[Notes from a session with Lucy Calkins, Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, and Lester Laminack]
In this session, Lester Laminack was posing questions to the panel (Lucy, Kylene, and Bob).
K = Kylene
L = Lucy
B = Bob
Q1: We hear so much about what is wrong with education. What is right with education?
K: Teachers.
Across the nation, they see teachers doing a better job than they have ever seen before.
A hidden gem that has been pushed aside is the wonderful job that teachers are doing.
L: The lone teacher who teaches in isolation is not the image of what we should do.
We need each other.
She sees communities of practice, thinking together, that collegiality is making an enormous difference.
B: There is a shift to the individual students.
Teachers are teaching kids first, then discipline second.
Teachers are paying closer attention to the unique individuals.
Q2: What are some of the most important things teachers can do, at each level, to develop independent and engaged readers?
L: Give them the books that will keep them reading up a storm.
Studies say that. Teachers know that.
Add to it that they have time to talk to each other.
K: Don’t forget the power of the series book.
The time of getting lost in a book often happens when you are in a series.
The world of living in a series book: You don’t have to worry about getting to know the character. All you have to do is learn to love the plot.
Give kids choice and time to read, MAKE SURE your classroom is filled with those books.
B: 80% of literate adults go to text to confirm they are right.
We need to reinforce that reading is an opportunity for you to change yourself.
Approach texts thinking, “I can come out at the other side of this text a different person.”
L: As an educator, we should live our lives considering that one of our pillars might be dead wrong. We need to read and learn to keep outgrowing ourselves.
K: We’ve often missed this.
Sometimes we ask kids to read a story and answer the questions.
The last time you finished reading a book you loved, we don’t make a diorama. Or a Venn diagram. Or a model of the main character.
More and more, our kids who graduate from high school, tell us they will never again voluntarily read another book. About 82% of high school seniors.
The first day of 1st grade, most kids say they want to read.
We read not to make a damned diorama. We read to learn something that lets us change, if not the whole world, at least ourselves.
Q3: All of our children are now 21st century students. None of our teachers are. Our students have never lived in a world without touch screens. Never lived in a world where information wasn’t a Siri question away. What do we do to convince young people that they need to fall in love with covers and pages and spines? How do we make children fall in love with books when this is their known lives?
B: Do you remember the book/situation that lead you to become a reader?
Respecting the social dimensions, and respecting the good fortune of finding something that matches with each student’s interest.
L: Knowledge is now like air. It is everywhere. That does change the teacher’s role. The role used to be to convey the knowledge kids needed.
Now we can access it faster from the Internet than from long term memory.
Teacher’s job becomes to organize, assess, and think critically about this knowledge. To compare it, contrast it. The charge is higher-level thinking and composition.
Lucy isn’t sure it’s the worst thing in the world if people are only reading on e-readers.
K: Wants to make sure 3 year olds aren’t defaulting to the device because it’s an easy babysitter.
American Pediatric Association: New syndrome where children’s necks are developing a curvature in their spines as they are formed.
In Kindergarten, children have great receptive language but not as much productive language. Watching media doesn’t teach you to talk. To talk, you need interactivity.
B: Simple request to parents: Talk to your kids.
K: In this world, the value of writing is essential. If kids have easy access to information, they should have easy access to responding to it.
You never worry about what your writing level is. You always will be able to write what you write.
Q4: Teachers often know more of what to teach next in reading than in writing. This might be because most teachers consider themselves readers, not writers. How important is it to be a writer to teach writing?
L: You can teach writing well without being a writer. Don’t wait until the day when you feel like a writer. The beautiful thing about teaching writing, is when you get kids going, you will become a writer.
B: You have to value writing.
Writing is the technology of extended thought.
K: When she started teaching, she didn’t know how to teach writing.
As she started teaching, somewhere along the line, she started writing. She discovered when you write, you figure out what you are writing. She discovered outlining is wrong.
Now she knows it’s important to be vulnerable in front of kids.
When kids are writing, she is writing.
B: “How do I know what I think until I see what I said.”
Q5: We are dealing with national standards. Places have very tight curricular mandates and pacing guides. Within those parameters, how can we give opportunities for choice?
