“CLOSE-READING STUDY GUIDES” - What’s Up with That? 10/29/2017

If you’re a teacher, you may well be brilliant. That’s not true of all teachers, of course, but for many of you, brilliance during your learning years gave you an easy career path to teaching, and you took it.

You brilliant teachers appreciate brilliant kids who learn as you did; you have a tendency to teach to the brilliant, and you’re superb at it.

Now then, some of us who are not quite brilliant ended up as teachers also, but we have different feelings and thoughts about learning, reading, and in particular, learning reading. We feel, deeply and sharply, that your methods did not serve us well.

Some of us are a bit resentful about it. I’m not resentful, by the way. I’d love to be brilliant! However, I could not, and still cannot, read as I was taught to read. I had to teach myself another way.

Brilliant kids are taught to decode language, and that’s about where the teaching of reading ends. Non-brilliant kids who don’t catch on right away are retaught decoding methods. Then they’re retaught the same methods again and again. The assumption is that it’s all about understanding words.

Most teachers appear to make further assumptions and presumptions about what happens “naturally” once a reader achieves a certain level of decoding mastery. Here they are:

1. Through language, readers naturally perceive and translate reading passages into images, much as they are perceived on a television or movie screen.
2. At appropriate times, immersed readers naturally identify with the narrator, or certain characters, through whose imaginary senses they observe the events and impressions presented in text.
3. At the end of reading, events and impressions can be recalled, naturally.
4. The time to draw connections and derive meaning is after the reading is finished.

Standardized tests of reading and comprehension are catered to this reading process. Most analysis begins after the reading of a significantly lengthy passage. There appears to be little perceived need for students to learn how to derive meaning or discern connections while in the process of decoding language and endeavoring to experience the essay or story. If this were not true, you’d see a much heavier focus upon breaking up reading passages in standardized tests, and you’d see many more questions presented, much as they are presented in my study guides, directing attention to unexpected but critically important details.

I learned to accept the fact that I’m not brilliant. I’m a deliberate thinker; not slow, just deliberate. There’s a difference between “slow” and “deliberate.” It involves making a choice. I choose to take a careful approach to most aspects of life, reading among them, because that approach serves me best. Otherwise, my mind goes everywhere all the time. Now, maybe a scatterbrain is brilliant in some “special” way, or maybe it lacks self-discipline, or maybe it’s a disability. Whatever it is, my brain hardly ever remains long buried in an author’s narrative. I engage for a period, and then disengage. Questions pop into my mind constantly.

Teachers of reading don’t want you wandering off on tangents. They want you to remain focused, to practice self-discipline, to bury yourself in the narrative, to stay “in the moment.” The ability to do so certainly has its advantages, but my mind refuses to allow that most of the time.

Don’t worry; I get by just fine.

Many of us deliberate thinkers have learned to get by. But no one taught us how. We had to teach ourselves. While we were urged to build faster decoding skills, we’ve had to teach ourselves to accommodate our habits of mind. Those habits required a high level of attention to details. We engaged by allowing ourselves to carry on a silent conversation with the author while reading:

“Why did you [the author] say it like that? What sort of thinking would cause your character to draw these conclusions about what’s happening around her? When did this character begin to believe that certain others in the story have an unusual perspective about him? I see you’ve provided a contradiction! Why did you do that?”

I could not stop asking questions. It’s the way I’m put together, I guess. Even if I couldn’t arrive at answers, I found myself constantly carrying on this dialogue.

For people like me, reading is not in the least like movie watching. We can’t flawlessly recall the details of a reading passage unless we’re thinking about those details as we encounter them. Delaying questions and interpretation doesn’t work for us; we can’t help ourselves. It is a successful endeavor only if we engage the author. “What are you talking about?” we ask. “Why did you have to put it like that?”

The same habit of mind reaches into the way we conduct our very lives. We live deliberately, too.

We recognize a value in this approach, to life as we live it, and to our reading as we read it. By habit, and because we must do so, we slow down just enough to participate in it, practically all the time. It helps us to stay, “in our moment,” if you will. And we’ve become so good at it that we can read almost as fast as brilliant readers, not quite as fast, no, but pretty fast, and with a very strong perception of an author’s depth. At times, we score almost as high on those standardized tests as some of the brilliant people.

(At times, we score a bit higher.)

