Why do I choose the books I choose for my class? Me, I always spent a lot of time thinking about the choices of text for my students because, well, for one… I could.

Unfortunately, teachers today are seeing more and more and more micro-management of their curriculums/books/texts by people who do not actually ever have to work face-to-face with any of the real kids in the room.

It’s kind of like going to Web M.D. for medical treatment. Sure, there might be some highly qualified folks who are posting very high quality material there, but only a fool would remove a face-to-face visit with a real doctor from the equation should someone actually fall ill.

Yet, removing the power of the teacher to be a “professional diagnostician” of the literacy needs of the actual kids sitting in the classroom is not only how we operate (all too often), but it’s a wave of tomfoolery that way too many school districts in America have bought into hook, line and sinker because they wrongly believe curing literacy shortfalls in kids today can actually work from afar.

It’s as if the solution to “fixing” our kids can be purchased in a box. Great tools can come in a box. The craftspeople who wield those tools cannot.

Teachers, when I really think about it, have almost been backed into a corner in far too many schools whereby they are supposed to be executors of curricular decisions; not parties to the crafting of the curriculum itself.

And so, how do I decide which books my kids will read? First, I made sure to grab the power to do so.

My feeling was always, “Hey, you hired me to do this job, now I am going to actually do the job,” and no, I am not saying the means always justify the ends. But I am saying that if I hire a contractor to build an addition on my house, I’d be a bozo to stand over them the whole time saying, “Okay, now use the hammer. Okay, now use the saw. Okay, now I want you to use the tape measure, the wrench and then the level – in that order and at these intervals.”

The person who is doing the work needs latitude in order to smartly and effectively do the actual work.

Do teachers have the latitude to make book choices for my their own classes in this day and age. class? Do you?

The teacher as “professional diagnostician”. Our importance in the classroom of today (and tomorrow) – despite the false appearances in the media – is on the rise. The question we all must face is, “Are we up to this challenge?”

I see it with my own eyes from the front of my classroom each and every day. Overall, the boys are getting their butts kicked by the girls – particularly when it comes to reading and literacy skills.

Of course, these are generalizations – I have boys that are wicked smart and truly great students… and girls that are just not stepping up whatsoever – but taken on the whole, there are more girls achieving at higher rates with greater regularity and consistency in school these days than there are young men.

And the data supports this assertion. Here’s a link to an article about the most recent report on how Boys Trailing Girls in Reading Across the States.

And so, should we hit the panic button?

Yes and no.

Yes because no matter what your gender, I couldn’t be more staunch in my belief about how kids need to own excellent literacy skills. Those who can read and write well are at a huge advantage over those who cannot in this world and I don’t care what tech invention Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and so on comes up with… the need to be able to read and write well is not a skill that is disappearing anytime soon.

(Goodness, I hope that doesn’t one day make a list of the world’s dumbest predictions one day like, “Who wants to see talking movies?”)

So yes, boys need to elevate their reading performance. And their writing performance. Why? Because it ultimately relates directly to their thinking performance and the fact is, for those who do not own solid literacy skills, a glass ceiling exists.

A glass ceiling being lowered by things like Friedman’s The World is Flat recognition.

But no, we don’t need to panic. And why? Cause panic isn’t going to do anything. Doing something is going to do something.

• Accessible relevant reading material that wins the hearts and minds of boys must be better embraced as a classroom tool.
• Reading for pleasure has to be recognized as something that does not just occur, but rather, is cultivated in young people. (Expecting it to just bloom is silly – we need to garden.)
• Bludgeoning our lowest level boy readers with scripted curriculums, disengaging, watered-down, 5 pound textbooks and drill-n-kill materials has got to be kicked to the curb.
• Sending the message that good bubbling on bubble tests is the penultimate goal to which readers should aspire needs to be exorcised. Reading is not about being tested on reading.

All in all, we need to listen to our literacy light leaders. I mean it’s not like we do not know how to better win over more boy readers. We do know bhow. And there are a ton of people who do, indeed, provide workable answers to this problem. Thing is, we are not listening to them. Our best thinkers in the field of literacy are holding a map, a flashlight, a canteen of water and a supply pack of tools saying, “Follow me!” …and still, these “experts” are not being entrusted to guide us through the rough terrain us we currently face.

Boy readers are reachable.
Young men do like to read once the right material crosses their path.
We can do better.

But let’s not forget one thing, we oughtta be proud of our girls. A few decades ago they couldn’t even vote and now they are taking the boys out to the woodshed and kickin’ their butts.

Remember, in our effort to raise up our boys, let’s make sure we do not slow down our girls. They are to be saluted!

If a kid leaves school without the ability to comprehend Ralph Ellison, well… it pales compared to the consequences of a kid not being able to read their credit card agreement.

Why does that not seem more obvious to people who wield power over the directions of our school curriculum?

Why do we not spend more time teaching “functional literacy” to our kids?

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d say it was because this is how we keep the lower socio-economic class in the lower socio-economic rungs of society. Upper socio-economic parents teach their kids the tenets of managing money, the financial rules attendant to cash. (Well, they certainly try but there are rubes to be taken to the cleaners at all levels of society.)

People who do not know this stuff, however, do not have the ability to teach it to their kids. And worse, they [incorrectly] presume that our public schools will show this stuff to their offspring.

But we don’t. Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into under-buying phone plans so that they end up getting $860 phone bills because they thought txt messages were included with unlimited talk time?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many folks with poor literacy skills have been duped into signing up for one of those “no payments for six months” promotions then fallen victim to the fact that the rate skyrockets to 28% and they backdate the interest owed to all the way to the date of original purchase?

