Literacy Now

by Kimberly Kimbell-Lopez

Do you find it challenging to locate web resources that provide your students with an engaging reading experience? A major resource can be found through National Geographic, which provides you with access to three of their magazines, National Geographic Young Explorers for K-1, the Pioneer edition for grades 2-3, and the Pathfinder edition for grades 4-5. These interdisciplinary magazines address reading, science, and social studies skills through stories, photographs, maps, charts, and diagrams.

The National Geographic Young Explorers’ issue includes a "Listen and Read" option where students can view the multimedia version of the book, then click on the sound icon   shown next to the segments of text to view each highlighted word as it is read. The text for the Pioneer and Pathfinder editions is not read for students, but they can still simulate the reading of the magazine as they explore each page, zoom in on pictures and text, and click to turn pages. An added feature is the ability to add notes to each page that you and your students can click on to view when discussing each article. 

For all three National Geographic magazines, you can click on the "Teachers" tab at the top of the page to access the digital version of the magazine as well as the Teacher’s Guide and interactive whiteboard activities.

Technology Resources 

“All of life, it turns out, is explained in the eighth-grade English list.”

I wish those were my words, but they’re not. I found them in The Washington Post, in a column by Michael Gerson, titled “Life Lessons in an Eighth-Grade Reading List.” In it, he discusses bullying, injustice, and the torment of outcasts, all to the following point: “Young adults learn big lessons—such as how to cultivate courage and sympathy—through the eighth-grade reading list.”

As Gerson points out, very few of us can read LORD OF THE FLIES and not be moved by the savagery; very few of us can read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and not feel a sense of awe and pride.

It’s an insightful article, and Gerson has a great point. Good fiction can give us hope, perspective, and understanding of the world and how it works; good books can not only change how we think, but how we feel. Literature can change lives. Here’s how literature changed mine.

It wasn’t eighth-grade for me—I have to say that middle-school was more a study in social survival than great literature. It was in my ninth-grade English class, during a section on Western mythology. I had a wonderful teacher named Rudolfo whose lessons have stuck with me, in more ways than I could have predicted.

Every myth, he taught us, has the following elements:

Challenge: What problem is being presented? What does the character want or need that he or she doesn’t currently have?

Journey: What will the character have to do to change the situation or get what he/she wants or needs? How does the character plan to do that? What is the quest?

Obstacle(s): What thing(s)—both direct and indirect—come up to complicate the quest?

Battle with Obstacle: How does the character react to the obstacle?

Reward: The term is used very loosely, and doesn’t always mean a glory moment or a blatant victory, or even a happy ending. Rather, what has changed or been affected as a result of the above?

It was enlightening; when we applied it to the myths we were reading, a pattern definitely emerged. But then he had us take it a little further. Go home, he told us, and watch something on TV. It can be a sitcom, a drama, a movie. Dissect it. And see what you find. Sure enough, each of us found the parallels—whether it was an episode of FAMILY TIES, or KNIGHT RIDER, or a storyline in GENERAL HOSPITAL. I think someone even found the elements in a toilet-bowl cleaner commercial.

It was fascinating. I felt like I had been given a secret decoder ring to understanding the elements of a story. Rudolfo had demystified it all—from mythology to modern screenplays— he’d made it accessible, relateable, even fun.

But it was during a classroom discussion that he really made us think. Where were the stories in our own lives? What were the challenges each one of us had faced, and how had we managed the journey? What obstacles had come up, and how did we deal with the obstacles? What was the reward, and did it come in a different form than expected?

You may not think a bunch of awkward, ill-complexioned, gum-snapping fourteen-year-olds would have been able to pull all the elements of classical literature out of their own life experiences. But we did. I’m not going to claim to remember everything that was brought up, but I do remember the experiences ran the gamut from seemingly ordinary (trying out for a soccer team, for example) to slightly heroic (standing up to a bully) to pretty tragic (losing a pet).

At the time, I was still recovering from the very “character-forming” years of middle school and had the self-esteem and confidence of a sand gnat. My brother had been put into a drug rehab a thousand miles away—I missed him. I was scared and full of angst. But Rudolfo gave me a different perspective. Maybe life was like an intricate myth, full of average monsters and everyday titans and little wars and nearly invisible victories, and maybe I just hadn’t gotten to the reward yet.

I know it’s not always so simplistic—in fact, my brother’s struggles with addiction have become a long-strung series of obstacles, perhaps more of an epic odyssey than a myth. But his journey isn’t over. Sometimes it’s a matter of keeping up the fight.