All people’s powers of recall, with the exception of a tiny segment of our population perhaps, are subject to limitations and consequent misinterpretation if people never learn how to think about their experiences while they’re having them.

Yes, I know, sometimes you don’t have time to think deliberately. Sometimes you must react, and quickly. I suppose we could now engage in a political discussion about how scatterbrains like me don’t survive, and how the most brilliant people in any society emerge as deeply flawed leaders who miss some of the most important aspects of reading and living.

But setting that aside for now, I think we can agree that close reading is at the very least a valuable skill, and maybe even an essential one. It may be brilliant to become immersed and then interpret later, but it may be wiser, at times, to surface and reflect long enough upon what you’re doing, and then to plunge back in and seek a depth of understanding you might otherwise overlook. I’ve caught a great many brilliant young students failing to do so.

That’s what’s up with that.

What Is Love?

Love is the urge to bless with no expectation of being acknowledged, appreciated, or blessed in return.

I don't mean "bless" merely as a synonym for "praise" or "glorify." I mean "bless" as in, "materially and actually improving the life experience of another."

Many are blessed by others, but they don't actually participate in love. Love is doing something you don't want to do because your urge to bless overcomes your laziness or distaste or disinterest.

When your child's nose is running green slime, you may not wish to wipe it. She may be coughing and vomiting, lying in her own filth. Her diaper might smell like the Chicago sewer system. If you don't want to go near her, you don't love her.

That's it. Sorry. End of definition. Love is not a thing received. It is a thing done, a thing performed. And many, many people live their lives through without understanding that fact.

If you immediately experience an urge to embrace and comfort the filthy child and then begin wiping, washing, and changing her, you are participating in love. You get the puke and snot and poop on you, but you get past it because your perceptions of your child's needs defeat your offended senses. Your tolerance instantly surpasses your initial disgust. Your energy levels rise to meet the needs of the human being you cherish, and you act.

Your memory of this event will be the way this child clings to you. You will vanquish misery, and the child will worship you. Long after she sleeps in your arms, you will hold and comfort her. You'll be reluctant to let this moment go. You won't feel proud or heroic. You'll be forced into total wakefulness, and you will be humbled by a third Presence that remains with you and your child. Awed by Love's transformations, this is as close as you will ever get to God in your lifetime.

If you force yourself to go back into the room after your initial decision to walk away, you may or may not be exercising an option to love. You may be acting out of a perception of "obligation." The ethics and morality of your role as parent (whether you are, in fact, the biological parent of this child), might force you to do your "duty" by this other human being. You will tend to her needs efficiently. You will perform your cleansing and reclothing tasks reluctantly.

Afterward, you will remember the presence of revolting substances and little else. You will remember your attempts to put the child back to bed several times, and you will remember your anger because she kept waking up. The experience will be marked chiefly by the overwhelming sense of disgust and your relief when she finally stayed asleep so that you could go back to bed yourself.

"Now just a minute!" people will exclaim. "Love is simply a feeling! It's a moment that one perceives at the peak of excitement, say (figuratively speaking), when two are gyrating and undulating in a carnival ride!"

Nope. Gyrate and undulate all you want. Sweat, pant, gasp! Cry out involuntarily as the roller coaster rounds a curve and gravitates the two of you tightly, tightly together.

That is not love.

Love is an overwhelming desire to do that which eases pain and heightens joy in a thing, place, idea, or person you find wonderful. And if you are the person receiving that love, and if it is a sincere love, offered as it should be, with no conditions and no expectations of being returned, you might not even know it's there. Your pain is eased, but you feel entitled to having your pain eased. You may have moments of ecstatic joy, but you get used to it, and after a while, it isn't a carnival ride, but it's comfortable, and you take life's comforts for granted, forgetting that many of them exist because someone believes you are wonderful. You come to the erroneous conclusion that you somehow deserve all of this.

When love is gone, we at last recognize that our lives were good because of a person who made it good. We also recognize ourselves for the pigs we are, but we find that conclusion distasteful. We walk out on it; we find it easier to dismiss "love" as merely a feeling that came and went, and we simply begin looking for the next gratifying experience.

We began life as selfish little creatures. Some of us remain so. We continue to take more than we give. We do exactly as we like, always. We laugh at people who see Love as that third entity in a relationship. In our relationships, we're constantly searching for the best "deal." We're Capitalists, after all! We're still pigs.

