the literacies that are required of them in the classroom? Clear statement about audience, purpose, and scope of the article. Previews research topics that will be discussed. Maintains voice, speaking to fellow school psychologists. Teacher Perception vs. Student Reality Each heading describes the topic of the research study that will be discussed in the section that follows Why do adolescents, who may have been avid readers in elementary school, become the reluctant readers that so many teachers see in middle and high school classrooms today? To answer this question, a group of university reading educators set out to develop reading profiles of students as they moved from middle school through high school (Bintz, 1993). The research team selected 44 students with differing patterns of reading achievement from four very different high schools. Using interviews with the students, their teachers, and their parents, the researchers created individual student autobiographies (p. 607) tracking their reading activities both in and out of school. The findings reported here are the results of one researcher s analysis of the data. Note how this first research study is presented succinctly, identifying the question and briefly explaining who, did what, to whom. The picture that Bintz saw emerging from the data is very different from the one that many teachers may have expected to see. The first finding, and maybe the most surprising, is that many of these students did like to read. In fact, many of them sought out reading time outside of class. However, as these students were reporting that they do read, their teachers were describing them as reluctant or resistant readers. So there was a disparity between teacher perception of the students as readers, and the actual practice of the students. What it really came down to is that the students didn t like to read teacher assigned work they liked things they chose for themselves. The importance of choice emerged in many student comments. This paragraph and the one that follows describe key findings from the study. Another disparity that emerged was that teachers believed that students valued their content area textbooks as a resource and that they actually read them. In actuality, students reported using as many shortcuts as possible with textbook reading (if they read the text at all). However, these same students employed higher-level reading strategies when reading selfselected materials. This quote from an eleventh grader highlights what I think is one of the most important things we can learn from what Bintz found: My teachers think that I am not a very good reader, that I don t like to read, that I ve never liked to read. But, they re wrong. Yesterday, for instance, I stayed home sick, and read all day in my room. Sometimes, I even feign sickness so that I can stay home and just read. I m a very good reader, always have been (p. 610). This next paragraph and discusses how this study relates to the article s overall question. Before we can do anything to further engage adolescents in academic literacy, we first have to know their relationship with reading. Bintz s results suggest that many teachers, whom

3 Engaging Adolescents 3 most of us would guess to have the best knowledge of this relationship, don t know much about their students literate lives. In fact, some of them are mistakenly assuming that students are reading things they are not (textbooks), and misidentifying others as non-readers (like the student quoted above). I did not know anything about the reading lives of my students until I started asking them about it. So, we, as educational professionals, need to ask these questions. We need to know if students are actually struggling readers, or if they are just disengaged from school reading. In either case, knowing what types of things they might choose to read and the skills that they employ when reading them - can be helpful in figuring out how to further engage them into the academic process. Clear transition sentence that keeps a smooth flow for the reader and previews the second research study. Motivation: What the Students Have to Say Heading describes the topic of the second study So what does motivate adolescents to read? We know that some of them are reading, but what are they are reading, and why? To further investigate these questions, Pitcher, Albright, DeLaney, Walker, Seunarinesingh, Mogge, Headley, Ridgeway, Peck, Hunt, and Dunston (2007) administered the Adolescent Motivation to Read Profile reading survey to 384 ethnically diverse teenagers from a variety of school settings, and conducted personal interviews with 100 of them. Their results both support and further illuminate Bintz s findings. As appropriate, the author links back to previous studies discussed. One finding was that some students may think of themselves as non readers or poor readers, and at the same time be actively reading outside of school. A good example of this was Paul, a student who found reading a boring way to spend time, but also reported spending 20 hours a week on the Internet reading s, articles, games, and stuff (p. 391). Two things to note here: 1) Great example of how to smoothly thread a quote into the article; and 2) Excellent choice of direct quote because it gives sharp details for the reader. Many of the students identified school reading as not interesting and said that none of their teachers had done anything with literacy that they enjoyed. Students identified a teacher s enthusiasm displayed towards reading as a primary factor in their motivation to read. How enthusiastic do you think most teachers are when discussing textbook reading? How enthusiastic do you think teachers themselves feel about reading their own classroom texts? There was one exception to the negative feedback regarding school literacy. That was in the responses from students attending a small urban experimental school with a new reading intervention program. These students spoke with enthusiasm about literature circles, sustained silent reading, and being able to choose their own books to read. As in Bintz s study, the theme of choice emerged as very important to adolescent readers. Of those students who identified something a teacher did that they enjoyed, several of them indicated that they liked when their teacher allowed them to choose their own book to read. They liked being given some flexibility in choosing topics for some of their school assignments as well. This theme of choice is also apparent in my own experience, as discussed in the introduction. In looking at the reading that students pursued independent of school, it was evident that today s students are using many different literacies regularly. They are still reading hard copy texts like magazines and books, but they are also spending a great deal of time online ing, reading blogs, and researching things that interest them. The internet has become a primary mode