But Rudolfo made us more interesting. He not only taught us how to read a story, and even craft one, but he empowered us. He gave us a way to look at our young lives and our moments of turmoil—bullies, injustices, tragedies of varying degrees—and find real meaning. To this day, when I’m going through something tough, I see the value in what I learned from him. It helps to remind myself that maybe I’ve just come up against a new challenge. Or maybe I’ve hit the battle phase. Maybe there will be some reward—if I can just get through the journey.

Sometimes I like to think we’re all just modern, ordinary, unromanticized, perhaps even Cheeto-eating versions of those gods and goddesses themselves. Sure, none of us wakes up every day feeling like some sort of glorious Greek deity, but it helps to know that if we don’t shy away from the uncomfortable, inevitable obstacles, we’re channeling a little bit of our own inner hero.

Kiera Stewart is a writer for teens and tweens. Her qualifications include never having gotten wisdom teeth. She’s been writing since she was five, but with titles such as “Mixed Feelings,” “Old Monster, the Bees, and Karen” and the self-congratulory, “The Amazing Story!” it’s no wonder FETCHING (Disney-Hyperion, releasing November 8, 2011) is her first published novel. She considers the publication of FETCHING her reward for surviving all the obstacles of middle school. For more information on Kiera or FETCHING, please check out www.kierastewart.com.

© 2011 Kiera Stewart. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.

The American Library Association’s Teen Read Week™ is October 16 through 22, 2011, with special events and programs aimed at encouraging area teens to read for the fun of it. Thousands of libraries, schools, and bookstore across the country will hold similar events centered on this year’s theme, Picture It! @ your library®, which encourages teens to read a variety of materials, including graphic novels, movies, books about photography, and more.

Teen Read Week™ is the national adolescent literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest-growing division of the American Library Association. 

Parents of teens are encouraged to celebrate Teen Read Week™ at home, as well: 
• Visit the public or school library with your teen to attend a program or to check out books.
• Set aside time each night for the family to read.
• Give books or magazine subscriptions to your teen as a gift or reward.
• Share your favorite book with your teen.
• Go online with your teen to learn about new books or authors.

• Join a book discussion group at the school or public library.

Teen Read Week™ is held annually during the third week of October. An updated sponsors and supporting organizations list can be found at the website, www.ala.org/teenread. 

U.S. high school students and their teachers are invited to participate in the Bill of Rights Institute’s sixth annual Being an American Essay Contest.

My 22 year old daughter called from college to say that she was dropping a course in history. During our conversation, she revealed that, in addition to having difficulties understanding the primary sources that were required reading for the class, people snickered when she asked a question.

As a mother, hearing that my child is snickered at when she is asking questions to understand something difficult for her deeply affects me. It makes me question the values of the learning environment she is in, and makes me wonder what defenses she has or needs to deal with peers laughing at her questions.

I wonder why the behavior exists in a college classroom and what skills my daughter will need for her future. Obviously, dropping the course is one option, but it is not the preferred choice for a young adult who will soon be entering the workforce.

For the educator in me, it reinforces the need to make each classroom a safe learning environment, regardless of the grade level, and the need to teach students the skills to positively communicate and stand up for one another.

In Massachusetts, the consequences of bullying were national news when a student committed suicide as a result of bullying last year. Legislation regarding anti-bullying curriculum was passed, teachers in the middle schools where I worked were mandated to teach a scripted curriculum designed to:

• improve student awareness of bullying,
• develop students capacity to become upstanders, and
• educate students about the legal ramifications of bullying

All of this was important, admirable, and helpful… from a policy perspective. However, in the reality of my classroom, student role plays and signing anti-harassment policies, were not impacting student behavior.

In my group of students, who came to eighth grade with perceptions of one another shaped by painful elementary experiences, bullying and harassing one another were the norm. One student was a “known liar.” Another student “always stirred up trouble.” Other students were determined “not to put up with it anymore,” or “not to allow his/ her trash talking anymore.” Students had built up years of anger and resentment toward one another that they demonstrated in blatant (stealing from one another) and subtle ways (making references to song lyrics which meant nothing to me but were a clear and public insult to another student).

Despite collaborative work with the guidance counselors—we wrote positive messages on posters on one another’s backs, and practiced voicing our frustration with “I” messages— students struggled to change their behavior. So much so that one student reported, “Mrs. DiGisi, I don’t think that people can change, we may be polite in here, but we will keep hurting one another.”

Clearly a stronger intervention was needed.

And so the principal moved my classroom closer to the center of school activity so that my students’ wouldn’t be walking in isolated areas to get to my classroom. Teachers were alerted to “catch my students being good” and award them stickers on a chart for for random acts of kindness. (Yes, sticker charts still have an impact on eighth graders, and when we later went to write about our work, it provided concrete data on the results of our efforts.)