Upon whom (or what) have you showered love? For whom have you experienced a desire to do that which is difficult, tedious, or miserable, with no expectation of receiving anything in return? What do you love? Whom have you blessed?

Do I Regret My Years of Teaching?

I’m retired from full-time teaching. I guess you could say that I’m not completely “retired,” since I still teach summer school and substitute occasionally.

But I work at other jobs now too. I’m currently employed in the receiving department of a large store that specializes in home improvements, hardware, and lumber. I intentionally took a job that requires real physical work because frankly, I found myself sitting on my rear end too much during my retirement.

Unlike teaching, the job is intrinsically rewarding. It is sheer fun to operate equipment and move things that weigh literally tons, to look back at what you’ve accomplished and think, “I did that.”

That’s wealth. You can see it. You can feel the energy go out of you to produce a result. You see the result. The result is wealth.

Let’s be brutally honest about money: Money is not wealth. Money is the symbol of somebody’s efforts to produce real wealth. Sitting around managing investments, buying low, selling high, is not wealth creation, no matter how much money you garnish in the process. Someone paid too much for a stock; you sell it for a profit and keep the difference before the price falls. I unload freight that someone has paid for, and I get paid for delivering it. What you’re practicing is wealth drainage. You take a share of my effort. My pay stays the same; you get a profit. Yours is the act of fleecing somebody, somewhere, out of his or her efforts to create real wealth.

Like it or not, that practice has become a legitimate business in this so-called “free” market economy. It’s the real world: There’s wealth creation, and there are those respected for fleecing us. That accounts for most vocations and professions in life. If you’ve got some other way of explaining it, go right ahead; I’d be interested in seeing it.

But where does teaching fit in with all of it; what is that?

In the many years I taught full time, I used to get a bit depressed occasionally. It occurred to me that I may be striving for unreachable, idealistic goals and wasting my life. I wondered how long I could go on before quitting and starting over with a new job, any job. There were many, many moments I wanted to do so. But the moments passed, and I remained a teacher until almost exactly six years ago.

And I was so, so tired; and so, I retired. And now I have time to think back upon it.

One thing teaching isn’t, is wealth-creation. And it certainly isn’t fleecing. Another thing teaching isn’t, is gratification. Oh, yes, you feel great after a class has gone well. And occasionally a kid comes up to you and says, “I really appreciate that.” One kid actually said this to me: “I want you to know that I’ve been attending school for almost twelve years now, just waiting for someone to reach me the way you did today.”

Well! Yes, that makes you feel great when it happens! But it happens rarely. Most kids keep their opinions of you to themselves, and when you think of it, that’s not so bad, because most keep their complaints to themselves also.

Statements of appreciation don’t come often. Your audience is tough. You’re constantly trying to penetrate hardcore adolescent and pre-adolescent prejudice, and most of the time, to be honest about it, you both succeed and fail. You reach some kids; others, you don’t reach. It’s a draw; there are no piles of wealth, neither earned nor fleeced.

Now my work is different; my job is physical; I reach for material things rather than nebulous educational objectives.

I used to be so strong physically. Very, very rarely did I meet up with someone who could move faster, lift more, or do more than I could. Now I am an old man. Now the pain is in my joints, not just in my muscles. When I lift something, it always hurts, at least a little. You get old and you get used to the pain, but you never get past it. You only get so strong. The muscles can’t grow beyond your ability to withstand the pain in your joints. I can’t show the kids up anymore. I used to lift and carry with one hand what they do with two. But I can’t “one-hand” anything anymore. I’m just another guy, struggling to keep up.

Still, I create superior wealth! I do better work than they do. My work is cleaner. My piles are straighter. I am more careful. I damage far less freight. Even if I work a bit slower, the wealth I contribute is of significantly greater worth than that of the young kids who throw things around because they can. Not only that, but I have a wisdom about dealing with people, and a sincere interest in them, attributable, no doubt, to my years of teaching. The supervisors tell me, “When you’re not here, we really notice it. We miss you when you’re gone.” In only a few months, I have received official and public recognition for the quality of my work no less than four times and numerous other unofficial statements of appreciation.

In all my years of teaching, I never once received official or public recognition. Nor did I want it. I observed, about those who received such accolades, that they were not praised for their work; they were praised for “fitting in.” You don’t get honors for making kids work just a little harder than everyone else. You don’t "fit in" if you show kids that a work of literature contains within it a warning that they're being fleeced by the rich and powerful elements in our society.

