On Reading
Probably the most traditional of all the traditional focuses in an English classroom is learning how to read. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a grade-abated makerspace or listening to a lecture on 13th-century poetry; it all starts with how well you can decode text and understanding its meaning.
This course forces you to practice reading as a slow and deliberate act. That’s why you have posts telling you what to do, instead of a traditional 42-minute lesson. It’s why those posts are much more complicated than a handout or embedded video. It’s why we don’t review directions and other materials at the front of the room1.
You must dedicate yourself to reading in here, and it has to happen well before you’re studying novels and poetry and all the other expected stuff of an English course. It’s about the skill of reading. You learn by doing — “We learn what we do,” Dewey said — and you only get better at a skill through practice.
What I also know after a few years of doing this — first through traditional, performative lessons, then through student-centered lessons, and now through makerspace work — is that you will seek out shortcuts when it comes to more difficult reading. It’s how we’re all wired: If everything else is equal, we look for the fastest route to the goal. So if you’re asked to read a poem or novel closely, you just might hop onto the Internet and ask it to help you.
In here, there is no summary of the instructional posts. You have to read them, and you have to read them carefully, or you will not know what to do. You won’t improve the skill of reading, either, and the deficit will spiral. The same is true of guides and handouts. They are the teaching, which means they can’t be treated as checklists or overviews. The Pareto Project guide, for instance, is written to teach you slowly and deliberately about many things related to the project itself.
If this is tough at first, it’s because you need to get stronger. It gets easier as you gain strength. You have to develop more than a habit of mind; you also need some sinew and muscle to move you through the work.
On Habits of Mind
Now, the tone of that first section is mostly matter-of-fact. There’s no judgment or disappointment, just encouragement to tough it out until you get better at the all-important skill of close reading.
The tone in this section will shift slightly to be more critical, both as an explicit model of how to use tone and because you need something more critical2. These instructional posts exist to help you strengthen your reading skills, yes, but they also exist to fight a particularly dangerous reflex: learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness isn’t unique to you, your age group, the year 2017, etc. It’s human nature to want things to be easier than they are, and it’s human nature to adapt to what we’re given. The educational system was built to spoon-feed students information, and it will take many more decades of reform to undo that ethos. Students are used to the spoon.
There’s no spoon here3. You need to be resilient and tough. You need to be okay with the feeling of being a little lost. Everything has been built for you so that hard work and focus will teach you what you need — from how to read more carefully to how to get organized to how to write essays.
Learned helplessness makes confusion and uncertainty much worse. But if you feel lost in this room, you can trust that there’s a route forward. There’s a map. There are even people who will read the map with you. They will help you figure things out.
But they won’t read for you. They won’t do the work for you. You have to help yourself first.
In old maps of the uncharted world, cartographers would sometimes use the phrase terra incognita to indicate the unknown. There’s a bit of a myth that this sometimes took the form of “Here be dragons,” which is, even if it’s untrue, still much more interesting:
It meant that there were dangers in those unknown waters. In here, the sections you haven’t charted yet have no monsters in them. Or if there are monsters — I probably shouldn’t assume; they say that makes monster food out of you and me — you’ll know how to fight them. You’ll have allies.
The point: If it’s true that some of you have learned helplessness, you can also unlearn it. You just have to be willing to struggle.
While you think about that, here’s a video remix of the Reading Rainbow theme song from PBS:
Well, that and the fact that we don’t have a front of the room. ↩
It’s also important to show you that “critical” doesn’t mean “insulting.” Pointing out flaws can be ameliorative, which means to make something better. ↩
I’d rather this not be an allusion to The Matrix and, instead, an allusion to the allegory of the long spoons. Either one works, though. ↩
I like how the beginning of this post encourages us to improve our stamina by reading, to get better at reading a long text deeply by trying to do it- clearly, the learning lies within the process, just as we have been hearing all along.
To me, this post serves as another iteration of the fact that we have the responsibility here… learning is self-directed, creating a feedback loop is the role of the student not the teacher, it’s up to every student to set their priorities and work at their goals for the course. But the second, more reassuring, part of the post is that we have the resources to fulfill the goals of this course through collaboration and perseverance. That is why to me, the uncharted territory is not so scary because failure can be okay and we have the tools to fix it.
