Reading Rainbow

The other night Leo was watching a movie called The Bad Guys for about the fifth time while Jairo and I were reading the news and not really paying attention to the TV. I happened to look up to catch a scene where the shark bad guy (who is pretending to be a fancy pregnant lady shark) throws a drink on the floor, tosses a table and yells, “I’m having a baby!!!” in the middle of a party to create a distraction. I laughed at the fact that the drink was thrown to make it look like the shark’s water had broken. That led to a discussion that will forever be burned into my brain (#corememory).

Leo: Wait, what water broke?

Me: Explains that this usually happens before labor and that it’s a sign the baby is coming.

Leo: But where is the water? How does it get out?

Me: The same way a baby does. Through the vagina.

Leo: WHAT????? (starts crying). I am so glad that I am not a girl because that is disgusting.

Me: It’s not disgusting, it's just how it works.

Leo: (through sobs) Are you being serious with me? Is that really how a baby gets out? That happened to me? 

Me: Correct (through tears of my own)

Leo continued to cry for several minutes after this revelation. Nothing we said made him feel better and the fact that I absolutely could not stop laughing didn’t help. We have talked about babies before. I know he has heard the phrase “babies come out of vaginas” on several occasions but CLEARLY he was either not listening or simply did not comprehend the situation. This made me wonder what else was going over his head without me realizing. Does this happen at school?! I started to panic but then I remembered that we get (many) worksheets sent home that chronicle his math and writing. We practice reading in English and in Spanish and we can see and hear the improvements he is making. Please know that when I say “we” that is mostly not true. It’s 85% my husband. You would think that as an educator I am the homework parent. I am not. He is a far better person than I am.

So I didn’t have to worry about Leo but then I remembered a podcast I stumbled upon the other day. It’s called Sold a Story. I started listening to it and couldn’t believe these statistics: Sixty-five percent of fourth graders in this country are not proficient readers and scores have been terrible for decades. This is according to country-wide standardized tests. Yes, these tests have a variety of issues but they offer some data. If you pull out specific groups of students, the numbers are more concerning. Eighty-two percent of Black fourth graders are not proficient readers. How has this been a persistent problem for decades? From what I read it’s a combination of a lot of things. It can be linked to underfunded schools, teacher shortages, and more recently, Covid. But, according to Sold a Story, it is also linked to the way some kids were being taught to read. Schools were targeting underperforming readers in first grade with a program called Reading Recovery created by an educator named Marie Clay. This approach is about looking for “clues” in the pictures to figure out the words. Rather than attempting to phonetically sound out the word (char·la·tan) kids use what’s called the “triple check” to see if they have the right word. Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right? I am by no means an early childhood educator but this seems more like guessing than learning how to put together the sounds and what they mean. Reading Recovery disagrees with me on this and calls it “active problem solving.” They swear by their approach but many, many, many, educational organizations and teachers disagree. Some even say the program has a negative long-term impact. Growing up I was taught to sound out the words phonetically and that is what my son is being taught in first grade. These debates about reading got me thinking about how much reading we assign in our college classes. Are our students actually understanding what they are reading? Are we helping them learn or wasting their time? There is a lot of research about pedagogy (teaching methods/practices) and I think it’s really cool (because I am a dork).

Here’s a fun fact: I was never really taught how to teach. In my doctoral program we had a class that met for 3 hours on a Friday for one quarter. The following quarter we had a class of our own to teach. Not to TA for a professor but to teach 35 undergraduates. By ourselves. Terrifying. That’s about 30 hours of instruction and the extent of my education on how to do half of my job. Bonkers when you think about it. 

Because I have very little training about how to educate people I had to learn how to “be” in the classroom. How to deliver content in a way students remember and that does not bore them to tears* I also had to figure out what to assign them outside of class and the answer was obviously reading! That’s what you do in college! You read! Why wouldn't I just assign some chapters and expect everyone to read them and be ready to discuss?  Here’s why:

Less than one third of students read assignments before class  

15% of college students completed their reading assignments after the material had been covered in class 

Reading tends to spike just before exams (No shit, Sheryl!)

Student compliance with reading assignments has steadily decreased over the last few decades 

Instructors complain that noncompliance with reading assignments has an adverse impact on students’ mastery of subject matter and on their ability to comprehend, analyze, and critique dense texts (It’s true, we do!)

Learning all of this drove me crazy. To me, reading just made sense as a way to teach students what they need to know but there are different kinds of reading depending on what you want students to actually do with the information. Because I was interested in understanding what would work best, I wrote a lovely (and never published) paper with my friend and colleague Dr. Geoff Desa. We specifically looked at academic reading (stuff assigned to go along with a course and focused on a specific discipline) and we learned that if you want students to understand academic reading they have to know the vocabulary specific to the discipline and they have to have a reading strategy. Ok so, make sure you cover the important words ahead of time. In my case it is philosophical stuff like eudaimonia, consequentialism, formalism. Easy. I can do that. But what the hell is a reading strategy?! My reading strategy has always been: start at the beginning, skim the middle while highlighting things that seem important, closely read the discussion/conclusion. This was how I survived grad school.  Apparently reading strategies are things now covered way before college but not all students were taught them so when they get to college things get tricky. Research shows that without these strategies student’s comprehension and ability to construct knowledge is impacted. This all seems bad! But sometimes bad is good because if we know what they aren’t doing and why maybe we can help! Helping does not mean eliminating reading from my course! They still have to read. But now I am trying to offer alternate ways to learn the material and reading strategies they can use. Sometimes I assign articles that come with a transcript or podcast version. This way my students who like reading can read and my students who don’t can listen. I assign TED talks or send them to speakers on campus. I want them to get the information they need to succeed in my class and put everything together and however they do that is fine with me. 

Of course I would love it if all of my students enjoyed reading. I try to convince them how useful it is. I tell them about all the smart and successful people who are/were voracious readers.** How it boosts creativity and problem solving and makes you look interesting in public. I even assign literature for class to explain some concepts. Does it work? Not always but I think it helps and I will take a small win. In hopes of getting Leo to become a kid who loves reading I’ve started reading way more at home. Not on a kindle or my ipad but an actual book made out of paper and borrowed from a library. I want him to see me engrossed in a good book and to realize the fun they can be. Before we get to that point though we need him to become a proficient reader. For now, we are sounding out words in English and in Spanish (much easier in Spanish) and moving on to more complicated works and books with more complex stories. Maybe the next book we try should be on childbirth…? 

*I have never had tears in class but I once had a guy fall very soundly asleep. Snoring once but that was during team presentations so I will take no credit for that!

**Is it that smart people simply like reading or that more reading makes you smart? Chicken or egg kind of thing but I’m a book pusher ;)