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Is Nanci Atwell, whose book In the Middle helped me structure my reading/writing workshops in my years as a writing teacher, living in fantasy land? That is, is Nanci’s experience as a teacher dramatically different than what is actually happening in schools today?

Consider that in some school districts, the work of Nanci Atwell, Lucy Calkins, Donald Graves, Kirby and Liner, Kenneth Koch finds its way onto teacher shelves, but the ideas go unimplemented. In conversation with one school district language arts director in central Texas, the ideas espoused in the article below are completely unrelated to what is happening in classrooms today. The only idea that was recognizable in the miasma of monotonous teaching that is ongoing in language arts indoctrination centers was this:

Many teachers who recognize the power of stories to create readers are doing all they can to squeeze time for independent reading into mandated, proven-ineffective programs of instruction that perversely substitute activities, drills, textbooks, quizzes, and tests for engagement and experience.

Chaperoning a field trip for my son’s school today, I couldn’t imagine sharing my joy of writing and reading in the classrooms that many colleagues find themselves in, and that Nancy describes so eloquently. And, while no one wants to be negative, when you’ve seen the light, nothing else is quite as good.

Thanks to PJ Higgins for pointing out the article in this blog entry.

• Education Week: The Case for Literature

  • The Case for Literature

    By Nancie Atwell
  • The irony—and tragedy—is that book reading, which profits a reader, an author, and a democratic society, is also the single activity that consistently relates to proficiency in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
  • In 2007, fully 70 percent of U.S. 8th graders read below the proficient level on the NAEP exam. Our 13-year-olds aren’t reading well because they’re not reading enough: The National Endowment for the Arts has reported that only 30 percent of students in this age group read every day. And that’s where literature comes in—or should.
  • Each year, my 7th and 8th graders choose and read between 30 and 100 titles. They devour books because the classroom library is packed with intriguing stories by serious writers, because they have daily time to read in school, because I expect them to read at home every night, and because 35 years of experience has taught me that it’s my job to read, embrace, and recommend worthwhile young-adult literature to the young adults I teach.
  • from my perspective as the teacher responsible for their literacy, my students become strong readers. They build fluency, stamina, vocabulary, confidence, critical abilities, habits, tastes, and comprehension. No instructional shortcut, packaged curriculum, new technology, regimen of tests, or other variety of magical thinking can achieve this end.
  • Knowledgeable English teachers have learned to fill their classrooms with well-crafted writing that appeals to and satisfies adolescents, provides rich, accessible examples of literary technique for students to notice and appreciate, and invites every student to want to enter a story and become lost there.
  • Today, young readers with access to books and opportunities to read them can live vicariously, alongside three-dimensional characters close to their own age who inhabit compelling stories about growing up in every time, place, and circumstance, with themes that resonate in the real lives of adolescents: identity, conscience, peer pressure, social divisions, political strife, loneliness, friendship, change.
  • The American Library Association recommends that each U.S. classroom have its own library, and that school libraries contain at least 20 age-appropriate titles per student.
  • So is regular, sustained time in school for students to choose, read, and fall in love with books.
  • Bernice E. Cullinan’s study, “Independent Reading and School Achievement,” funded by the U.S. Department of Education and available on the American Association of School Librarians’ Web site, marshals the evidence.
  • Many teachers who recognize the power of stories to create readers are doing all they can to squeeze time for independent reading into mandated, proven-ineffective programs of instruction that perversely substitute activities, drills, textbooks, quizzes, and tests for engagement and experience.
  • Nancie Atwell, the author of The Reading Zone and In the Middle, teaches at the Center for Teaching and Learning, in Edgecomb, Maine.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.