This process applies to any work of literature or nonfiction. It’s also a universal process that can be used every time you’re asked to read. Note that there are levels to this: Everyone can watch the central video and discuss it; it takes a little longer to read and discuss optional readings, like the School of Life article or the excerpt from John Holt’s writing; and it will take significant time to read everything in the instructional post below. Make the time for as many levels as possible.
Learning from Literature
This post asks and answers the most pressing question:
The centralized quotation in that short, prefatory post is this one, from the end of the School of Life video:
We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
The key word is “tool,” as in a tool for our makerspace: a way to solve problems and treat ailments and create meaning. Here is the end of that video again, for reference and inspiration:
Using Alternative Assessments
John Holt wrote about this more than a half-century ago, but his ideas still resonate:
- John Holt – How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading (PDF)
- John Holt – How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading (Google Docs)
You might make a copy of the Google Docs version for yourself. If we study the text in our course, we will read it together.
Since we are building skills, we must avoid the “the microscope and x-ray treatment” Holt describes. In a Humanities makerspace, we use literature and nonfiction to answer the most important questions about ourselves. Your ability to grow as a student and provide insight into your experience — those reveal what you’ve read. Those are the tests. Like many important truths, it’s a cliché with real power.
The School of Life video on literature has an accompanying article with more insight into this idea:
The best tasks and assessments for literature will be project-based, like this final project for seniors in their second semester. Reader-response work is also among the most effective ways to engage with literature:
Building the Habit of Reading
The following post has probably the best distillation of how a makerspace like ours approaches reading as a 21st-century skill and lifelong habit:
That post has been updated after its original publication in 2017 to be more universal. If you or any other stakeholder in your education has a question about our approach to reading — how, why, what, etc. — that instructional essay likely has the answer. It’s also an invitation to ask questions and leave comments as part of an ongoing discussion.
Engaging While You Read
As you read, monitor what the work is doing in terms of
- the “range of emotions and events that would take countless lifetimes to encounter”;
- the empathy required “to see things from someone else’s point of view”;
- a sense of who you are — and the idea that “everyone is a strange and interesting person”; and
- an acceptance that “failure is a part of life.”
In general, you are looking for how the reading process works as a tool to help you — either in a specific, targeted way, or as a “tool to help [you] live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.”
In terms of practical work, you need a system for close reading. If it’s a formal assignment, it’s likely to come with parameters and directions; otherwise, you can develop your own system for engaging with a text. Here to help is a textbook chapter on close reading, available to anyone in the BCSD system:
Studying this textbook, both as you are instructed and on your own, will help you develop a system for getting more out of what you read. That doesn’t mean annotating every page of a book or pulling every scrap of meaning out of an essay; it means finding a way to deepen your experience.
In fact, the essential questions are always about how we read, why we annotate, how we talk to each other, etc., in addition to what we learn about ourselves and our world through the novel. Remember that analysis has its place, and it can add to the experience of a story.
As an example, here’s the director of Black Panther, Ryan Coogler, on how he crafted a scene in that movie:
Each of his choices is deliberate, and watching him unpack them doesn’t lesson our enjoyment of an action scene. It adds to our understanding and enjoyment. That’s the point of analysis: to add to our understanding and enjoyment.
It helps, of course, when the author is the one telling us what is happening. There’s an explicit level of trust when the artist tells us what each element means. It activates the white matter in our brains to create the “hooks” that Paul Graham talks about. That’s what adds to the depth of experience. Whether we have the author’s expertise or not, however, this kind of analysis is one reason to go back to films and stories and songs again and again. The experience deepens with repetition. We find surprises.
And that’s our goal in reading and literature and nonfiction: to find and appreciate those surprises.
Using Worksheets
In a school setting, we often need to balance the more authentic work we do with test prep and rote skill-building. That’s not just okay, but good: In even the most by-the-book analysis, you find deeper meaning, and you aren’t getting through public education without taking high-stakes exams.
Below are directions for a three-part analysis that has been simplified to allow us to explore three aspects of reading. The first focus is on how a student reads, which makes it much more metacognitive and reflective in nature; the second invites discussion and writing about essential questions and other sources of wisdom and knowledge; finally, the third focus is on using analysis to be a better writer, while also practicing exam-styled analytical responses.
- Simplified Analysis Directions | Front-and-back handout that converts this post into actionable prompts and questions.
- Simplified Analysis Worksheet (Online) | Sans-serif version of the worksheet, with directions printed before each box. Boxes expand as you type. For working online and submitting through Google Classroom.
- Simplified Analysis Worksheet (Photocopies) | Serif version of the worksheet, with directions printed before each pre-sized box. For printing, photocopying, and completing by hand.
There are also worksheets and guides available for the reader-response writing that is often used to assess reading:
Selecting What to Read
We talk about Medium as a place to publish your writing, but it’s also one of the best hubs for readers. When you register an account, Medium asks you to indicate your interests, from literature to health to cryptocurrency, and then gives you things to read. You’ll find essays, poetry, comics, and more, tailored to you as an individual reader.
Here is a screenshot of what I saw when I loaded Medium on September 20, 2018:
This is for a school account. I tend to read articles on mental health, the Internet, and engineering, since those topics fit the makerspace built for students. I see just as many articles on politics and literature when I scroll down the page.
Medium also lets you get emails directly every day, if you choose, with a selection of stories included. I’d suggest that, because it makes checking your email as much about discovering new writers and interesting perspectives as it is about the day’s announcements.
In terms of literature, from nonfiction to poetry, your best bet is to listen for the recommendations of others. Look for posts like this one, from the very beginning of 2019. That subreddit has over 15 million subscribers, and it’s just one of hundreds of different online communities that discuss literature in the real world.
The major thing that i can take away from this article is that reading can overall change your perspective of life. You will realize that compared to some other people you aren’t weird. It gives you a perspective of another point of view which will also make you nicer. Reading by itself is another type of self education.