Chapter Fourteen Kylene Beers' book, When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do is entitled "Finding the Right Book." The chapter focuses primarily on knowledge and tips to help teachers find book for their students. However, the more important information in the chapter may be the bits that have application on how students can learn to find book for themselves.
Beginning on page 290, Beers outlines seven strategies for "Selling the Book to Students." They are all helpful and effective strategies, some of which I have already attempted in my classrooms, but I think one of the most powerful long-term is covered on page 292: "Suggestion #4: Take Students to Your School Library."
Beers references a survey she had conducted of english teachers to determine how frequently they were taking students to school libraries. As might be expected, she was dismayed to learn that none of the sixty-four had. The common excuse, with which I'm sure any teacher can sympathize, was, "I'm too busy teaching students how to read to waste precious time watching them wander aimlessly in a library." This is an understandable dilemma; class-time is such a valuable resource to most teachers, that an activity such as a library visit that may not have immediately observable benefits would seem to be time ill-spent.
Beers counters this line of thought with a few choice lines that have implications beyond the classroom. She writes,"If we don't take all students, but particularly reluctant and struggling readers, to the library on a regular basis, then chances are that when they leave school, being a regular library patron will not be part of their routine. Public libraries are a major equalizing factor in this nation, so how can we afford not to take students to the library?"
This is a statement that has huge implications for the power of a visit to a school library. However, by that same line of thinking, a visit to the public library outside of school can have even greater impact, particularly for teachers working in urban environments. The New York City Public Library system is an absolutely tremendous resource with which every NYCDOE employee should become acquanited. The range of services and programs designed to cater to adolescents are enough that a well-organized and well-orquestrte class visit to a library close to a student's neighborhood can make a student much more likely to return to that library.
Urban adolescents are tremendously complex people, with tremendously complex needs. However, sometimes the things that they need to be happy and healthy are actually relatively simple. For certain students, the realization that there exists a place in their neighborhood where they go at most hours of the day, that is quiet with comfortable chairs, provides access to the internet, and will even provide them with entertainment that they can even take home for free in the form of books, dvd's and music is a realization that could serve as a game-changer in terms of the range of healthy and safe options for them outside of school hours.
I conducted a public library trip this past year with my eight grade ELA class and couldn't have been happier with the results. It was a week or so into a research project in order to complete a culminating project on a self-selected historical topic. Students had been searching through books I had provided through our school library to create an outline of the research paper they would eventually have to write. I had held off on providing internet access, knowing that when given the opportunity to Google, many students would disdain the laborious process of searching for and selecting an appropriate book, using the index to determine to appropriate page to begin their reading and then searching through several pages of text for helpful information. However, after a week of working with the provided texts, many students were finding that they were generating more questions than answers. They needed more information and more resources. It was time to provide them with exactly what they needed courtesy of the New York City Public Library.
The library trip began with a short explanation of the Dewey Decimal system, a system with most students had no familiarity with, and which continued to prove mysterious for most without a bit of adult assistance. However, in order to get credit for the trip, students were required to independantly use the decimal system to locate at least one book on their topic. Whether or not they chose to check that book out was their choice, but I wanted my student to have experience with the process of using a public library to get more information about a topic of interest.
Some students were indeed wandering aimlessly. Some quickly took to goofing off on the Internet. Some simply collapsed onto a couch. But everyone found at least one book on their topic, and the fact that they now knew there was a safe place in their neighborhood where they could find books, wander aimlessly, goof off on the Internet and collapse on couches made the trip, in my opinion, hugely worthwhile.
Every teacher is charged with the task of providing students with resources to improve their thinking. For many teachers in urban environments, the charge extends into providing students with resources to improve their lives. A class trip to the public library may provide either of those things to every student, but if it results in even one student returning to that library in the future, for whatever reason, it is time well-spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment