Apr 01 2008
Masters of Fake Reading
Tom Newkirk says in one of the articles I put in your box to prepare for his visit to our school, “By now, the difficulty that boys as a group experience in school literacy is no longer news. Boys fall behind girls in reading and writing early on, never to catch up. By the end of high school, the gender gap in writing is huge. In fact, it’s as large as the achievement gap between whites and blacks in writing (NCES, 2002). Difficulty with reading and writing tasks plays a role in the dramatically higher high school dropout rate for males, particularly black males (Greene & Winters, 2006). It also partially accounts for the fact that 57 percent of college students are now female and only 43 percent are male, a reversal of the percentages in 1970 (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2005). This gender gap is most pronounced among Hispanic and black populations, in which the college graduation ratio of females to males approaches 2:1 (Hacker, 2003).”For boys, these numbers can translate into feelings of shame and embarrassment and, ultimately, to self-defeating strategies of avoidance and resistance (Boldt, 2006). During independent reading time, look for the boy flipping through the pages of National Geographic magazine–he’s becoming a master of “fake reading.” Or look for the anger that arises when the teacher assigns a reading task. “This is stupid!” the student exclaims. Or look for delaying tactics during writing time–the pencil always breaks, the paper that’s always mangled. In high school, these students find ways of familiarizing themselves with a book’s plot without ever reading the book.”For these boys, a difficulty has turned into an identity. Many come to identify themselves as nonreaders, as nonwriters–indeed, as nonstudents. They choose a self-protective strategy that conceals their difficulty with literacy. By doing so, they enter a downward spiral. Because they have mastered avoidance tactics, these boys don’t get the reading practice they need; as literacy tasks become more difficult, the gap widens, and their avoidance becomes ever more necessary.”…To keep boys on the literacy train, educators need to ask Gene Kranz’s question, “What’s good?” What positive cultural, artistic, and linguistic resources can we tap into to improve literacy instruction for boys?”We know the boys Newkirk speaks of. We have them in our classrooms. So I ask you, what Newkirk asks, what’s good? What works? What engages the reluctant boys you work with? Let’s share and learn from each other…
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I’m responding too quickly, as I haven’t read the article, but three things immediately come to mind: In the NBC nightly news and today in the New York Times, the astounding drop out rate amongst high school students was a hot topic. There was no mention of gender, so I’d like to revisit the news to see if they find a trend. Secondly, I mentioned once before that when I was a sub, boys asked why they were required to read tragic novels about women who kill themselves (The Awakening, Anna Karenina, etc.); we have to give them a variety of reading optons and hope they’re lead to read on. Thirdly, TED TALKS is new to me. I was introduced to Sir Ken Robinson. Google TED TALKS and search under creativiy/schools…when you have a spare 20 minutes. Robinson humorously talks about education and the need to engage our kids’ creativity. I think we need to keep it in our minds when we think about how we teach anything, including reading and writing…
KLK
What’s good? I’ve got a couple. I have a student in my night class who absolutely does not/will not read. He picked up a copy of Rules of Survival one night from Ed and Penny’s room and read the whole first chapter. The next week he couldn’t find it and said “I can’t read; my book’s not here.” So I scoured the place for the book and handed it to him last Wednesday night. He asked to take it home.
I have another Eagle Academy non-reader who loves to read the Darwin award books. He’s already finished the first one. A boy in Pop Fiction, who is also a Darwin Awards fan, has been seen with a copy of Stephen Colbert’s book (which I’ve also seen boys in my homeroom reading).
One of my ninth graders, who has been bringing the same independent reading book to English since the first day of school and has never moved a page, volunteers to be the first to read aloud in a six person reading lab. He doesn’t like to read silently and there’s no pressure because their reading levels are similar.
What else can I think of that I see boys actually read… Stephen King’s Buick 8, Lemony Snicket books, Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, some Paulson, maybe some Tolkien… buy my brainstorm is drying up.
What works for me – time and an open mind. Time to let people read and toss out and read another until they find something that finally works. Not to mention we need time in class to read. We need to be open minded about what qualifies as reading. Novels are reading, short stories are reading, newspapers are reading, graphic novels are reading, etc. I ban almost nothing (in fact, I even find myself being the one buying some things I’d never, ever read myself).
