The Readers I Want

Being Explicit About My Values for Student Success

When I first stared working with kids, I made the mistake of mentally separating them into two groups: the kids I enjoyed teaching and the kids I didn’t. Not surprisingly, my behaviors toward each group only reinforced the stereotype I had created and made it harder for me to be effective with kids in either group. In general, I was too punitive toward the kids I didn’t want to teach and too permissive toward the kids I did.

As embarrassing as it is to admit that I carried around such prejudice, I’m proud to say that I learned good lessons from it. Here are three that I think about often:

• Student behavior, and not ability, is what I react to most strongly. I’m not uncomfortable teaching kids of widely varying abilities in the same class. But I am uncomfortable dealing with many different kinds of behavior, particularly those behaviors that make it hard for me to teach or for kids to learn. It’s not whether kids can do the work that worries me, it’s how they go about doing—or not doing—it.

• All kids can master effective learning behaviors if I make an effort to teach them. I don’t have to treat kids like babies, but I do have to tell them what I expect and, when I want them to act in ways they may not be used to, I have to teach those behaviors as explicit lessons, just like I would teach any other new learning.

• The key for me in helping kids improve their behaviors is treating them like the people I want them to be. Once I lay out my expectations, I have to start by assuming that kids will meet them. If they don’t, my first job is helping them assess their actions and make better choices. This may involve reminders or more practice, but it should never involve punishment. My goal should always be to help them find their way back to the positive behaviors they already know.

Before I can make any of these high-minded ideas come to life, however, I have to know what I’m looking for. Specifically, I have to answer the question, “What kind of readers do I want?” It’s tempting to think of things like, “I want readers who always do what I tell them”, or “I want readers who pass all their tests”, but expectations like this aren’t realistic or useful.

To develop my description of the readers I want, I thought about the kids I really enjoyed teaching and asked myself why I liked working with them so much. I realized that these kids weren’t always the highest readers in class or even the easiest kids to work with. What they all had, however, was a set of qualities that made them better learners and, therefore, more likely to benefit from the teaching I was offering. In the end, I came up with six qualities. The readers I want are passionate, curious, engaged, productive, practical, and aware.

To help all kids embody these qualities, the first thing I have to do is explain them. Here’s what I mean:

• Passionate. I want all kids to love reading, of course. But this never seems to happen even in the best of circumstances. So I tell kids that if they can’t be passionate about reading, they can be passionate around reading. For example, they can be passionate about a particular subject area and do a lot of reading about it. They can be passionate about writing or talking about what they read. I’ve also worked with many kids who started out several years below their grade level but who developed a passion for learning how to be better readers. They might not have always enjoyed the books they had to read. But they thoroughly enjoyed getting through them and on to more challenging texts as the year progressed.

• Curious. In my experience, the most successful readers have always been the most curious readers. These readers are always asking questions, always trying to learn something new. They never seem fully satisfied that what an author says is what an author means. No text is safe from their prying minds. Curious readers tend to choose challenging and sometimes offbeat books. They read many different kinds of text and seem to realize that the “rules of reading” apply equally to all of them. Curious readers are also curious critics. They write interesting book reviews and ask great questions during book talks. They often want to know what other readers are reading and what they think about it.

• Engaged. Kids spend a lot of time reading in class. I also want them to spend a lot of time reading at home. But I worry about this. It’s so easy for a reader just to sit them with a book open and not really do much. It’s also possible for readers to read words but to disengage their mind from thinking too much about the text. I tell students that engaged readers do a lot of thinking while they read, and that I look for evidence of this thinking in their journals, in my conferences with them, and when they share. They know that being engaged does not mean just sitting there quietly turning pages.

• Productive. I want kids to read a lot and I want them to get a lot of good reading done. To help them with this, we keep track of reading rates, pages read, and books read. We can also count the book talks they’ve given, the papers they’ve written about books, and times they’ve given formal readings or made other presentations. While I would never say that quantity is more important than quality in any learning endeavor, the amount of reading kids do makes a huge impact on how they improve. This is because fluency is such a key factor in reading improvement.

• Practical. I want kids to get something useful out of their reading. While I certainly believe in reading for enjoyment, I don’t believe that’s the only reason to read, or that I serve kids well by basing all of their reading on the idea that it will be fun for them. When kids read fiction, I want them to reflect sincerely on important life lessons. I also want them to do a lot of non-fiction reading, particularly as it might relate to interests students might have or topics they are studying in other subject areas. I see no reason why a student can’t read up for a Social Studies report or a science test during Language Arts.

• Aware. It’s kids’ awareness of their reading that I value most of all. When kids realize they aren’t understanding something and take action to improve their comprehension; when kids realize that a book is too easy or too hard for them; when kids see patterns across multiple texts; when kids can tell me how they’ve improved and what they need to work on next—these are the things that tell me they are learning to be better readers.

The qualities I’ve described here won’t show up on a test or in any listing of reading standards. They’re really just my values. But I find that when I’m clear about these values, kids meet more standards and pass more tests.

I suspect that every teacher has a set of values like this around reading. They might not be the same values as mine, but I’m sure they exist. I also suspect that most teachers don’t share their values explicitly with their students. These values come out, of course; no one can hide them completely. But they may not reach kids in as clear and simple a way as possible.

This is a loss.

Reading is such an important thing. In school, we think of it as “The First ‘R’”, the most important subject and the foundation of academic success. But if we don’t share with our kids the kind of readers we want them to be, many may never figure it out. Instead, many are likely to think of themselves as “school” readers, people who only read when forced to do so in school, and then only for a grade or to stay out of trouble.

I think there’s also another good reason for sharing our values around reading with our students: it helps us share a bit of ourselves at the same time. When I list my criteria for the kind of readers I want my students to be, I’m telling them how I see myself as a reader when I’m reading as well as I can. This helps students see me as a model of what a good reader can be.

Comments

[Brian Cox]

I've never thought to explain to my students what kind of reader I expect them to be. I've always just relied on my own passion to be contageous. I can see the value in putting this passion into clear words. I appreciate what was said here. Thanks Steve.

[Steve Peha]

I like the phrase Brian used here: "putting this passion into words." It speaks to two essential traits of effective teaching, I think: (1) Having a passion for the subject; and (2) Being able to articulate that passion to students. Too often, I think we just hope that kids will "get it". But when we spell it out, they tend to get it faster.

Another advantage for me is that when I can put my passion into words, my words can survive even after I'm around -- or even if my passion seems to be flagging. I think of it as a kind of "passing of the torch" from me to the kids I work with.