Teaching as Social Justice; Reading Improvement at Dr. George Johnson School

We have known for some time that school success and academic achievement is closely linked to social class and ethnicity. There are a variety of possible reasons postulated for this including home conditions (nutrition, parent’s education level, lack of reading at home, etc.); teacher expectations and institutional racism among others. Regardless, the social and human costs of poor academic achievement and school completion are enormous. Much has been done in Manitoba to develop in students an understanding and responsibility for social justice. Many students, encouraged by their teachers have even become activists, the annual We Day is one example. Much less attention however has been placed on how teachers themselves can also act as agents of social justice, or as Paolo Friere (author of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”) has suggested we must come to see teaching as a political act whether teachers recognize it as that or not. Said Friere, “The educator has the duty of not being neutral” … in the struggle of marginalized groups in our communities. However, teachers generally see social justice as do students – acts of kindness involving helping others in some material way. Much less thought is given to how the act of teaching and pedagogy itself might also be considered acts of social justice. Educators are well aware how important reading is as a gateway to learning and empowerment but less thought goes into the much broader context of how teachers can use reading and academic achievement as an agent of social change for students. At Dr. George Johnson Middle School we have come to see reading instruction as our most important act of social justice.

You need be in the building for just a short amount of time to identify what our school community values most – academic achievement in the context of an environment focused on nurturing the social and emotional growth of students, or CARE (cultivating academics, resiliency, empathy and engagement). The school community first identified reading improvement as a core commitment to social justice. As many middle school teachers become aware the fundamental challenges associated with reading instruction begin to change in middle school, some are pedagogical and others are institutional. For instance, institutionally, middle schools and their teachers adopt a pseudo high school mindset that it was the job of early elementary teachers to teach reading, and their job is to teach content. This becomes reinforced in the many middle schools that implement specialist instruction where content instruction is the focus and “reading instruction” if it could be called that, happens in language arts classes only.

Pedagogically, many teachers come to middle school unprepared to teach reading as it was not part of their pre-service training, and as a result of the institutional barriers little effort and incentive exists to remedy that. This situation becomes more problematic when you add into the mix the unique nature of middle school readers. While some training in reading instruction would definitely be an asset it would not be enough to me the needs of these learners. To do that a school wide effort to understand and learn about these students would be required. This is exactly what our school has done.

So who are middle school students as readers? In general research shows that young adolescents do not read much for pleasure (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988). Our own school based data not only confirmed this but revealed an even more alarming fact through the national student survey Tell Them From Me (2006), where our students reported they did even less reading then what was the national norm for their age group. Other research indicates that they “develop negative feelings about reading as they move through the middle grades” (McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth 1995). In total the picture that emerges of middle school readers from the research is that of “poorly skilled and apathetic” (Ivey, & Broaddus 2000). We generalized some of these sentiments across our school in 2006 when we began to consider how to transform our school through reading, and when presented with school wide data that showed only 54% of students reading at or above grade level we decided it was a moral imperative for us to do something about it. Through our focused efforts over 10 years that number is now consistently near 90%.

At the beginning we identified a staff member with a keen interest in reading to look at the needs and nature of our youngest students – grade fives... The result was the identification of a crucial instructional obstacle as students enter middle school, which is the shift from narrative to expository reading. While students had great familiarity with narrative text they seemed to have little with expository and lacked the skills to “decode” meaning from this text. Of course as students enter middle school and later at high school this text is the basis of curricular content and becomes their primary form of reading which then becomes a major obstacle in student achievement for many students. As a result, our school adopted the “Core Four” reading strategies to implement throughout the curriculum - summarizing, clarifying (vocabulary), predicting, questioning (sometimes called teacher questions). Teachers were encouraged to employ them with students whenever reading expository text. So for instance I observed a grade five social studies class in which the class was reading a section in the textbook on New France, and the teacher would regularly engage students by utilizing one of these strategies. At the same time the school implemented a reading program throughout the school. In grades five and six it was called Reciprocal Reading, and in grade seven and eight Literacy Circles or Book Talks. Small groups of students read together with one text (with a emphasis on expository texts) and were taught to discuss the book using the Core Four in a rotating fashion, guided by an adult or older more accomplished reader. Much emphasis was also being made to allow students to choose the text.

The adoption of this program highlighted a further weakness of the school – a scarcity of reading material. Supporting this type of reading program requires a great variety and quantity of books. In 2003, the elementary school in Gimli split into two schools, with early years students moving to a new school. The split left a noticeable emptiness on the library shelves (once again highlighting the lack of emphasis on reading in middle years). We faced the dual challenge of acquiring books to support our reading program, and getting students interested in reading in general. In this regard, while we knew students weren't reading on their own time, teachers did recognize that when they did they had their preferences, which included scary and adventure stories, sports, comics and magazines. Similarly, some studies we reviewed found the same to be the case (Ivey & Broaddus 2000). Fortunately, we were able to secure approximately $20,000 to build our library collection over a three years period. An increase in school based budget support now keeps the collection growing and current.

