Thank You, Bluford

Most people can admit to not finishing at least one book they were assigned in high school. For me it was Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” My own adventures keep me alert with eyes wide open, but action and adventure movies and books bore me for some reason. The other book I dared to skip was Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” I couldn’t stand the puritanical language. I found it hard to follow and irritating. As a junior in Honors English, I decided not to read it until one day it occurred to me that even though I could bullshit my way through the daily comprehension questions, I could not bullshit my way through the essay we were inevitably going to have to write. So, I picked the book back up. I was always good at English, but it certainly wasn’t my favorite high school class. I preferred Physics and Spanish.

And yet, it always saddens me to learn that my students have not ever enjoyed reading. Many have never finished a complete book. We’re not talking about books by dead white guys, either. The majority of my students score at about a fifth grade reading level. For many of them, this is right where they are expected to be because they’ve only been speaking English for a few years. For others, this low reading level can be attributed to myriad causes: revolving door substitutes, under-prepared teachers, a home culture that does not include bedtime literacy or early childhood education, reading disabilities, attention deficit, etc. Whatever the cause, the result is that my room is full of ninth graders who have never finished a book. Until now…

Three weeks ago I spent a portion of a lesson showing off the books I had chosen for my students. I did mini-book talks on each of the books and talked them up as if they were my best friends. I’ve learned in the last year, that I’m responsible for holding the enthusiasm for learning. If my students don’t have that enthusiasm, I overflow with it and hopefully it will be contagious. This seems to work, despite my skepticism. Included in my book talks were paperbacks from the Bluford Series. These books are written for young adults. They contain themes that appeal to teenagers, especially urban teens, but they are written at an elementary/middle school level particularly for struggling readers. I held several of the books up and I said to the class, “Some of you have never read a book. Next week, you will read one of the books in this series in just five days!” In my mind, I was hopeful that I could carry this through rather than offer them up another academic disappointment. But in my speech, there was nothing but certainty that they could, in fact, read the paperback in one school week.

Soon thereafter, students signed up for the book they most wanted to read. I organized them into small Book Groups of between three and five students. The following Monday, the collective ninth grade was reading thirteen different books from the same series. As a second year teacher, all of this felt like a big risk on my part. I’d never tried small Book Groups, and I’d never read any of the thirteen books in the series. I simply knew they were popular and had been successful elsewhere. I borrowed the idea of a Book Journal, or Dialogue Journal from a friend who is a reading specialist at a nearby school. By the end of the first class period, students were signing up to take home the book journal and write about what they had read to their small group. Their job was to return the next day with questions, comments, and ideas about what they had read and pass them off to the next person in the group. The idea is to capitalize on ninth graders’ propensity to pass notes, and turn it academic. The results were good. Each group completed their journal. There were only a few exceptions of one student in the group not participating at all. No journals were lost at home or eaten by dogs. On the last day, the group collectively had to design the cover, thinking of a symbol to characterize the book and by pulling a representative quote from the book and rewriting it on the cover. They thought it was fun, and I thought, “Yes, they are doing literary analysis without even knowing it! I’ve tricked them!”

Some days a few students hadn’t done their homework, so they were behind on the reading. But more often than not, students were reading ahead. These books were so engaging that students wouldn’t put them down. They wanted to check out the next book in the series before finishing the first. A young woman nicknamed Danielle (for the sake of this blog) swore to me she’d never read a whole book before in her life, except the care guide for her new Chihuahua. But on the night of Back to School, I saw her in the back row with her nose in a book. I met her mom later that evening who told me she’s never seen Danielle read, ever. She was beaming. So was I. Another student, Carlos, who had made it perfectly clear to me early on that he was a “bad kid” last year with multiple suspensions and horrible grades, went out of his way every day to tell me how much he loved his book. I saw him at the taco truck one lunch period and he announced to all of the kids around him, including some of my students from last year, that English was his favorite class because it was “hella fun.” By the end of the week, every group had finished their book!

Tonight as I’m finally reading the finished Book Journals and grading their final books tests (where most students are scoring at least twenty-five out of thirty points), I’m learning from them that they loved reading in small groups because it was social but also supportive. So many reported that when they got stuck, their group members could help them out. This is from the group of ninth graders who wrote into their culture that “None of us is smarter than all of us together.” That's Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development” from the mouths of babes.

In my class reading is cool! I can hardly believe I’m lucky enough to see this happen in my class. My students have the skills to become better readers. The main thing they need to do is just read, and read, and read some more. That they have found some books they like and have learned that there are even books out there worth liking will go a long long way towards them choosing to continue reading. While the Bluford Series is far from lofty literature, it is the gateway to other reading. It’s the beginning. The bridge I’m trying to build now is to Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight Los Angeles.” I’m building the bridge on our practice of poetry in the early weeks and the urban setting of the L.A. Riots. My students understand police brutality better than me. They know racism deeper than I do. They are crossing the bridge. Duc asked last week, “When are we going to start the next book? Can’t we hurry up and read?”

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Find out more about the Bluford series by visiting www.townsendpress.com Teachers, schools, and even students can write to them and ask for a free sample of books. Teachers can buy books directly from their website for only $1 a book. Definitely worth the investment!

Resurfacing

Already five weeks into the school year, I’m facing the last days of the first marking period with joy and some sense of accomplishment. When I think of last year now, I can hardly believe I survived it. I don’t think I could do it again. Knowing what I know now, would make it impossible for me to tolerate the behavior I saw in my class. Maybe it is that knowledge and resolve not to see it any more that has created the positive experience of this year, but I think there’s more to it than that.