I enjoyed both of the Newkirk articles. I could envision specific faces when he discussed the fake readers, and I now have renewed energy to keep searching for things that will appeal to my reluctant readers.
Hmmm… With visions of particular students (males, of course) perusing the National Geographics, most certainly searching for ’skin’, I can only nod in agreement w/ Mr. Newkirk. However, over 50% of the males in my current World class, when given the opportunity to choose their own book and read it in class, greedily grasped the opportunity. (The books did have to have an historical or multi-cultural emphasis, of course!)
An article I read recently bemoaned the recent trend in college and university admissions surrounding gender. It seems that females are dominating in the admissions halls. Their application and acceptance rates are much higher than males, which is leading many institutes of higher learning to institute policies reminiscent of Affirmative Action. The result of these reactions is to accept into those institutions males with lower ‘acceptance standards’ and to deny more adequately prepared and qualified females in order to maintain some level of gender parity
The questions arises then…Are these males simply suffering from Newkirk’s proposed gender gap in writing/reading? Do these educational gender gaps manifest themselves in all areas of the college admission process? Is this a societal issue that will come back to haunt us as the next generation slowly assumes the reins of leadership in both the realms of academics and economics…Anyone? Anyone?
(That said, the finest examples of writing I’ve seen in the past two years have have both been crafted from the minds and at the hands of males.)
What a great weather week! I lounged on my sunny deck on Thursday and read Newick’s article; so many ideas flooded my thinking. Why is it that boys’ and girls’ reading and writing habits and abilities are so varied?
In my business class we study the “glass ceiling”, the struggle for women to climb the corporate ladder – seeing the top level management jobs within reach, but not quite breaking through to the top positions. Although women make up almost half of America’s labor force, as of 2005, only eight Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs or presidents, and 67 of those 500 companies don’t have any women corporate officers. (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenceo1.html) I start the unit by polling the class to see how many mothers work, most all raise a hand; how many grandmothers work, a few hands drop; great grandmothers, many more fall. So if statistics show females far excel males in writing, why is it males dominant the corporate world. Hmm. Is it because historically men were the bread winners; women stayed home to raise the family? The women who did work entered stereotyped professions like teaching, nursing, secretarial, etc., those fields that require caring, nurturing, sensitivity……. Let’s look at teaching, I never had a male teacher until 6th grade, and very few after that. So who was influencing and choosing what I was required to read and write about? WOMEN. Is it any different today? According to NEA research, just 24.9 percent of the nation’s 3 million teachers are men. And over the last two decades, the ratio of males to females in teaching has steadily declined. The number of male teachers now stands at a 40-year low. (http://www.nea.org/teachershortage/03malefactsheet.html)
Women and men are different! I agree with Newkirk, we need to stop suppressing reading and writing preferences, all the way back to early childhood and allow our kids to make choices without forbidding or shaming them. I know Kathy is interested in revamping the required reading lists. What good are the books if students are forced to read something of no interest? If I start reading a book and it is not grasping my attention, I put it down and move on. Why waste my time? Perhaps the theory in the 1992 popular relationship book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, applies to many facets of our life including reading and writing??????????
I think that boys reading and writing has been discouraged. There is/maybe a necessary stage that boys go through (being a mother of 2). I tried to keep guns away from them when they were small, but they would use their bananas or chew their cookie into the shape of a gun. Boys like to read about war, blood, action, battle, violence and draw action figures. It shouldn’t be preceived as a problem. A note came home to me from school when my son was in 1st grade, that he was drawing Ninga Turtles (quite well I might add)and the teacher wanted him to stop as they were preceived as “violent”. Could they of taken the art and had him work on a story to go along with the drawing?
History of war is a yearly part of their curriculum and mostly conducted by men. Wars are violent, bloody and are justified!
School has become creatively a more restrictive environment, as alot of schools cut their arts and music for budget reasons. Teachers have less voice in creating engaging activities. They need to teach writing to get ready for the writing test. I wonder if NCLB and the past violence in schools, has something to do with stiffling and not allowing boys to write about what they read. If this indeed is the nature of boys and restrictions on what they choose to read and write about is discouraged , the light may go out. So, I think if it is fantasy, action, humor, war, etc., it needs to be encouaged and managed. When is writing about violence not ok? That needs to be determined by the teacher.
In my program, I have readers ranging form non-readers to 5th grade reading levels. They all have choices in what they want to read or be read to. I have a student that loves fast cars, so I bought 2 books about fast cars. I read one and follows along. Then I have him write about what we have read. He likes it.
I have all the classic chapter books for girls and boys, including new vocabulary and comprehension questions. They all get to choose what they want to read.
Reading needs to be pleasurable and fun. If that means scary stories, horror, war stories, graphic novels, comics, humor, so be it. At least they will be engaged.
And remember Gardner’s 12 intelligences. People learn in different ways!
Lots to ponder here… I am the “Dada” of a four year old boy (and a 3 year old girl that I run safety interference for every day) and that little guy lives for “make pretend” swords, shields, battles, pistols, long guns, knives, (all fake and honestly safe) and anything else he can imagine to put into his constant world of role play as a prop for engagement, and then when he’s done, his picnic basket that doubles as a toy box for his “protection” as he calls it, is full of sticks, hinges, hunks of old canoe seats, a wrench or two, and what-all-else that any knight or cowboy or army guy would be proud to go to battle with, in a MADE UP STORY.
Few people appreciate peace, love, and bamboo shoots more than I do. We don’t encourage constant battle and bloodshed; we’re more into bluegrass, but this boy has a real need to wrestle, rumble, and create imaginary stories that contain physical action and percieved danger in order to develop drama. His action is always play, often with some “violence” within. So it is with a boy. Not all of them, but many. We let our boy play, and make sure we talk about reality, fiction, the important differences, and I die and come back to life as often in our shootouts at the Kiddo Coral as he does. It’s fun. School can do that too when we are helping boys to shape their imagined stories onto the page.
I grew up in a family of seven siblings, five of them brothers, boys. I worked for 18 summers at fresh air camps, most often with some variation of age group in the realm of, yup, boys. And I’ve worked for over a decade in the Kennett schools, in classrooms, and with many boys. Sorry about the mini-resume, but authority is essential if we want to make valid points in our writing, yes? So,I think we don’t let them all “be boys” enough. We hold too much social and gender bias within the culture of our educational institutions.
Especially with boys and their written expression and their reading. There are loads of gray spaces here, not many black and white ones. But it seems much of our high school curriculum has a pretty traditional, anglo, literary canon type of orientation with our required reading. (There’s one canon the boys can play with and not cause a battle, eh?) I could go on and on about problems and hypothesized causes and factors and relationships, but I won’t. But I really want boys to read more. It’s that simple.
I liked what Newkirk had to say about a sort of “meeting them where they are at” kind of teaching, and allow for loads of topic choice in writing assignments, and loads of choice in their reading as well. Newkirk described a matter of “taste” to identify one of the ways boys get alienated or turned away from developing their own literacies at schools. I agree, and think it’s often at the heart of any discussion with conflict about people, their learning, the arts, what’s good, what’s not, assessiing high, good qualities to certain forms while viewing other forms of expression as lower or less worthy of a learners time. Cultural snobbery anyone? I’m sure I do it as well. We all have our own leanings. Karl Marx would have a party with this concept, and wealth, class, social, financial status, family and educational background, as well as gender, all play huge roles in the swirling alchemy of the trouble that is getting boys to read and write better in our schools. Our world is full of slants and agendas in regard to art, expression, education, learning, and more. The development of literacies for boys are supressed at our schools as a result.
