Not only self-reflection, but text-reflection

One crucial thing I have learned about becoming a good teacher is that it requires almost constant reflection. In my practice I have been encouraged to ask myself many questions - “How did that lesson go?” “Did I explain that assignment well enough?” “Are the students understanding this material?” However, through reading Tovani, I have realized that most of my questions revolve around me and my teaching methods, which, while important for my own growth, is not the only thing I should be reflecting upon and questioning in order to become a good teacher. This text taught me that teachers must constantly question the materials they use; specifically the texts they ask students work with.

I experienced what Tovani cited in her book, that is, being overwhelmed with the task of teaching a novel that I felt I knew so intimately. I wanted to cover everything and almost always ran out of time and felt unsuccessful in creating fruitful discussions. While it is in part due to the fact that I tried to cover too much material, I also think it was due largely to the fact that I operated under the assumption that the students absolutely understood the text we were working with. Tovani’s advice on modeling reading practices and anticipating trouble zones would have likely helped me enormously.

I think this strategy of modeling and aiding comprehension for texts can be executed in many different ways, but I attached most to Tovani’s idea of student responses in double entry journals, or a similar format. It seems appropriate to let students grapple with the text a little bit their first time around and then gather information on their reactions.

However, for my own practice, I would want to center such activities around questions or confusion, asking students to tell me what they didn’t get, what they’re curious about, what the context is, etc. This way, you can know where the trouble spots are and perhaps identify characteristics of the difficult areas for future preparation. The questions also provide focus points for discussions and conversations. It seems this would be a good strategy for combatting the overwhelming task of “fitting it all in” by narrowing down the scope based on student responses, as well as discovering more about students and their reading challenges. This may be a strategy that becomes more about content than comprehension as eventually the teacher would be able to better anticipate common difficulties and adequately prepare students prior to reading the text.