Oh, students sometimes appreciate your integrity; they even offer praise. If you’ve been gone a day or so, they might even say they missed you, but what they mean is, they missed you because they know how far to push you. They know your limits. They’re comfortable with you. They don’t tell you they appreciate you.

Real teaching is putting students through difficult but essential learning experiences that make you work harder as well. So you put in far more hours than you will ever get paid for, and you don’t get intrinsic rewards. But you get used to it; you just quit hoping to receive payoff for a job well done or goals accomplished.

Your students don’t miss you very much when you’re gone; not really - and your colleagues? Many of them don’t even know when you’re gone.

But when your students have left school and taken on other endeavors in other places, they will remember you. They will begin to recognize what you’ve given them, even if they can’t explain it very well. They may only recall something you said in class, or something you did, or the force of your personality. They may not be able to tell you what you gave them exactly, even if they’re living it every waking moment of their lives.

And what did our generation of teachers give our students?

That’s the amazing part of it. All of us gave them something a little different. We gave them a quality that they will never be able to fully appreciate, one that they may never even completely attribute to us, and yet, now, years later, when they approach us to express their thanks, we will see ourselves inside them. They shake our hands and stumble around trying to express gratitude. They say, “I don’t know just what it is, but …” We see in them a sense of self, with attributes mirroring our own, an alertness, a consciousness, a balanced understanding, far more valuable than any symbol of wealth, far more vital than neatly stacked freight.

No, I do not regret my years of teaching.

What I Teach, Why I Teach, How I Teach

I often compare a first trip through a piece of writing with a walk through my own classroom. I’m carrying stuff and I’m looking for a document that I know I left someplace. I have my hands full, but I’m only partially aware of what’s in them. I have my glasses and a board marker in one hand, and a fistful of papers in the other. I get down on a knee to open a bottom drawer of a file cabinet, putting my glasses on top of the file cabinet and dropping the board marker on the floor next to the drawer. I don’t find what I need inside the drawer, so I get off my knee and walk to my desk, where I know I’ve looked before.

Suddenly, I catch sight of the paper I’ve been seeking. It’s in my left hand! I’ve been carrying it all along. There’s some information on it that I need to write on the board, so now I walk over there, but I need my glasses to read the paper. I fumble in my shirt pocket for them, and then I realize that I’ve left glasses and board marker someplace while searching for the paper, but I don’t have any idea where they could be.

I usually illustrate casual, “not-close” reading for my students by dramatizing the above experience or one like it. I bumble about the classroom acting out the part, narrating as I go. They get a good laugh or two of course, and at the end of it I ask, “Does this ever happen to you?”

Heads nod; smiles abound. “All the time,” they say.

Then I tell them, “That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you and I were trained to read. We are taught to dash through, reading and interpreting words – not forming visualizations, not considering ideas. We encounter the words as we encounter life’s little tasks, but we are not conscious of them. We have not been taught to be conscious of them! We don’t pause for anything. We don’t think about what we are doing. At the end of it, we retain nothing.”

Then I show them how to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. I review the dramatization; I kneel at the file drawer again, and as I do, I consciously utter the words, “I am now placing my glasses on top of the file cabinet and my marker on the floor, here by the drawer.”

I proceed through the rest of it and illustrate how much easier it is for me to find those items when I need them, simply because I took a moment to pay attention by making an observation in the form of a very brief, verbal proclamation.

Close reading is the skill of interaction with a written passage, literary or otherwise, followed by careful introspection. For the most part, we are taught that effective analysis takes place after a first reading and during a careful re-examination of text.

Now you know what I teach with my close reading study guides. You have a very good idea how I teach it, and you should understand why I choose to do so. Have a great spring and summer!

TeachersPayTeachers and a New Giveaway

Many thanks to Danielle and Brittany for allowing me to be a part of their new TPT giveaway!

Enemies of Education?

What a phrase!

How ridiculous to assume that people would actually want to slaughter, gut, and devour education because they regard it as their "enemy."

A regime that depends upon total control would want to do so; I understand that. If you want to preserve power, it is important to prevent people from thinking too much. Keep them from thinking, and you have it made. Don't educate them; just train them to do work. In our country, how many politicians do you actually see behaving as though they believe such a thing?