Some brief thoughts for classroom solutions: 1) use whatever means you can to electrify boys into reading and writing more, including many forms of books, genres, comics, graphic novels, newspapers, truck or sports magazines, piggy-backing with video plot lines in writing, writing workshops with pals, or whatever. So what if they don’t read and write about things you think are great. If they think the ideas are great, let them go with it and develop as readers and writers. Take turns with stuff, you pick this time, teacher p[icks next time, you get five picks, I get one for reading time, let them “win” and enjoy their reading time. Get rid of the idea of “losing” if they don’t engage the literary canon. Have classroom libraries all over the schools, particularly in the English rooms, that offer good “boy” reads for a wide range of abilities, with loads and loads of choices for titles, genres, forms, etc. Nothing like a great, fun library, at almost an arm’s reach, to get the reading going for these guys. It seems so simple, why don’t we do that? Offer consistent, daily time in class to read those things they choose. Don’t make them do a book report and kill the darn thing. Have a book share type environment. Run writers workshop classrooms with loads of choice for boys and girls to write and be with their pals and have a laugh and stay out of thier way and my goodness, they’re boys, and the “violence” is “with a wink” and is within the context of story or friendship or both, and we can find a way to determine what is threatening and what is not in post Columbine public school America.
And thanks for the articles, Tom, and Penny.
My response to this prompt is going to be short…I don’t really have any advice as to what works as to how do we engage the boys in reading. Reading in my classroom often looks like reading a selection from a textbook that guides the students through activities ultimately intended for them to discover some theorem or mathematical relation. We either read this as a class…students volunteer… and we stop to interprtet the meaning along the way… or the students read in groups and try to follow the activity. I have often found that the small group reading is not very successful. The students will say “I don’t get it” before they even attempt to process what they have read. It seems as though they just want to be told how to do something, not discover it on there own. As the year is drawing to a close, they seem to be getting better at this approach, but I usually follow these activities up with some sort of direct instruction for those that may not have understood it through discovery.
As far as the achievement gap between boys and girls I do see this in my classroom, especially in the lower level classes, the girls are more successful as a whole than the boys. I vaguely remember a book I read in a class for my master’s — Boys and Girls Learn Differently”. It called for and mapped out methods for differentiated instruction for girls and boys. I believe, and it has been a little while, that it advocated for single sexed classrooms to increase achievement for both genders. It would probably serve me well to revisit this book and its ideas.
Okay…I’ll try to be brief, as it is late and Tom will be here before any of you get to read this! I understood, enjoyed, and accepted Tom’s work and did learn how to interpret the possibly benign nature of the male’s attraction to seemingly violent themes. Unlike Ed, I’m not a boy, have daughters, had four sisters and two less-than-tough brothers. I love to read and write and am crazy about my opportunity to enlighten young people about the opportunities a solid education can offer. In my interview four years ago, Neal asked me how I was going to attract the nontraditional student. When I realized he meant boys (because I teach early childhood courses), I decided that was going to be a goal of mine. I lured them with the fact that my class was full of pretty girls. I stole many from study halls; I was active in my quest. I now got what I wanted…half a room full of males…who don’t want to read, write, learn about theorists or children’s lit, or work with kids in the future…but they can’t wait to get into the preschool…to play. So now fast forward to Thursday evening. I’m invited to a dinner to honor many students and faculty of the Whittemore Business School. Prior to dinner, I thumbed through the latest book written by one of the honorees. I’d rather pull my own fingernails out with pliers than read further in a book about “Imprecise Knowledge Economics”! Can anything be more dry? boring? sleep inducing? It wasn’t until the next day when I decided to reread Tom’s article that I froze with the sudden “dawn lights on marblehead” understanding that I had bored most of my nontraditional students for the past three years! I can see Richard H’s blank face now…when I asked him to write a response paper to all that we had learned about children’s art! He didn’t absorb much more than I did from the economics text. He couldn’t write because he had no response…no more than I did from that award winning book! I have a lot to learn…walk a mile in their shoes!
