Update: This project was funded in less than 24 hours! Thank you to Denise, Jenni, and Iris for your generous contributions!
Update #2: Ramir and Dezmond won! They’re both very happy. I’ll try to post more info soon.
My students graduate on June 2 and go off to college and into the world.
I remember one of the first things I did when I got to UC Berkeley. I bought a subscription to The New York Times. I’d grown up with the San Francisco Chronicle, but I noticed that my peers had upgraded to The Times. Getting a subscription was one of the best decisions I made. Twenty years later, I still get home delivery now.
I’d like your help in giving two lucky students print subscriptions when they get to college in September.
The college student rate is $3 a week. That’s $36 for a three-month subscription. After that, the student will decide whether to extend the subscription.
The home delivery subscription will also allow the student full online access to nytimes.com.
Interested? Just click the ChipIn! button over on the right sidebar. Donate as much or as little as you want.
In our current climate, this story is not new. It goes like this:
Public officials bemoan the quality of public schools and demand that schools raise standards.
Teachers make adjustments to their curriculum, often teaching directly to the tests.
Students take the tests and sometimes don’t perform well.
Public officials lower the standards, let the students pass, and then blame the teachers for doing a bad job.
Repeat from Step 1.
One of the strongest arguments being made right now in educational reform is that non-educators should be leading the way. After all, the argument goes, if something is broken, we shouldn’t rely on the people who broke it to fix it.
While I understand that theory, it also doesn’t make sense for non-teachers to make large pronouncements about education and then blame teachers for failure.
I do not have a problem with someone telling me that I need to do better. I already know that. But it’s not OK to talk big and serious about standards and then backpedal when the results come back lower than what you want. And please, let’s stop blaming teachers. It’s just not effective.
Here’s a typical way that reading is done in classrooms: The teacher assigns a reading, the students read the selection, and then the teacher assigns reading questions to determine how well the students understood the passage.
A newer approach, influenced by reader-response theory, goes something like this: The teacher introduces questioning as a reading strategy, the students practice coming up with questions as they read a selection, and then the class discusses the student-generated questions.
We know that both approaches can be effective. After all, sometimes the teacher wants to direct the lesson and emphasize specific pieces of the reading. On the other hand, sometimes it’s best to allow students to interact with the text themselves to find their own meaning.
The Common Core standards, which go into effect in 2014, emphasize close reading of challenging nonfiction texts. David Coleman, the architect of the English Language Arts standards, argues that classroom activities should be based on text-dependent questions. In other words, the curriculum should come from the texts and authors themselves, not from the students or teachers. Instead of injecting ourselves into the reading, we should find out what the reading and author intended.
This might be a good theory, but many reading experts have begun to protest. I’m finding out that most opponents of Mr. Coleman are teachers who work with struggling readers. Here’s a recent tweet from Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do. (I hope it’s big enough to read.)
Ms. Beers makes a good point. If the questions should come from the text, and if the text is challenging, doesn’t that just mean that teachers will continue to generate the questions, thereby making students passive in their reading?
I know it’s not as simple as that — that good teachers will continue to encourage students to read actively. Nevertheless, Mr. Coleman wants students not to include their personal feelings and experiences into their reading.
While I appreciate that Common Core and Mr. Coleman have articulated a strong stance on reading, I worry that they’ve missed a big point. It’s not enough to assume that great authors, texts, and teachers will engage struggling readers. If a student hates reading or can’t read well, then text-dependent questions will do little to garner interest.
Maybe it’s true that teachers abandon texts too quickly, opting too soon to ask students how they feel. Maybe it’s not best to have students connect the reading with their own lives.
But on the other hand, I believe that there is a relationship between the author and the reader — a transaction that takes place. If students are going to read on their own and to care about what they read, they must be allowed to bring themselves to texts, to think about where and how they enter, and to wonder what the author is trying to tell them.
There are just two weeks left before the end of school, and I’m still trying to get two of my Kindles back.
My students want to keep them.
“But I need to finish my book!” says one. She’s still not finished.
“Sure, I’ll bring it back tomorrow, Mr. Isero,” says the other. He doesn’t bring it back.
Sure, I’ll get my Kindles back eventually. But it won’t be without a fight.
I think this is because my little experiment, the Classroom Kindle Project, has been a huge success this year. More than any of my other campaigns, this one struck a chord with my students.
The project convinced me that teenagers like to read but have to be encouraged to do so. The Kindle does that. It has the perfect combination of technology and flexibility.
Again, thank you to all the donors who contributed to the first year of the Classroom Kindle Project. I’m ending the year extremely happy with 12 Kindles and 140 e-books.
I can’t wait to see what happens next year. In the summer, I hope to find a few more Kindles so that I can reach my goal of a classroom set of 25. If you have friends who would like to donate their Kindle, please let me know.
David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, will become the president of the College Board in October.
I’ve been following Mr. Coleman for a while. Many English teachers are leery of him because of his emphasis on teaching nonfiction over fiction. They also don’t like that he believes in New Criticism, or close reading, over Reader Response. Finally, Coleman is controversial because he claims not to tell teachers what to do but has spent the last year traveling across the country and offering a way to teach Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Now he will lead the College Board, the behemoth organization that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement tests.
In the New York Times article that I read, Coleman said he is interested in building solid curriculum that will prepare students for the high-stakes tests. It also sounds like he wants to level the playing field for students taking advanced placement courses. “The College Board should consider any student in an AP class a student in our care,” he said. “We need to find better ways to support their success.”
But some educators, including reading expert Stephen Krashen, are not having any of it. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“There’s no reason on earth for common core standards and these tests that we’re wasting billions of dollars on,” said Stephen Krashen, an emeritus education professor at the University of Southern California. “The problem is poverty, poverty, poverty. Middle-class children who go to well-funded schools do very well, but even the best tests, the most inspiring teachers, won’t mean anything if the kids don’t have enough to eat.”
It’s weird. I still don’t have a good read on David Coleman. I mean, I think he means well, but he seems out of touch with teachers and students. On the other hand, I want to like Stephen Krashen, and I do — at least on the subject of reading. But his emphasis that poverty is the reason for all educational ills cannot be the answer, either.
My students graduate on June 2 and go off to college and into the world.