I’ve noticed over the last few posts that a lot of students have commented on how they feel that the traditional model of schooling has been ingrained in them. I agree that it is going to be hard to lose that perspective, but it is certainly reassuring to hear that it is okay for us to feel confused, as long as we are willing to be like the tardigrade and work through it and adapt to it.
This post makes me feel better. Since it explains how some of us might be doing in this class right now, and where we should be going, I don’t feel alone. This post made me feel better about some of the confusion I have right now because I am going to learn to adapt to this new style of learning along with everyone else.
I agree, this post assures me that I am not the only one who is getting used to adapting to this class and the way it is set up. It makes me want to try harder to adjust and get the most possible out of this class. I think it is a great opportunity to be creative and put your own twist on your work.
I agree with Maggie and Natalie. So far in this class i’ve come to the conclusion that the posts we read are more challenging then what i’ve had to read in past english classes. The reading posts require time and effort. What I like about this post is that is states how they should be hard. I believe that my peers and I can relate to this post because everyone is still trying to adapt. This post makes me feel better and as if I can connect to it.
I agree with Maggie, Natalie, and Caroline. I also like how the posts states that the reading should be difficult, it makes me feel as though I am in a good place with this class. If I am reading and interacting with each posts then the work should get somewhat easier as the year progresses. It’s okay if things feel difficult and if I feel a little lost or overwhelmed because that’s how things are supposed to be at this point in the course. I will just continue to persevere!
I agree with Erin about the difficulty of reading the posts. I think that they should be dense reading, that they should take some work to unpack. If they were easy to read, what kind of instruction would they be and if they didn’t force us to think differently, how would the posts be helping us learn? If the posts are challenging to read, we really have to engage with them, and consequently, we will truly enhance our reading abilities- a skill that will be vital to use in college and in life. We have to get used to reading complex texts. Remember the summer reading form asking us about how we use shortcuts? Well, the lack of shortcuts here really makes us work harder to maximize our understanding and if we learn through the process- through trying to learn- then this is the most effective way to improve our reading ability and stamina.
I’m sure that the teacher new that it would take some time for us to adapt to this kind of intense self learning due to the fact that we have been used to standardized testing our entire lives. The first three weeks (Q1a) was designed to help us sift through all of the instructional posts that teach us about how the class really works, and what to expect for the rest of the year. Now that we have completed one grade abatement, we can see how our grades will work and what to improve on next time around. The start of the Pareto project shows that we have moved away from learning how the class works, since students should have already figured that out (and if they didn’t they should have asked questions during the class period to the teacher or their peers to help them understand the layout of the class). We can now delve into the class and focus our time into projects and writing pieces.
I agree as well this post pushed more into the direction of where i want to be in this class
My Pareto Project has to do with reading more books, and emulating them, so by doing this not only will I be working on my project but also be improving my effectiveness in this class, by becoming better at digesting pieces like this and other peers’ pieces. I like how this class and the Pareto Project are described as uncharted territory, as scary as this is it excites me, I am always up for an adventure. This class can be treated like that, because you have all of the responsibility in it, and you either wade in the unknown waters and succeed or you stay on shore and get eaten by beasts such as Procrastination or Laziness.
I really like that idea for your Pareto Project! I had considered doing something with books and/or reading.
This post made me think back to a statement that one of my teachers reiterated throughout the whole year. He said in this system we are so used to getting spoon fed but that’s not how the real world works. He decided he was not going to spoon feed us as we had been before. I think this still sticks with me because even though I didn’t want to except it I knew he was right. I know we have been (sort of) handed many things in our life and that sooner or later we would have to come to a realization that it won’t always be like this. But, I think a major question that comes into play is how do we detach ourselves from this? The posts have been very helpful to guide everyone into the right direction but a big part of the shift is left up to us. The posts have shown us that everyone is trying to detach themselves so we can lean on eachother for help and guidance. This reiterates how important collaboration is because even though you may be able to handle most of the shift yourself it is always a good thing to have others there to do it with you.