Next we asked ourselves how do we get students reading more? Recognizing it was something that was imperative but we could not rely on students reading at home, we decided it had to occur at school. This can become an uncomfortable choice for middle school teachers who are driven by content as it can have seemed like “non instructional time” but having removed the institutional obstacle of specialist teachers it quickly passed as a concern. We came to believe that no time spent on reading was wasted and so we implemented a silent reading time in each classroom, at a time of the teacher’s choice. This time has now become a favorite part of the day for teachers and students alike – not only for the quiet interval all teachers crave each day, but as a treasured time for both to indulge their interest in reading. This should not have come as a surprise to us as research has shown that while reading is not often a leisure time choice for middle school students they do value time to read in school and “are more inclined to do so when a specific time is set aside to do so” (Stewart, Paradis, Ross, & Lewis, 1996; Worthy & McKool, 1996) In another study when asked what was the best part of their reading or language arts class, the majority of students reported “having time to read silently and independently” (Ivey & Broaddus 2000).

As one might expect the school has a number of other programs and activities to encourage students to read, some common to other schools such as celebrating I Love to Read Month, and others like the now popular Poetry Café, and Accelerated Reader through which the school rewards students who have met grade level reading goals. This focus on getting students to read more as a key strategy is strongly supported in multiple studies (Allington 1994; Ivey & Broaddus 2000) where it's been observed that for middle school students “the majority of reading difficulties are a result of a lack of experience with print, rather than a lack of ability”.

However, improving students reading skills is also dependent on improving teachers understanding of reading as a developmental process (Ivey & Broaddus 2000), and intensifying supports for students who are not responding to classroom level instruction. Given the range of reading needs / levels middle school students bring into a classroom it should be obvious that a one size fits all approach would yield limited results. Therefore, it will be important for teachers to become more intimate with each student as a reader. Sometimes this may mean using a commercial reading assessment or maybe just making time when they can, such as during silent reading, to hear students read. Regardless, this knowledge of students reading abilities and needs will form the basis of further reading instruction that should include fluency activities, linking reading and writing, and word analysis (Ivey & Broaddus 2000).

One way to accomplish this is through the traditional classroom novel study. Novel studies should not be the foundation of what we call reading instruction at the middle years. Instead classroom novels can serve two important functions in regards to student’s developmental needs in fluency and writing. When novels are read aloud to a class, teachers can present models in pronunciation and exposure to conventions in writing, along with time to discuss and practice them in more detail. At our school teachers read aloud in a several ways; sometimes it is with each student having a book to follow along with, sometimes the teacher reads from the one book and more recently, a teacher has begun to use eBooks displayed on a projector to have students follow along. Either way teachers can use novel studies to help students improve their fluency while also providing models of quality writing. To their delight teachers have discovered that even in middle school students enjoy being read aloud to, and it is an easy strategy to employ to develop and expands students interest in reading. Research consistently indicates that “motivation, interest, and engagement are often enhanced when teachers read aloud to middle school students,” (Albright and Ariail 2001). Yet in at least one study only “58 percent of teachers reported reading aloud to their students” (Korby 2013). It will be important for teachers to purposefully identify other opportunities for fluency development throughout the day as well. Having students reading out loud can also contribute to fluency development if the material is not too challenging (Wolf 1998) and so in our school this practice occurs regularly during the before mentioned Reciprocal Reading and Literacy Circles.

“Effective teaching of word analysis skills, spelling, and vocabulary” also has to be a feature of middle school reading instruction (Bear & Templeton, 1998). At our school we have focused on these skills through word study. Some teachers have pursued this through approaches such as “Words Their Way” as popularized by Donald Bear, and others with more traditional spelling programs. Teaching word analysis continues to be a topic of ongoing discussion as teachers continue to explore ways to best incorporate it as an instructional component of reading. This will likely remain the case as they learn and grow as teachers of reading.

Finally, but equally important the last key component of our reading improvement plan was a system of targeted interventions for students who were not approaching grade level despite all of the above. While many middle school students just need exposure and guided experience with text, still others need more intensive skill development. We believed, as did (Ivey, 1999; Morris, Ervin, & Conrad, 1996), that middle school students who were still behind their peers could improve in reading with the right kind of instruction. Therefore, an effective school wide reading improvement plan will have to include a system of interventions that provides teachers time to deliver either small group or individualized reading instruction to students who need it. This step will require of the school administrator an unflinching commitment to student achievement first and foremost, as it may present a significant institutional challenge either in staffing or scheduling to bring this about. At our school creative scheduling has allowed us to arrange for the classroom teacher to spend 4 periods a 6-day cycle working with student(s) on skills such as fluency, comprehension, and word analysis. In a small number of cases students have been further referred to the resource teacher to more intensive intervention which includes one period a day for at least a month.

To summarize, our school has seen significant improvement in both achievement and interest in student reading through the following:

Creating an environment where reading is highly valued and supported
Moving independent reading (silent reading time/reciprocal reading) – choice, to the forefront of instruction
Providing access to a wide variety of reading materials
Teaching the Core Four Reading strategies during context instruction (summarizing, clarifying, questioning, prediction)
Engaging students in fluency activities, linking reading and writing, and word analysis

Teacher / student read “alouds”
Explicit of word analysis (i.e. spelling program; words our way, etc.)

A system of interventions for those students that do not reach grade level with regular classroom instruction

The amazing commitment and work of teachers at this school have enabled us to reach high levels of student’s success in reading. The most important take away we have to offer from these efforts is that a school, a group of teachers, can engage in collective action through their pedagogy and instruction to make the kind of substantial change in children's leaning that can enable them to take advantage of what an education can offer them to better their lives. To us that is the most powerful form of social justice teachers can engage in. Empowering both teacher and learner.