Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Too much of a good thing?” I’m sure you have. Too many fruity cocktails after a long week can be too much of a good thing. Too many field trips planned for the end of the school year can be too much of a good thing. And, too much emphasis on student reading levels can definitely be too much of a good thing.

Can I share with you one thing that kind of freaks me out? While I love all things organized, the sight of a classroom library organized solely by reading levels makes my skin crawl. Where is the joy of reading in that? And what makes me even sadder is when I ask a teacher about a particular student’s reading and he or she replies, “Oh, he’s a 38.” What reduces me to practically weeping in the hallway is when I ask a student about his or her reading and hear, “Oh, I’m a 38.”

Pardon me while I collect myself for a moment.

Please don’t misunderstand. I think reading levels are wonderful tools. As teachers, they help us to more clearly see how typical reading development unfolds, they give us strategies to help focus and refine our teaching, they provide us with a method for organizing our instruction in powerful ways, and they can serve as a common language to use in conversations about trends we observe in our practice.

I also don’t blame teachers for this all too common reality. I think many of us out there are just trying to survive in an age of extreme accountability where data collection and placing students on a graph seems to have superseded everything we know about best practices and the idea of fostering a love of reading somehow seems like an investment we no longer have time for.

However, students are not reading levels alone and classroom libraries are not places for sorting books like they are a million tiny screws in an aisle at Home Depot.

photo: riaskiff via photopin cc

Personally, I think the implementation of the Common Core State Standards could go in two distinct directions. They could go the way of testing and accountability and measuring things and blah blah blah. Or, we could use the CCSS as a tool to help us redefine reading practices in our classrooms, starting with how we organize our libraries and think about our students as readers. The Common Core asks us to create independent thinkers who have a broad understanding of various reading genres and text types, not kids who know how to pick a book out of bin labeled with the correct number. It asks us to develop students who can closely read any text while also speaking passionately and knowledgeably about the types of books and reading that they love.

What does all this mean for our classrooms? (Hold on, let me step down from my soap box for now.) I think it means we continue to determine the appropriate reading levels of our students and use that information to help guide and shape our instruction. These are good, helpful, wise tools and we should continue to use them. However, it also means reorganizing our libraries to include some leveled baskets, but also books sorted by area of interest, author, genre, and text types. It means helping our students to develop and articulate their identities as readers. What books do they love the most? What are they interested in reading or learning more about? What authors or illustrators make them excited to read? How do they like to read? And where? How do students prefer to share their thinking about their reading– in a conversation with others, on a blog, in a journal?

Do you know what never feels like too much of a good thing? (Or at least it never gets to be too much in my deeply nerdy little family.) Reading. Loving reading. Sharing books. Discovering new authors. Refining who we are as readers. That is always a good thing and it never feels like too much. In fact, the time we are able to find never feels like enough.



Putting the 'Fun' in Reading Fundamentals

QUIET! Teacher in Progress: Focus on the 'How'

Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week!

Okay, I’ll be honest with you. Banned Books Week wasn’t exactly on my calendar. But when a little birdie told me that my column was scheduled to appear right smack in the middle of this celebration, I turned to my friend and yours, Google.

Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read what you choose and draws attention to the problem of censorship. I spent some time looking at lists of the top 100 most challenged titles from the last two decades. And you know what? I’ve read about half of them.

What made me really stop and take notice was when I realized that one of the series books that I regularly read aloud to my little friends made the list: Junie B. Jones. Seriously? Did I miss the one where she joined a cult or something?

Once again, I turned to my friend Google to see what was what. Evidently, people object to Junie’s incorrect grammar and impetuous nature. Um, hello? Isn’t that sort of the appeal of Junie? That she speaks in a way that is typical of many five year olds (it’s called voice, people) and has problems that a large number of young readers can relate to (like being impetuous). Personally, I know a lot of teachers don’t care for the series, but the idea of banning it from the library all together seems a bit extreme, don’t you think?

Methinks there are some people out there with too much time and an anger problem.

photo: nataliesap via photopin cc

Regardless, the entire situation got me thinking about what we decide to read to our students and how we decide to read it. Do you know what I realized? It’s not so much the what as it is the how.

Let me explain. I’m sure you’ve heard the words “text complexity” kicked around your school a time or two this year. With the introduction of the Common Core State Standards and its assertion that all students must engage with grade-level appropriate texts, we have become obsessed with the what. What are we going to read? What is considered grade-level appropriate? What is considered complex?

Yet, I think the more important question is the how. How are we going to make these text selections work for all students? And, my personal favorite, how are we going to encourage students to become critical readers of text? How do we push our students to think critically about what is being said and what is not being said?

You see, if we shift our focus to how we would like our students to interact with text regardless of its subject matter or complexity, then the what starts to matter less.

Now, don’t get carried away here. Please do not run into your classrooms with 50 SHADES OF GREY screaming, “It’s the HOW that matters!” Because in that situation, I think the what may very well take center stage.

Mrs. Mimi is a pseudonymous teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of IT'S NOT ALL FLOWERS AND SAUSAGES: MY ADVENTURES IN SECOND GRADE, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

© 2012 Mrs. Mimi. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.

Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms.

This post is to commemorate the importance and fabulousness of International Literacy Day. Thank goodness that there are smart people everywhere who recognize that the story is everything and want to unlock the power of story for each and every child.

So, sit back and let me tell you a story about a little boy who one day discovered the wonder and magic of reading.

Ahem.

Once there was a student. We shall call him Muppet. By the spring of first grade, Muppet had made progress as a reader, but it was slow. Painfully slow. For both of us. He received all the extra help I could beg, borrow and steal. Yet more and more of my little friends were graduating into more difficult books, while my Muppet stayed in books that were clearly super easy.

Although he never said anything to me, I knew it bugged him to be so far behind. There were days when I noticed him trying to hide his books from the other children at his table because his books were filled with big, colorful pictures and very little text. While his friends blissfully made their way through a chapter book, Muppet sat staring at the ceiling.

Did his embarrassment motivate him to spend more time reading? Of course not, but it did motivate the heck out of me to find what else I could do to help.

One morning, I presented Muppet with a nonfiction book about octopuses (octopi?). A few minutes later, I checked in with Muppet to see how he was faring. I was immediately thrown off because Muppet was totally engrossed in the book, studying each photograph-filled page as if it was pure genius. Muppet was intently working his way through each and every word. I watched him study the page, taking in all the labels and well....reading.

Me: So, how’s it going over here?
Muppet: Mrs. Mimi?
Me: Yes honey?
Muppet: Okay, wait. Wait. Wait. Okay, so you’re saying that I can read this book and actually learn stuff?
Me: (Um, what?) Well, yes. Of course you can.
Muppet: Even me?
Me: Of course even you.
Muppet: So, I can want to know about something, find the book and teach myself?
Me: Um, yeah. You can absolutely do that. That’s what we were talking about today.
Muppet: Cool!
Me: Do you want to know more about anything in particular? I could find some more books for you...
Muppet: Really, you would do that?
Me: (Are you freaking kidding me? You’re asking me for books? Uh, yeah, I’ll go get them.) Of course. Just tell me want you want to learn more about.

And just like that, Muppet decided that while he hated learning how to read, reading to learn was right up his alley.

If only I had figured this out three months ago! I gave him nonfiction book after nonfiction book and he devoured every single one. He read books about animals, books about people, books about places.

And almost every day, he would be desperate to show me something that he had learned in a book...all by himself.

Mrs. Mimi is a pseudonymous teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of IT'S NOT ALL FLOWERS AND SAUSAGES: MY ADVENTURES IN SECOND GRADE, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.