In August, 2015, I began my seventh grade reading classes with a pre-reading-class survey. The survey opened with this question: How do you identify your own race and/or culture? For this question, I did not want to give students a bubble to click (thinking about the book None of the Above where the character’s identity did not fit neatly into a bubble – whose does). Here is how my 90 reading students responded in the form of a word cloud:
The cloud is incredibly diverse, right? So the question is this: are students reading into this diversity? Do they see their classmates in the characters they meet? Are their reading experiences helping them be more conscious of the world and their place in it? Yes, English teachers want their students to love reading, to enjoy a story, to get lost in a good book, but isn’t our job to also help students to stretch their experiences through reading and to uncover how reading can and does help them make sense of this incredibly diverse world we live in — together?
In the pre-reading class survey, I asked questions to get at how diverse students’ reading experience had been. I wanted to know if students were even aware of the race, culture, gender, or mental and physical health of the lives of characters they read. I wanted to be deliberate with my curriculum this year, to try to work from what student knew and felt comfortable reading and help them stretch into new subjects, places, and characters. Here are some of the pre-reading results:
Of the books that you have read, how many include…
…a transgender character?
| Most of the books | 0 | 0% |
| Some of the books | 2 | 2.3% |
| A few of the books | 17 | 19.8% |
| None of the books | 67 | 77.9% |
…a gay character?
| Most of the books | 1 | 1.2% |
| Some of the books | 4 | 4.7% |
| A few of the books | 18 | 20.9% |
| None of the books | 63 | 73.3% |
…a character with an ability difference?
| Most of the books | 4 | 4.7% |
| Some of the books | 29 | 33.7% |
| A few of the books | 40 | 46.5% |
| None of the books | 13 | 15.1% |
…a character with an emotional or cognitive difference (PTSD, depression)?
| Most of the books | 7 | 8.1% |
| Some of the books | 17 | 19.8% |
| A few of the books | 34 | 39.5% |
| None of the books | 28 | 32.6% |
The pre-reading-class survey indicates that students had not been reading texts that offered windows diverse gender identities, sexual identities, abilities, races, and cultures. Or, perhaps, students had read into these diverse lives but were not noticing this (perhaps they were enjoying the story). Is it enough for students just read – anything — or should students be reading everything? And can students read everything if they are not aware of, well, everything — if their teachers are not deliberately bringing in resources to explore or inviting students to do the work of discovering human experiences within and beyond their knowing?
It seemed to me that in our globalized world (and light of the Orlando massacre), we could use greater awareness, understanding, acceptance, and even empathy for the diversity among us, so I developed curriculum to create windows into diversity by deliberately including diverse voices and experiences in our reading class. And I made a point of modeling reading practices that brought a critical eye to the representations of peoples. Deliberate or not, reading teachers privilege certain voices and experiences over others when they choose this author or that, this poem or that, this book or that. Some teachers may not want to take on political or social justice issues, but they are doing just that.
With the results of this survey in mind, we set the goal for independent and partner reading to be books that would stretch them into the lives of characters beyond their own, beyond that which they are familiar. I did use Donalyn Miller’s 40 book challenge as inspiration for this, but in addition to genre quotas (or alongside), I asked students to explore culture, language, class, religion, ability difference, gender identity, and sexual orientation. I read over 300 books, trying my best to read “everything,” and a generous grant from the Bokor family helped me to develop a more inclusive classroom library. Knowing these books and having so many titles on hand (literally) just made reading into lives beyond our own more accessible.
As a class, we read Tree Girl, historical fiction about a Maya girl living during the civil war between the government and guerrillas in Guatemala who survived the government’s genocide of over 200,000 Maya in the 1980s. We read The Outsiders, also rather historical now, focusing on class conflict and the stages of grief before exploring how to adapt texts into film and the director’s responsibility to the narrative. We learned the rhetorical triangle and how writers and speakers make appeals to move their audience to feel, believe, and act in certain ways, sometimes unethically. We witnessed and wrote spoken word performances about being transgender, the implications of parent incarceration on children, and how technology is overcoming our humanity. We read poems about being bilingual and bicultural (being on the “fringe” of society) with Pat Mora, about child abuse in “The Child Who Walked Backward,” about overprotective parents in “The Quiet Room,” about Jim Crow in “Strange Fruit,” about our environment in “Big Yellow Taxi,” and about “Vegetarians.” We read speeches by Cesar Chavez, Benazir Bhutto, Mary Fisher, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Glaser, Florence Kelly,Elie Wiesel, Crystal Eastman, Fanny Lou Hamer, and Sojourner Truth. And we gave activist speeches about problems in our world we’d like to change.
We ended the year with speeches about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, equal pay for women in sports, immigration, deportation, video game violence, diabetes, the trash crisis in Vietnam, the Gulabi Gang for women’s rights in India, religious freedom in Russia, education for girls around the world, and access to bathrooms for people who are transgender.
I have written about the difference between standards and curriculum. This curriculum –to stretch students into new genres and ideas and to read into their worlds — drove my choices. I deliberately put books and articles and poems and speeches and spoken word into the hands of students that would start and continue conversations about the world we we live and lives within and beyond our own existence. I did include the standards — you can see evidence of this in their blogs and essays and speeches — but my philosophy of what reading is and can do certainly directed the reading experiences this year. I know I am influencing their reading with what I do and do not bring into the classroom library.
The Post-Reading-Class Survey, May 2016
In the post-reading-class survey, I knew that we had read into culture, language, class, religion, ability difference, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Certainly, some students read more than others, but we did build a community of readers.