I completely agree, we have been spoon fed for a good ammount of our lives (when we were babies and in elementary and middle school. I feel as though the detachment began freshman year, but really occurred last year). I think having a platform like this to communicate with all our peers in the same position is comforting and beneficial.
For a large part of our lives, I would say that we were spoon-fed information. It wasn’t until high school that we may have had to start learning information ourselves. I don’t think that I learnt a single topic outside of class that hadn’t already been covered inside of class. With that, we are forced to be dependent on our teachers – which just is not a good practice. Not only do we face the problem of being in a tough spot if the teacher’s teaching does not match our learning style, but we are unable to overcome that adversity. This year, especially with my Pareto project, I will be learning almost more than I ever have by myself than before. I think that this will really go on in life, onto college and jobs where we aren’t spoon fed on what to do and how to do it. Furthermore, what we are trying to do here can be applied to any other class we are taking where we may have trouble.
I think in middle school and the grades below, we were too young to reliably do this type of independent, student-driven learning, so it made sense to have traditional instruction. I agree with you that we just started learning information ourselves in high school. Like in AP Physics freshman and sophomore year, much of the learning was for homework and the activities in class were just to reinforce whatever it was that we learned the night before. And this year, I would say that this class as well as APUSH have been student-driven, which I think is good preparation for college and beyond into adulthood and our careers.
I agree that we were spoon-fed in middle school but I don’t necessarily agree that we were too young to this type of independent self-learning. See when I first got into AP Physics in freshmen year, as Victor stated, most of it was self driven and we had to learn topics out of class and it was reinforced in class. It came to a complete shock to me as new high schooler who had been spoon-fed through middle school to learn everything on my own. So my argument here is that in middle school we should’ve been gradually made self independent. And they could’ve done this by giving us a few topics to learn out of the classroom because for me, I know I could’ve done much better in AP Physics freshmen year if I had done some sort of independent learning in middle school. To conclude my point, as students we need to be lead into ideas and new things gradually or else we’ll struggle more and have less success.
I agree with everyone’s posts about how up until we started high school we were always spoon fed of what to do. Now we are more independent and can learn for ourselves. The posts we read are good learning experiences and I am still adapting to the learning style of this class. It will also push me to read more.
For the last year I have heard more often than not that we have been spoon fed information, and we’re trained to memorize take a test and forget the work. As a result, we as students have trouble being able to decipher what is more important than others when we’re learning. As we come closer to our finals years of high school it’s great that we have the opportunity to be independant and grow through reading and analyzing. This class has already presented me with posts and ideas to glorify and expand my knowledge. It is what we make of it
It also doesn’t help that the whole idea of “memorize, test, forget” really does give evidence into the ‘this is useless, why am I learning it?’ complaint that many students have.
I remember at the end of last school year, my geometry teacher said that literally doesn’t care what we do after the finals. We can forget everything we did for the entire year, as long as we remember it for the finals.
It really goes to show how bad this system is when a teacher says that.
I agree with Julia, it is what we make of it. This course relies on your responsibility and your motivation. You honestly do determine your grade through your work. If you’re working hard evidently you’re gonna receive a good grade
I Agree that we are, most of the time but not all the time, spoon fed. Their are some topics and I believe that are necessary to be spoon fed, but not everything. We do have the ability to where we can find a solution and teach ourselves how to do things which is an amazing process. This post though that specifies on how reading is important is true. Some long books that I’ve read, fiction or nonfiction, have taught me many things. Either they were words of meanings that i haven’t came across, and I may have not ever used them but I still found them out by myself. But this shouldn’t lead to that you have to read or need to read. These were only little things i have found but, there are many more things that can benefit you while reading. Yes, it is important to read, but its not always for everyone. There are many ways one can learn. That is a skill anyone can use, which makes it useful but more importantly, it makes it special. So reading a book can help you learn but its not the only path you can take as there are more of side roads and paths rather than a long one-way street. It all depends on which one you see is fit that can help you in the long run.