Thursday, July 7, 2011

William J. Broz, "Not Reading: The 800 Pound Mockingbird in the Classroom"

This article, in the most recent issue of English Journal (May 2011), talks about an issue that rarely appears in print, although it probably occurs in almost everyone's classroom: students who do not read whatever text they are supposed to be reading!  (Thus the mixed metaphor of the title.  Not reading is the proverbial "elephant in the room," but becomes the "mockingbird in the room" because William Broz is writing about how he assigned To Kill a Mockingbird to his college students, and he knows that some just won't read it!!)

Hilariously, he says he actually uses that book because he invariably finds that many of his students didn't read it the first time around when they were in high school (Broz asks them to admit it honestly).  In response, he exhorts them with the main point of his piece: "If students do not read the assigned texts, nothing important is happening in your literature classroom" (italics are his).  Then, most astounding, is his observation that despite this lecture, 20% of these future English teachers will actually fake it a second time.  In Broz's words, "Not reading is such a strong mode of operation that at least two students will attempt to write reading response journals, student-generated discussion items, and short literary essays based on reading SparkNotes and other Internet chapter summaries they find among the 2.5 million Google hits on To Kill a Mockingbird."  Wow.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, for sure. 

Much of Broz's article is devoted to strategies to encourage reading, rather than faked reading.  He shared that his first solution was to advise students to just not assign the "old chestnuts" that will have been written about ad nauseum on the internet, but later he realized that students not reading has much more to do with what teachers ask students to do.  If teachers "use study guides, comprehension quizzes, pseudo whole-class “discussions” that serve mainly to summarize and interpret the reading, and similar enabling strategies, we send the message to students that no engaged reading or individual interpretation of the text is necessary and that not reading the text is just fine." 

So what does Bros believe teachers should do instead?
*ask interpretive questions (rather than comprehension) that can not easily be answered by sparknotes.
*use reader response journals (and/or discussions of reactions to text).  They are unique and personal, and cannot be easily faked, as opposed to test questions on character, plot, or the definitive meaning of a symbol.
*use YA, high-interest literature for whole class reading at the beginning of year.  Encourage students to read what interests them, even if not particularly highbrow
*use student-generated "discussion items" and frequent discussions during reading, not just after reading
*use natural consequences - if students have not arrived prepared to discuss the day's reading, than they need to spend class time reading until they can participate with the group

Broz also has some DON'Ts:
*don't spend time in class going over what students should have already read to compensate for them not having read (I italicized this last bit because in at least two schools that I have worked in, teachers would frequently have students listen to the book on audio tapes, and then would have to spend time summarizing - especially in middle school.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is bad to enable students when they aren't reading.)
*don't use the film version unless there is a really good reason too
*don't make tests/quizzes "right answer games" that test comprehension or memorization of a particular interpretation

I guess I can never be 100% positive, but I never got the impression that students were secretly not reading in my class.  They were accountable to their peers when we did literature circles, and we would often listen to the audiotapes of books we read as a class.  Independent reading used to be faked on a rampant basis, so I tried doing book blogs instead of just a reading log, which did seem to help for the most part.  (Sometimes students copied and pasted summaries of their book, but in most cases I think they did actually read them.)  I will write in my next post about some of the most frustrating cases though, which are the disaffected boys who aren't interested in reading much of anything in any genre, no matter how open you make the requirements.

Broz, W. J.  (2011) "Not Reading: The 800 Pound Mockingbird in the Classroom."  English Journal.  100: 5.

*Note: I did look through several years of English Education and downloaded some articles that intrigued me, but I saw very few articles that I felt were directly related to adolescent literature/literacy.  These last three articles I am posting about are all from English Journal.

1 comment:

Jason Whitney said...

Why didn't I write this article? This is one of those topics that has broad appeal. Many teachers have said to me that they often suspect they are fooling themselves and that students are faking all the readings. I agree whole-heartedly with the suggestions in the article. A lot of teachers find that they are sunk at the beginning of a discussion because half the class read. Reading quizzes can help, sort of. One thing that is interesting is that one of my students asked this question on English Companion Ning and teachers gave some very interesting advice. One said he makes them stick their forehead on the desk for the remainder of the period. Another said that he has students face the wall in social Siberia as a punishment. These I don't especially recommend.