4 Engaging Adolescents 4 of information finding and a primary method of literacy engagement. The research done by Bintz, Pitcher et al., and others underscore the complexities involved in looking at what engages adolescent readers. It is true that there are those students who don t read because they can t. There are also those who don t read because they have no interest. However, there are many who are reading all the time although you would not know it from monitoring their academic lives. As Bintz found, their teachers certainly don t know it. Some of these students don t even self-identify as readers, as in the case of Paul, the student quoted earlier. The question becomes how do we use what we are learning about adolescent literacy to engage all of these students academically? Can we use that knowledge to engage some of those students who are not currently reading at all? These are huge questions which cannot be fully explored by an article of this length. However, we can explore what it might look like to take what we know and try approaching classroom literacy in a different way. A Different Approach One additional study is described (but not included here for brevity s sake. I think you can get the picture from the first two) Implications for School Psychologists This is the discussion section where the author explains the so what? See how it brings the reader back to the overall question and keeps the audience firmly in mind Why should we, as school psychologists, be interested in these findings? Why isn t this article being written for an audience of teachers the ones seeing these students every day and designing the curricula? In fact, these studies were all published in literacy journals whose target audience is teachers. However, I think this information is extremely relevant to our role in promoting students academic progress and that there are many ways we can incorporate this knowledge into our daily practice. As stated in the introduction, we can be a bridge between students and their teachers. The more we understand the realities of adolescent literacy, the more effective we can be in that role. As consultants we can encourage teachers to be creative when looking at ways to engage nonreaders in class activities. We can discuss alternative approaches to content literacy, including what it might look like to not use a textbook. If nothing else, we can help teachers brainstorm ways they can incorporate student choice into their classrooms. Some teachers may already be doing these things. Some may be aware of these ideas, but have not yet had time to implement them. This may be brand new information to others. Whichever the case, we can serve as a support and a resource. For those of us who spend most of our time focused on assessment, we can still use this information. We can remind ourselves not to make assumptions about what motivates students or their interests. We can take the time to ask students about their out-of-school literacy activities. This would be very helpful information to have in IEP meetings; we can think about these things when writing IEP goals and incorporate them. We should also make sure that the teachers who work with a given student know that she is reading Sweet Valley High books under the covers at night. When that same student is staring at her textbook with glazed-over eyes, that knowledge may prevent the teacher from making the assumption that she is not reading because she can t.

5 Engaging Adolescents 5 Maybe that teacher will be challenged to try something different. Final Thought The conclusion. The story is effective because it s engaging and, again, grounds the article in a real world of students who desperately need our help. However, you don t necessarily need to do it this way. The final paragraph of the article would also be an appropriate conclusion) My final thought is more of a final story. Jerome was a 17 year old student in the credit retrieval program I discussed in the introduction. He was charming, good-looking, and not very interested in school. He was a genuinely good kid who idolized Tupac and had in fact duplicated all of Tupac s tattoos on himself. His three hour school day usually consisted of two parts gossiping with other students to one part actual school work. When it came time for him to choose a book, the bookshelves had been restocked with student chosen books. He picked Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (2004) by Sanyika Shakur, a former Crips member. Once he cracked that book, he was riveted. Until he finished, his three hour school day was spent in his seat, nose in the book. He shushed other students who tried to talk to him, and read that book cover to cover. When he was finished, he consistently recommended it to every other student the boys in particular. By the time Jerome arrived at our program he was checked out of his education. He graduated high school with the bare minimum of credits needed and did not continue any further. He is now 22 or 23, and last I heard, on the run from the police after being involved in a shooting. But when I think of him, I think of that brief moment in time when we had him engaged. I see him sitting alone at a table, bent over that book, oblivious to everything around him. What if that had been when he was 13, still in a traditional school? What if someone had been able to use the themes in that autobiography: gang violence, racial discrimination, and the realities of prison life, to reach him then? I don t know the answers to these questions, but I think about them often. Those of us who are graduate school veterans know that academic literacy is not always going to be fun or interesting. Textbooks will never be obsolete and homework will never be a joy. However, because we are engaged in the academic process, we have the motivation and the skills to accomplish what we need to. For those students who are not yet engaged enough to push themselves through dry textbooks, we need to pull out all the stops to hook them in. Literacy is the gateway to education, and education is the gateway to choices in life. Our role is to do whatever we can, and use whatever we know, to make sure that all of our students can have access to those choices. References Behrman, E. H. (2003, Fall). Reconciling content literacy with adolescent literacy: Expanding literacy opportunities in a community-focused biology class. Reading Research and Instruction, 43(1), Bintz, W. P. (1993, May). Resistant readers in secondary education: Some insights and implications. Journal of Reading, 36(8), Dickey, E. J. (2000). Milk in my coffee. New York: New American Library. (Original work published 1998) and all others cited in the body of the article

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