When I asked students what most impacted their way of reading (a question from The Book Whisperer), the answer was overwhelmingly time to read in class and conversations with classmates:
| Classroom library | 54 | 68.4% |
| School library | 11 | 13.9% |
| Independent reading time in class | 69 | 87.3% |
| Reading at home | 34 | 43% |
| Conferences (talking with the teacher about books) | 30 | 38% |
| Blogging and reading other people’s posts | 44 | 55.7% |
| Having a teacher who reads a lot | 42 | 53.2% |
| Conversations with classmates and book groups | 55 | 69.6% |
| Other | 5 | 6.3% |
As students read on their own, choosing texts with subjects that interested (or might interest) them, the entire class benefited. Junior high students experience many changes in their cognitive, physical, and social development. Their interests change, and it is difficult to find books when you don’t know what you like or enjoy anymore. And in junior high, time becomes a challenge. Early teens go from a few teachers to nine teachers and from park district activities to school clubs and sports that go into the early evening. Many students also have club sports. So schedules fill up, and balancing school and life becomes incredibly challenging. I had 90 seventh grade reading students this year,and half said they “hated” reading on the first day of class with only 15 percent saying they “loved it.” I really wanted more students to “love” reading by the end of our time together, but I am okay if students ended the year in a place to acknowledge the value of reading and have some positive shift in their attitude toward reading. Here are just a few responses from the post-survey to this question: “Has your attitude toward reading changed from the beginning to the end of the school year, and if so, how and why?”:
I think that reading for me now changed just because I don’t only think about the plot, but I looked at the smaller parts within the book and sort build of that.During the beginning of the year I think I was more conservative on what I read and sort of only reading with what I was familiar with, but now I’m more open up to other genres and subjects or topics I’m introduced to.
Well my attitude towards reading now is the same because I’m not much of a reading type of person. I always try to read at least 10 or more books and try to finish them. But my interest has changed i like to read more realistic and romantic stories now then scary and mystery last year.
My attitude towards reading is still the same, but this class changed my interest range and now I like more different kind of books than just one.
I mean, my attitude with school is ugh, but in reading class, it’s pretty chill here. I have no problem reading a book. So basically, my opinion has changed over the months I been here because Dr. Donovan picked out some decent books for us to read.
Nothing has changed I still hate reading …. But I have learned so much … Though I still hate it !!!
My attitude used to be to read because you had to and you never had the choice to pick which books you read. Now this class changed my opinion by letting us chose the books, reading at our own pace, and being able to use our own knowledge. Now I enjoy reading and try to read whenever I have a little time.
Genocide happens as a byproduct of indifference (Elie Wiesel’s speech).
I learned that transgender and gay are two different things (Parrotfish and Boy Meets Boy).
War is not the same thing from the eyes of someone seeing it on the media as from someone seeing it happen right in front of them (Tree Girl).
I discovered it’s heard to have a disease…you’re treated differently (Everything, Everything).
That people argue a lot about these topics because I have read countless articles and stories about these issues and they argue a lot about how government should of done something, etc.
I learned that even with all these nasty things in the world, there is still happiness. Even though we can’t see it, it’s always there.
This year I learned about ways of life from books this year, I learned that women in Saudi Arabia had no rights to do much (but women can now drive). I learned that life can punch you in the gut because in books like Counting by Seven’s Willow’s life slowly ripped apart the was sown back together.
I have discovered that I have a lot of courage and I am willing to try something new. How did I figure out this through books? Well, the book “everything everything” showed me that its okay to step out of your comfort zone. It is one of the best books I have ever read.
I learned that culture does define who you are, it is apart of you. Yes, some people go to a different culture and learn new things, but its up to you to stay true to your self (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).
Orbiting Jupiter because that book is a window to me because I can see the struggle that is happening between a teenage dad and his daughter.
I already knew that life and the real world is messed up, I already knew that lots of different people have very different lives, and I already knew that people of certain genders (like women, or people who are transgender) can have a really bad time in life. But, I did not know the struggles of someone who is mixed race. Which is strange, because I’m half Brazilian and half American. I’ve never looked into the subject of mixed race people, and how we could not know who we are, or where we belong. The book I read, called Nothing But The Truth (and a few white lies), helped me know more about this subject as a whole.
A social issue that I learned about would be women’s rights in India. I learned that in Uttar Pradesh there is a gang of women who embarrass or beat up men who mistreat women called the Gulabi Gang.
Every student could say something about how reading had illuminated some aspect of our existence. Perhaps students could have reported learning about the world had I not been deliberate about selecting books that represented many different lives and experiences, but I think the above comments capture the wide range of reading students did because we read widely.
Finally, because teenagers are rather opinionated, I asked in the post-survey about their favorite text. Here is word cloud of their 90 responses, which range from books, to articles, to poems, to spoken word pieces. Overwhelmingly, however, students loved two pieces the most because of the “emotion”: The Outsiders and “Counting Graves.” You can see titles here but also some of the subjects in the texts and the word students used to talk about their reading. 
In the end, I know that my curriculum, to have an inclusive reading experience, guided the reading choices and thus learning experiences of the students. In my view, it was a “good” use of my power as a teacher. As I compare the first word cloud about the “culture” of my students to this last word cloud of “favorites,” I can’t help but think of this second word cloud as representing the culture of our reading class: dreams, family, world, emotional, brutality, place, losing, words, explored, social, living, everything. Students loved these stories because they represent “everything” that is our humanity -not a particular race, culture,language, class, or gender.
I saw you present on this at NCTE in November. Would it be possible for you to share the full pre and post surveys with me?