There have been big changes at my school this year. A turn over in administration which was at first controversial ultimately forced the staff into making some changes and firmly articulating what we wanted from our new leadership. The roll out of a new school-wide discipline policy that is being followed by all teachers and has the backing of our administration, gives me backbone and the ability to follow through with my classroom consequences (amazingly, none of my students have escalated past the warning stage). Work that the ninth grade team did over the summer and in the first days of school to socialize our ninth graders and also set strict boundaries with them has paid off. The reduction in class size, the restructuring of the ninth grade schedule, and the formation of a solid ninth grade team of teachers have all played into the success I’ve experienced in my class this year.

But there’s more to it. There’s me. I am a different teacher this year. The beautiful part is that I’m the teacher that I was a year ago, the teacher who decided to pursue a teaching credential because I loved teaching. She’s back after a long hiatus of humiliation, self-doubt, depression, and dread. I see the change and resurfacing of the me I used to be every day, and it amazes me. I am easily positive with my students where last year I had to be phony. I am confident in ways that last year I was shaky. I know my boundaries. I know what is not allowed under any circumstance in my room. I know better when to call a student out, and when to quietly continue teaching right next to a squirrely student. This year, when I ask students to do something, they do (and I’m amazed).

Here’s my favorite example this week: On Friday I gave out progress reports. For all students who had a D or an F in my class, I wrote on their report that they were required to come see me after school on Monday. This report went out to their advisor and their parents, plus I verbally told them too. The first gain is that I was able to identify failing students so quickly. I never did anything like this last year because I was so buried under work, so busy just trying to figure out my grading software, so preoccupied with scraping my emotions up off the floor that by the time I passed out progress reports, I had no time to look at the data reported on them. The second gain I’ve experienced in this regard is that only six of my students were failing! Last year, out of sixty-four ninth graders twenty-eight failed my class, (which is part of why I never did much intervention work). The third gain is that of the six students who were failing my class yesterday, five showed up after school. This is miraculous in and of itself because last year I fought a constant battle with students who refused to come after school for detention or other. The fourth gain is that all five students had time to sit with me, look at the grade book and then either find their missing assignments (a matter of one-on-one organizational intervention – something I’m very good at thanks to my OCD) or complete their missing assignments. By time 5:00 rolled around, all of the students who had been failing earlier in the day were now passing!

This is a huge change for me and my teaching, and for my students too. My dear friend and co-ninth grade teacher has been telling me for a year that in your second year of teaching and the years that follow, you have more capacity as a teacher. I had a hard time understanding her and believing her last year, but now I get it. There are certain things about teaching that I don’t have to think about as much anymore, which gives me more mental capacity for gathering data, organizing it, and assessing who needs interventions. I still need to grow. I don’t feel like I’m at the place yet, where I can identify the kind of interventions needed, apart from basic study skills and organizational assistance. However, knowing that my capacity is growing, makes me confident that over time I’ll know how to tackle this dilemma as well.

My mind and heart are full of the things I wrote about last year – the pain in my students’ lives, their rich stories. But my practice is rising to the forefront now. I am less shocked by the news of a students’ parent who has cancer, the brother who has a bullet permanently stuck in his forehead, the student who was born in jail and just finished his first young sentence, the young woman’s journal entry about wanting to die. These things still touch me, but do not immobilize me. They do, however, exhaust me. Only five weeks into the year and I need a day off, a sick day, a vacation. Putting in my 11-12 hours in my classroom each day plus 6-8 hours on Saturday is beginning to weigh me down already, make me heavy, and on my worst days snappy. This year, though, I know when I feel short-tempered it’s usually not because of something the students have done, it’s because of something I haven’t done – that walk to see the sunset, the extra hour of sleep, a whole Saturday to myself. The theme of my mentoring meetings continues to be balance, but there is more to be found this year as the real me resurfaces.

What They Learned in School

A "poem" by Jerome Stern. This monologue aired March 17, 1990, on "All Things Considered," National Public Radio's daily news broadcast. Stern was a professor of English at Florida State University in Tallahasee.


In the schools now, they want them to know
all about marijuana, crack, heroin, and
amphetamines,

Because then they won't be interested in mari-
juana, crack, heroin, and amphetamines,

But they don't want to to tell them anything about
sex because if the schools tell them about sex,
then they will be interested in sex,

But if the schools don't tell them anything
about sex,

Then they will have high morals, and no one
will get pregnant, and everything will be all
right,

And they do want them to know a lot about
computers so they will outcompete the
Japanese,

But they don't want them to know anything
about real science because then they will lose
their faith and become secular humanists,

And they do want them to know about this
great land of ours so they will be patriotic,

But they don't want them to learn about the
tragedy and pain in its real history because
then they will be critical about this great land
of ours and we will be passively taken over by
a foreign power,

And they want them to learn how to think for
themselves so they can get good jobs and be
successful,

But they don't want them to have books that
confront them with real ideas because that
will confuse their values,

And they'd like them to be good parents,

But they can't teach them about families be-
cause that takes them back to how you get to
be a family,

And they want to warn them about how not to get AIDS

But that would mean telling them how not to get AIDS,

And they'd like them to know the Con-
stitution,

But they don't like some of those amendments
except when they are invoked by the people
they agree with,

And they'd like them to vote,

But they don't want them to discuss current
events because it might be controversial and
upset them and make them want to take
drugs, which they already have told them all about,

And they want to teach them the importance of
morality,

But they also want them to learn that Winning
is not everything--it is the Only Thing,

And they want them to be well-read,

But they don't want them to read Chaucer or
Shakespeare or Aristophanes or Mark Twain
or Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck, be-
cause that will corrupt them,

And they don't want them to know anything
about art because that will make them weird,

But they do want them to know about music so
they can march in the band,

And they mainly want to teach them not to
question, not to challenge, not to imagine,
but to be obedient and behave well so that
they can hold them forever as children to
their bosom as the second millennium lurches
toward its panicky close.