We also changed our curriculum, so that all of our literacy work focused on understanding bullying; voicing our frustration in positive ways; learning about the roles of bullies, victims, and bystanders; and learning to communicate in a positive manner.

We began by reading excerpts from two books that provide perspectives of both the bully and the bullied from the male and female perspective. The first book, NAMES WILL NEVER HURT ME by Jaime Adoff, features a boy whose head is being pushed into the water fountain by other boys. The second, FREAK by Marcella Pixley, features a girl who is being tormented by other girls.

I divided the class into halves, and each group was assigned a passage. They had the responsibility of reading the section, summarizing the events, and then determining how the bullies, victim, and bystanders felt. Then, they presented their analysis to a group of students who had read the other passage.

These discussions opened the dialogue about bullying. Students were able to openly discuss how and why students act the way they do. They were able to listen to one another’s conjectures about how the bullies felt, and why they acted that way. They were able to bring personal experience to how the bystanders, responded, and why the victims were chosen. Thus our work began.

We moved from this discussion to the informational text, BULLYING AND ME: SCHOOLYARD STORIES by Ouisie Shapiro, where students tell their stories and an expert on adolescent bullying, Dorothy Espelage, responds to the students’ stories. My students read excerpts, and shared their own viewpoints on the student’s descriptions and the expert advice. Interestingly, students often did not sympathize with the victims, nor did they agree with the doctor’s recommendations.

Fortunately, around this time, the Boston Globe published an article on Susan Callender, who through her firm, Oh My Gauche!, teaches etiquette classes for children and corporate executives. This article articulated the importance of manners and appropriate communication for corporate employees and children.

We also explored formal social competency curricula such as Open Circle. While students were involved in this work, they were also reading NIGHT by Elie Wiesel in their English Language Arts class and discussing FREEDOM WRITERS, the movie based on the work of Erin Gruwell, as part of a curriculum by Facing History and Ourselves. This movie so impressed the students that they asked for journals that they could invite me to read or not, based on what they saw in the movie.

Still behaviors persisted, and the state assessments were going to be administered in one more week. After a particularly challenging day, a colleague sent me the poem “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee, which I shared with my students. I was amazed that my students were able to interpret the essence of this poem, and encouraged that we were breaking beyond the anger and perceptions that they held of one another and into common discussions of the human condition, and these discussions were pushing all our thinking.

Further, I was relieved that our reading and writing about our emotions and creating an improved communication within our community, was transferring to skills that would enable my students to analyze poetry, a requirement on our state examination.

Finally, after three months, we had over 100 stickers on our “Acts of Kindness Chart.” Students were now charged with writing a convincing argument to the principal that they learned enough about respecting one another to return to our classroom. Student responses for why they had earned the right to move back to our classroom included statements such as:

• “We have been promoting constructive behavior, been doing a lot of acts of kindness and we even learned to work with people out of our element. Especially when their behavior impacts our class.”
• “Being kind to others is good because when you’re kind to others, there is something positive that you can be happy about. Took me a long time to realize that there is more to life than being mean to others and being immature. Life is too short to talk back or argue or do bad things so that’s why you have to try your best at everything you do. Of course we are probably going to mess up in the future because, hey, after all, we are just humans, but I ask you to give us another chance to go back to our classroom.”
• “One of the things I can take into my high school academic years is tolerance. I’ve learned to work with people that I didn’t think I would like, but when I looked at them from a different point of view, I saw that they were not as bad as they seemed.”
• “I think we should go back to our classroom because we have all grown and even if we didn’t, we all learned our lesson—bullying and teasing each other over things that are not important. So, we have all grown emotionally and physically, and I will remember this experience for all my years in high school.”

The principal was invited to our classroom, and each student read their letter aloud. He responded to each student after they read their letter, commenting on the personal growth they described. It was determined that the class could return to our original classroom, and we returned to our original literacy curriculum. Behaviors continued, but we all had a language to deal with them, and a commitment to keeping our classroom a safe environment.

The introduction of the Common Core State Standards states that the literate person of the twenty-first century “actively seek(s) the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experiences, and broadens worldviews.”

Sometimes, as literacy teachers, we can provide access to quality literary and informational texts that expand the world views that students need most. Sometimes, the educational community we work in will support our efforts to give students not just literacy skills, but the communication skills they need to navigate their lives.

For an annotated list of the books mentioned here and other books on bullying, see http://mass/resources/booklist-for-%20MSLA-anti-bullying-MRA.pdf


Lori DiGisi serves as an educational specialist for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Previously, she worked as a literacy specialist at Fuller Middle School, in Framingham, Massachusetts. She's a past president of the Massachusetts Reading Association, the current president of IRA's Secondary Reading SIG, an active member of the Legislative Action Team, and August's Member of the Month.

© 2011 Lori DiGisi. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.