In August, I began a new teaching position at Oklahoma State University as an assistant professor in the Secondary Education department. When I refer to “students” and “readers” and “writers” now, I am mostly referring to pre-service teachers. I already think of these students as teachers. I am keenly aware that they are just semesters away from having the same responsibilities and concerns and joys that I had just last year as a classroom teacher. Still, I am learning how to write about them as both students in a college course and teachers, so just keep that in mind as you read my blog posts this year.
Especially in high school years, we should help young people to discover the power of literature to enable us to experiment imaginatively with life, to get the feel and emotional cost of different adult roles, to organize and reflect on a confused and unruly reality, and to give us pleasure through the very language that accomplishes these things. Both our classroom atmosphere and selection of reading material should therefore be guided by the primary concern for creating a live circuit between readers and books. (p.70)
Rosenblatt, L. (1956). “The acid test for literature teaching.” English Journal 45(2), 66-74.
And in college years.
It is almost 8:30 p.m. The education library in the lower level of our building closes at 9:00 p.m. I have been in class since 7:20 p.m., but quite a few students have been in class since 4:00 p.m. while others have been moving between coursework, fieldwork, and studying since early morning.
I have taught many evening teacher education courses over the years and know that it takes careful, creative planning to engage adults in content after five p.m. However, engaging adults who have been working and learning all day into the ten o’clock hour takes something more. I try to organize the almost three-hour, once-a-week courses like I did my block junior high classes, workshop-style: writing, speaking, listening, reading, creating, and physical engagement with space and place.
Tonight, we began class with a quick write and three students shared in our weekly open-mic. We complimented one another. We smiled. The energy was good; we noticed and celebrated the impact of writing on readers– the pleasure of language. Then, we moved into small group discussions about reading mini-lessons and the gradual-release model of reading instruction. They pulled out sticky notes with talking points, turned to highlighted sections in their texts. The group leader started the Screencastify recording so that the other groups could listen in on and benefit from the other discussions. We were shifting roles from writer to listener to reader to teacher to leader to group member. We wrote, read, spoke, listened, but now, over an hour into class moving into the nine o’clock hour, it was time for what what students looked forward to perhaps more than anything: choice reading.
We take a field trip down two flights of stairs to the library.
One student and I detour to my office to get another copy of a book her classmate was reading. She tells me about a book she just finished and how she told her mom all about it. She tells me her mom commented on how she hadn’t heard her talk about books for quite a while. She is smiling. I am smiling. Her reading life is coming alive again. We talk about books and smile some more as we make our way to the library.
When we arrive, we see that our class has already settled in. One leaning in the arm of a comfy chair; another shoes kicked off, socked feet on the sofa. A few are wandering the book stacks, whispering recommendations.
I invite two readers to join me in conferring. In a few weeks, they will begin student teaching, and I want to offer them opportunities to develop their teacher-reader voices and bodies. How to move among readers. How to start conversations. How to ask follow-up questions to elicit the information that makes teachers able to be more responsive. I model how to do a quick, low-stakes reader conference. We talk about the value of these moments to check in with one another about our reading lives, our choices, our preferences, our pleasure, our concerns. We talk about conferring as an opportunity to check in with one another about our lives more generally — stress, joys, friendships, plans. Then, we move among the readers quietly to confer.
Nine o’clock is just minutes away. The librarians are ready to close-up, but our readers are in the flow. You can see their minds are in the stories, grappling, imagining, wondering while their bodies have taken the shape of the furniture. Their postures are different now (relaxed, safe), and I wonder how their bodies looked as they read when they were five, ten, fifteen years old. Now in their twenties, I wonder if the book triggers reading muscle memory or if it is just the impact of the reader-book circuit engaged (Rosenblatt).
I nudge them to come back to this space and place, and the class begins to make their way back up the two flights of stairs (or elevator) to class for our last hour together.
We talk about our books, share passages we loved, and then I turn the class over to two “teachers” for a guided reading lesson.
To end our evening, I invite students to complete a quarterly reflection about the course and how I can better support them, and I learn that we are okay but have some room to improve. I choose to swim in one comment, however: a student wrote that she can tell I “love them as people.”
Live. Live. Rosenblatt reminds teachers to create “a live circuit” between readers and books. That takes nurturing a live circuit as a whole (for the class) and live circuits for each reader. I see the live as in we are living in these spaces and have to nurture the reading lives of our students whether they are middle school, high school, or college students. And I see the live as in keeping alive these circuits in how we choose to spend our time in class.
That love is part of all of this live and live makes sense. I am invested in living alongside these future teachers. I care about their lives as human beings and the lives they will soon be alongside in the classroom.
Will you write with me this month? Join the 5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge with teachers and by teachers. See our flyer for more information and sign-up for reminders (if you have not already done so).