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, how many people have been tricked into buying one of those “gift cards” to a superstore in their local supermarket (i.e. Best Buy, Staples, Target, and so on) and not realized that there is a 4% processing fee so that for every dollar you spend on the gift card, the recipient only gets 96 cents worth of goods.

Okay, could happen to anybody.

Hmm, now ask yourself… How many people have fallen victim to all three of the above scenarios?

Uhm waiter, more literary canon please.

Funny but English teachers will go to war to defend the canon. (Just you dare try to remove TKAM or Huck or Gatsby… you’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.)

But teach basic day-to-day functional document interpretation. That’s not for English teachers who teach reading, is it? I mean isn’t their some kind of business ed class or home ec book that covers that?

When we teach reading, we teach Reading with a capital R… even when so many of our kids are in desperate need of learning how to read all the lower case r stuff.

So a really special opportunity has come up for me to offer 50 free tickets to a private literacy bash that is going to be off the chains at NCTE 2009 on Saturday night.

What we are gonna do is celebrate literacy, words, and books the way it oughtta be celebrated.

I wanted to open it up to everyone who wanted to come — all my ning friends — but since the food is free and the drinks will be flowing, my book publishers decided that the cap for my ability to invite my web homies would be set at 50 and they are gonna go the lottery route instead of first come first serve (cause that’s always BS anyway.)

So here’s how to put your name in for some free tix:

Email the ever gracious Beth at beaton@recordedbooks.com and let her know that you are gonna be in Philly and would love to come rock the house with us til the wee hours. (The flier says it ends at 10:00 pm but let’s be honest, when you get this many high energy teachers, writers, book lovers, spoken word artists and the such together, 10:00 is more like a start time. LOL!)

Beth has requested that you please include your name, job title, school, state, and email address — and please make sure to put ‘BookJam Bash’ in the subject line. thx.

Here’s what’s up… wish I could invite everyone. (Maybe next year in Orlando).

Everybody recognizes the spectacular value and importance of literacy. Or rather, everybody that actually gives serious thought to it when considering a means by which we can improve our schools recognizes the spectacular value and importance of literacy.

The research, the data, the biggest thinkers in education, they all agree: literacy is critical, if not absolutely essential, and there is a direct correlation between academic success and the literacy levels of students.

I mean it’s not that hard of a concept to grasp. Kids who are poor readers and writers are often poor students — in many subjects areas, not just in our ELA classes — and kids who have strong literacy skills have a much greater chance and capacity to successfully navigate the halls of our schools. Like I said, almost self-evident.

But try talking literacy instruction or its importance to “other” teachers in “other” academic disciplines. I mean really, don’t they they pretty much tune out?

Come on, do math department people really embrace the idea that literacy is actually monumentally important to their own effectiveness? Naw, not really. However, if you look at a state standardized test, in so many ways it’s a reading comprehension test before it is a math test.

And the same is true for science and history as well.

But do other departments buy into the idea of teaching literacy across the curriculum? If so, well… I’m just not seeing it. Yet to be fair, in the places I do see it, I see schools that seem to more closely resemble a smartly functioning organization.

For the haters and doubters, check out this latest capstone study by the Carnegie Foundation. It’s packed with good stuff.

It’s also titled Time To Act. But will we?

There are a lot of “if only” type scenarios when it comes to reaching teen readers — especially reluctant teens readers — but I’d say if there was one “if only” chip I could be given to cash in and nevermore be able to moan about how difficult the task can sometimes be to get kids to read books, I’d say that I’d lay claim to the “If only our students came to us as blank slates” chip, take my winnings and shut my trap.

Because the truth is students don’t come to our classrooms as blank slates. They come into our classrooms carrying baggage. Emotional literacy baggage. Lots of it. And so much of it is negative. I mean I don’t start the year with a room full of teenagers who are at ground zero; I start off the year with a majority of kids who come into my room overtly disliking (if not outright hating) the act of reading. They finding reading to be a punishment, writing to be onerous and the applied combination of the two, reading and then responding to the reading through writing, to be like a trip to the dentist that is tragically exacerbated by a mandatory referral to an orthodontic specialist.

Goodness, I’d LOVE it if my students came to me as blank slates… but they don’t. And a great amount of my work is actually repairing the idea of how reading can be an awesome, worthwhile and exceptionally valuable experience. It’s a point that I do not think gets enough talk time in our professional conversations. Most of us, unless we are teaching honor’s classes at a high scoring API and AYP schools in high income socioeconomic districts, are being assigned rooms filled with kids who simply put, have a poor relationship with literacy which results in them not really being all that fired up to actually participate in too many literacy related activities.

And who can blame them? I mean if you take a moment to think about an area in which you are weak or do not much like (for me it’s auto mechanics — I couldn’t make a carburetor carb or a piston piss to save my own skin), you’ll probably also find a lack of enthusiasm to actually do much in the way of work in that arena. (I know I get pissed when I am asked to make my car pistons piss.)

So why do we not better address this? So, so many of us are starting our school years with an uphill battle and yet, the powers-that-be regard matters as if we are starting on a slate-has-been-wiped-clean, even-keel tier. It’s just not true. Our students are entering our rooms with emotional language arts baggage. And let me tell you, some of them are carrying Louis Vitton!!

Nope, one of my foremost tasks at the onset of a year is to create new perceptions of literature and literacy because the ones they all-too-often enter my room with are tattered, battered, jaded and cynical. I mean the fact is, I’d rather have a group of “far below basic” kids who are motivated than a group of “exceeds proficiency” kids who are blase’ — or even worse… victims of, as K. Gallagher so aptly put it, Readicide.

Cause so, so, so many of my students at the start of every year are.