K: She was president of NCTE during the rollout of CCSS. She was in conversation with the people creating them.
She realized it would be a tipping point in the country because states were going to adopt them without understanding them.
The standards weren’t there to say choice or no choice. They are there to say there is a new type of reading that matters that the interaction with the text.
When success is by the measure of a test.
Nowhere in the CCSS does it say you can’t have choice.
You can’t argue with policy. But if you can get to a person-level and say, “Show me where it says you can’t allow choice.”
If you are in a district that mandates it, move districts.
Standards lead to more emphasis on state tests. State tests lead to more emphasis on how teachers are evaluated.
Tying your job to how one student performs on one day is shameful.
L: Choice reading is going to accelerate progress and achievement.
NY has addressed the most problematic parts of the CCSS.
We can’t act as if the standards are mandating a type of curriculum. They are not.
We need to produce avid and flexible readers and writers.
TCRWP schools are 20 points higher than other schools. Giving choice will lead to higher test scores.
K: In our highest performing schools, choice is NEVER even debated. Of COURSE there is choice.
Our lowest performing schools
The notion that some children, because they come from homes that are not print rich, must have a scripted curriculum in which we prescribe how they think is a damnation of our democracy. It’s segregation.
When our highest performing schools allow choice in reading, and our lowest performing schools are given a scripted curriculum in which we prescribe how students should think, we are damaging our democracy. It’s segregation.
B: Curriculum and standards should not interfere with the interest to read.
Should we reorganize Barnes and Noble by AR level?
K: Leveling of texts should be humane.
As a teacher, she wants to know text features that will help her.
L: Thinking through bands of text complexity.
Teachers and school districts should make the decision.
New to balanced literacy? K-4 teachers level 60% of their books. You don’t need to tell each child their level, but you can use it when you need it for certain children.
The independent reading is where TCRWP teaches kids. This a bit different from models where the bulk of instruction occurs during Guided Reading, and the workshop comes alongside it.
Having a system that provides children a way to easily find books in which they will have success, without having to go through 50 books.
Analogy: When her kids were learning to ski, she found the slope labels helpful. She could go in for hot chocolate and ask her kids not go on the black diamond without them.
But not all kids will need it.
Q6: What is the most appropriate use of leveled books?
K: In middle school, she worries about interest.
She worries about kids who have assumed the identity of a level. “I’m an H.”
If we look at texts and consider features, content, font size, decodable words, etc. and we can identify a level, that is to tell use something about the book. Not the kid.
Q7: How has our focus on nonfiction in reading and writing impacted our reading of fiction?
L: In many elementary classrooms they think they need to spend an equal amount of time with fiction and nonfiction, but don’t have rich libraries of nonfiction. Many teachers have to print out articles on their computer, effectively halving the amount of reading.
Also, CCSS has created a problem with too much writing about reading.
K: When she wrote Reading Nonfiction, she went into it with skepticism.
She realized that there is an assumption that we all share the same definition of nonfiction.
Most teachers teach students that Nonfiction = NF = Not Fake = True.
We forgot to tell kids that Nonfiction means that it is NOT. FICTION.
Dewey (as in decimal), let’s put everything that is fiction, as in a novel, on one side, and everything else that is not a novel on the other side.
Nonfiction is what comes into your world and you decide if you stand alongside it or stand against it. You don’t always accept it.
Everything should NOT be read through the lens of NOT FAKE.
Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t make it fake. (Fake News)
Q8: Harry Potter has magic wand and we do not. If you did, and you could change one thing about the teaching of reading and writing, what you would change?
L: Create more time for teachers to do this. Study together, be in communities of learning together. We need to be reading, writing, talking, and outgrowing ourselves together.
A college professor teaches 4 hours a week, and is given the rest of the week to prepare.
How do people imagine we can teach kids 6 hours a day, everyday, for a year with so little time to think and learn and grow? Teachers need more time.
B: More models of good discourse so we can learn better ways to interact.
Talk shows, public figures, and celebrities are currently modeling bad examples. We need people who engage in high-quality, well-reasoned discourse as models for our youth.
K: Double teacher salaries and halve the number of kids you teach every day.
Lester: Remember: We’re not here to raise a score, we’re here to raise a human.
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