RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

I found the articles a bit more difficult to read than the previous ones, but I understood that in order to reach African American students, you have to find their interests and use those interests as literacy instruction. As I was reading the Henry and Staples articles, I recognized the overwhelming challenge teachers today are facing with educating and sometimes “parenting” these students. Some students do not have any support at home, and school becomes their escape. These are the most difficult students to reach.

Most schools have students with diverse backgrounds and as teachers, our job becomes more difficult. With these varied backgrounds come different languages, different parental support networks, and different cultural differences. As a language arts teacher my job is to reach all of these students and in order to do so, I must make the content relevant to them. While most of them already know how to read when they get to the 8th grade, many do not comprehend what they read. Much of the state testing involves application and analysis surrounding topics they have no prior knowledge. Sometimes the articles on the state tests are gender and racially biased making minority groups disadvantaged.

I am currently teaching in a school that is almost all white. On my team of 110 students this year, only two were African American. Two others were multi-racial, two were Hispanic and six were Asian. I realize that I need to continue to connect the literature that I teach to the students, and by doing so, they thirst for more.

Henry’s article reminded me of a new strategy I tried this year called, Reader’s/Writer’s Workshop. I allowed my students to read anything they wanted. Each week they were to write to me or a peer about what they had been reading. I had them use a series of question stems to help break the habit of always writing a summary. I wanted them to connect to the literature. Years ago when I first started teaching, I was fortunate enough to have a principal purchase a class set of Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey by Margaret Peterson Haddix. In this novel, the character has to write in her diary for class, and the teacher collects the journals and reads them for a grade. If a student writes anything personal in the diary, the students can fold over the page and the teacher promises not to read that entry. Remembering this idea, I told my students that if they ever wrote anything private or felt that a connection to a character was too personal, I promised not to read it. I saw huge growth in the reading comprehension skills and writing skills of my students this past year. Out of 110 students, I only had 4 that didn’t pass the reading EOG for 8th grade. What I learned from this is, if we allow them a say in what they read, they will read.

Karen Chester