Finding Meaning and Purpose Together

Abstract

Teachers' immersion in a literacy study group produces authentic reading for the teachers as well as their students. The social processes of reading, talking, modeling, and further discussion push teachers' learning to higher levels than does just reading about new ideas. ********** IT STARTED with just a vague sense of dissatisfaction. After several years as an intermediate school principal, I was frustrated with my inability to move my staff from literacy instruction that could be described as a approach to more meaningful instruction. Technical-basics literacy wasn't working for our fourth- and fifth-graders. Most classrooms were using a basal reader and the related workbook, and all the teachers but one were using a spelling workbook. The teachers were generally teaching reading, writing, and spelling separately, and the students weren't seeing the connections. Some whole-class novels were being read, but teachers micro-managed each chapter with lots of vocabulary and questions. Round robin reading was still prevalent, and there was very little real about reading. Much of the instruction in all these language arts classes was teacher directed, and so students didn't own their learning. Moreover, students were spending a lot of time on reading-related activities but not much time actually reading. It was the disjointedness of the instruction that struck me, though. Students weren't putting ideas, strategies, and concepts together to help themselves become better readers. Instead, they were going through the motions and just doing what they were told to do--fill in a worksheet, read chapter 10 tonight, answer end-of-chapter questions. But the activities weren't authentic and purposeful, and consequently reading had a smaller impact on the students. My teachers, on the other hand, were working harder and harder. Some had found ways, mostly through coaxing, to make reading meaningful. Others kept trying ideas in the hopes that they'd hit on something that would work. Still others had given up and simply relied on what they'd done for years. In short, teachers were managing their literacy programs. And while the programs were organized and included all of the pieces we thought were necessary to make literacy meaningful, somehow a huge piece was missing. As the instructional leader, I wasn't completely sure what that piece looked like. This sense of dissatisfaction led me back to school, where I studied literacy intensely. And I became fascinated. I returned ready to help my teachers move forward. What I didn't realize was that I was still at the technical-basics level in my own understanding. HOW WE GOT STARTED In an effort to create meaningful literacy instruction, I designed a staff development initiative in which my teachers and I studied literacy together. In short, we became immersed in meaningful literacy. (1) We read a text, came together as a book group to talk about the reading, watched a model of the literacy concept we had read about, and then encouraged one another to try the new concept. (2) The study group met weekly. Teachers were given the text and were required to attend, since the meetings occurred during the workday. Of course, I couldn't require anyone to do the reading, and I could only urge teachers to try implementing what we were learning. While I went into this experience to help teachers consider new ways of teaching literacy, I found that my own beliefs about literacy and instruction were changing from valuing the technical basics to attaching more value to meaning. At first, as the literacy teachers and I began to read about, talk about, and implement new literacy practices, it was easy for me to identify technical-basics literacy practices that I hoped we could replace. It was clear that round robin reading needed to disappear, for I had seen that it created anxious students (those whose turns were coming up) and unengaged students (those who had already read or were far down the line). …