Some few of them, it is true, seem to regard the majority of citizens to be ignoramuses, incapable of real thinking. Of course, if they believed such assumptions, it would be perfectly natural to see why they would want to destroy education, particularly public education. After all, what is the sense of wasting tax dollars trying to educate the uneducable? But in this great nation certainly, most politicians don't harbor such attitudes about common people, do they?

Admittedly, a few politicians, those who want the most labor for the smallest wages, for example, appear to possess such a perspective. You can observe as they befriend the ignoramuses and do their best to fool them into submission, warning them of treacherous intellectual elites who are constantly trying to fool them into compliance. "Framing the debate" in this manner helps them to maintain a certain amount of aversion to education among the ignorant. But really, the number of politicians among us who seek to deceive people in that way must be exceedingly small, must it not?

Now, big money moguls who don't produce wealth, but who possess the symbol of wealth (money), have very powerful reasons to preserve an uninformed class of American voters. They want most of the ignoramuses to respect the symbol of wealth more than the work that creates true wealth. Buying low and selling high must not be perceived as "fleecing" (even though that's exactly what it is).  Buying and selling is nothing more than buying and selling! It's just a person's right, and perfectly legal. If it can be done profitably, such a skill should be advanced as a mere "job," and perhaps even one to be admired at that.

People who behave and believe in those oversimplifications and myths would wish to maintain them, of course, and would certainly like to see education, particularly public education, dead if possible, but that crowd in a nation such as ours, one would think, must be few in number.

They do seem to make a lot of noise at times, however; you can hear them every once in a while complaining about "rising tide[s] of mediocrity" while they're engaged in cutting educational funding - to ensure that the "tide" continues to rise, apparently! But we all trust - do we not? - that those selfish, greedy Americans must be a rare breed in a nation as highly focused on human rights as ours.

Those who routinely play on fears to build their powers would naturally want to weaken education as much as possible. Educated people are the first to step forward and question fear-mongering. When a rascal is trying to get constituents to guard his special interests against people who favor the general welfare, he or she will definitely find it advantageous to spread fear, and an ignorant crowd is the most fertile ground for such an endeavor. But how many powerful Americans would actually do that - foster ignorance and fear, calling their stream of misleading statements a "public [educational] service," just to preserve power?

Most of us can accept that the concept of "enemies" is a comforting one, to be sure. Life is so much easier when you have someone to blame and denigrate when they disagree with you. Defend the right of wealthy people to gather even more wealth; insist upon many, many low wage jobs; keep desperate people desperate, but be friendly with them; keep ignorant people ignorant, and be especially friendly with them. Then, as people step forward to question your motives, demonize them! Define them as enemies - you're free to do so in a free nation as ours - and your ignoramus friends will follow your lead!

Naturally, that doesn't happen in America. Oh, yes, it looks a little like it does at times, but surely, Americans are truly not enemies of education, are they?

Close Reading Doesn't Mean "Draw a Picture"

Drawing a picture takes your mind away from reading. Drawing requires careful control and, particularly for younger students, forces attention away from the narrative to under-developed fine motor skills. I see many "one size fits all" study programs that include "hot button" Common Core terminology and claim to transport kids to the Shangri-La of  compliance by making them draw pictures.

Close reading also doesn't mean, "Write complete sentences in response to the following questions." Composition and reading are two different, admittedly related, but divergent activities. We must establish a pace, direct attention to details, and open the mind to speculation, not assign tasks that constantly take the reader's mind off the substance of their reading. In other words, close reading study guides must be composed of questions that facilitate reading. The answers must be extremely brief.

It takes time enough for a kid to move his attention from the story to a question and then onto a sheet of paper to record an answer. The question should do most of the work. If you want to use pictures, draw them yourself. They can be effective! Graphic novels are effective because they show kids how to visualize! Don't require kids to visualize before showing them how it's done.

Your reading skill builders should draw the reader to critical components of understanding. The answers to the questions must not require too many moments of reflection. Most questions shouldn't require a "gathering of thoughts." They should instead be "bases" that kids touch on their way to understanding. Readers stop just long enough to verify clearly that they have observed the first detail, then the next, and the next.

And finally, yes, you should have them draw a picture or compose a conclusion. But these should be obvious. They should beg for expression. If you have built the road to understanding, and if they've make all the stops, the answers should be easy.