One of the things I LOVE about To Understand is the concept Ellin uses of
showing those who have, indeed, spent their lives trying to understand the
world through art or music or architecture in order to mentor us as we move
toward trying to understand, too. One of the reasons I like it so much is that
it's so new to me. I live in a very rural area (our school district is larger
than two of the United States) and I haven't had the experiences Ellin
describes. I have to drive 150 miles to browse Borders and 400 miles to hang
out at Barnes and Noble. And our closest museums are museums about fur traders
and mammoths. So I love to ride along with Ellin as she does those things
about which I can only dream. And I love that she has a life outside teaching
so she can widen mine. The literature she chose for the new Mosaic of Thought
left me awed.
And, this being almost October of an election year makes me wish all the voters
in our democracy had been taught the thinking strategies Ellin describes as
transformational. Just consider the original comprehension strategies and see
if you think our populace is using them to read some of what the campaigns have
put out there. Sometimes it takes using all the comprehension/thinking
strategies to understand something because of its level of challenge. But
sometimes we need to use them to realize there really isn't anything much
there. You can't delve deeply into something that's an inch thick and a mile
wide.
Then I think of my daughter struggling to "teach" Reading Mastery this year for
the first time. And I think of the long-term consequence of seeing reading as
something to which you "call and respond."
Then I reread in chapter one the section about the principal dying his hair
purple if children "read" X books and it infuriates me once again! Even
ignoring the obvious folly of what it says to kids if you have to bribe them to
do something, we can't ignore the fact that what we're teaching the children
exactly the opposite of what we think we want them to do. As Ellin writes, "Do
we demonstrate our lofty goals by asking the children to fly through hundreds
of books, with little expectation that they dwell in the ideas or learn more?"
How do we proactively reverse this thoughtless trend?
I think these practices shout our beliefs and pretty much drown out what our
words say. Between our "fluency" instruction, AR, "we can read 850 books
each," to Pizza Hut's Huts incentive program, we say "read fast, read not what
you want to but what has the right number of points, choose the thinner books
and skim over the words cuz you know nothing very deep will ever be on the
test, etc." If what's essential to us, if our goal is "skimming and scanning,"
we'd be doing great! Skimming has its place, but it's certainly not deep
understanding. What are we teaching our children?
And that brings me to one of my favorite quotes from Robert Fulghum: Don't
worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching
you.
If our children watch us teaching them, what do they conclude is essential?
What do they think reading is? What do they think comprehending is? What do
they think thinking is? What do they think understanding is?
No wonder Jamika couldn't figure it out.
_________________________________________________________________
Get more out of the Web. Learn 10 hidden secrets of Windows Live.
http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008
_______________________________________________
Understand mailing list
[email protected]
http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