I found the article and all of the posted comments very insightful. There were so many great points and ideas brought up. I have never had to teach reading in the capacity that many of you do, but I do include it in many of my classes. In my experience like most of you, boys just have a very active brain and like to read about sotries that involve a lot of action. The few biys i do see reading are usually indulged in comics, magazines abouts cars or video games, dragons, and things of that sort. The girls like to read about romance,fantasy,true life stories, music,and fashion. I have always encourgaed my students to read about what they enjoy and then provide ways for them to share and express what they enjoy. In theater students act out what they read or write and I teach them how to connect it with other subjects and materials. Last quarter we took the guys script which was about the war, and combined it with the girls love story script. It was very interesting to see the two worlds combine to make one amazing story and combined the likes of both males and females and reading and writing. I even have them act out eachother’s stories which expose the boys to a very different style and they really like doing this.I think theater is a great way to get boys to read and maybe become interested in different styles of literature. Acting is very active and engaging and I think it makes a huge difference. Sometimes I ask them to act out thier favorite scene from a book they a reading or we do tableau and have students guess the theme or book. There are so many different activities. I do similar activities in my music and dance classes. I’m not sure if this will really help anyone but it is what I do to promote reading and writing in my class. If anyone wants ideas i have many i can share!
For some reason, I wrote “sincerely” early on and Tom brought that point up in the article we read as well as his presentation. Many young men don’t want to be sincere as they would rather guard themselves and instead work with parody, humor, or grand fiction stories.
Currently our 9th graders are working on “You Magazine.” The structure is narrative, but Tom’s article nudged me, and now I have opened the gates to fiction, much to the relief of many of my male students. However, several females have decided fiction suits them better as well. I will do a tally at the end of the assignment in several weeks and do a gender study.
Kids are so much better at slapstick humor and parody than I am. I am hoping to be entertained and learn a few things about this genre I have historically avoided. If allowed in high school, I would have been the “personal narrative” pet. This assignment is challenging me in new ways and getting me to think.
Perhaps Simpsons cuts as a way to help writers scaffold their plots?
**Holly, I was so turned on to drama activities in college to help struggling readers. Not only does this help with reading, this helps with community and identity. The thing that’s great, kids are safe if they perceive themselves as someone else when they are acting. Keep up the great work!
I have not researched this, but my experience tells me that it is more common to keep a young boy out of Kindergarten than a young girl. I’m talking about those children who turn 5 right around September 30th. When we wind up with large gaps in performance between boys and girls in the high school, it makes me wonder if the root of the problem really goes back to day one.
I used to teach a group of ninth graders with severe reading troubles. Year after year the group was about 80/20 boys to girls, but we never addressed reading along gender lines. It was always a matter of meeting the student at his current need and then trying to go forward.
I, like you, Kathy, am from a family of sisters and only raising daughters. This is all new to me… and very interesting.
I had the privelage of working with Ryan two years ago on the Vikings Boys Writing Camp – we took a group of kids – some of whom are seniors right now – and did a canoe, raft, write trip to the Adirondacks- a forerunner I suppose to the River as Metaphor camp that we are organizing this summer.
We did a really cool thing that had a lot to do with Ryan – create a space where it was okay to be young men and to write and share. There was so much testosterone flowing – the front page of the book of reading selections had the pitcure of a viking with the phrase “submit to our dominence or we will burn your village.” What evolved though was the creation of a place where it was safe to create and share very personal and powerful writing peices. The adventure experiences challenged the kids – hauling 70 pound canoes over a brutal half mile portage and several shorter ones, sailing the canoes, whitewater rafting, camping, and swimming around the island we were staying on etc. Hard physical labor, all guys, campfires, performance peices – and it was brilliant – they wrote lots and some potent peices. I think because we created this manly-man “guys” environment – the debriefing was safe and supportive. The point – I think that if we are able to create environments in the classroom where it is safe to take risks – to expose ourselves as writers to the criticism of the world (which can be brutal) – then we can start to get at this stigma of being a struggling writer and reader.
As teachers – modeling and self-disclosing what is challenging for us probably helps. I have recently stepped up and tried writing articles for the Mtn Ear on kayaking- and some of my collegues have been gracious enough to give me feedback – I felt, and still feel that the feedback may really challenge me – and as a “fragile” new writer in a public forum it all feels intimidating – I do have confidence in success in other venues to fall back on. I think we need to take “baby steps” to grow confidence in students as writers so they are willing to take larger risks.
Kids that I have had that have written successfully – one kid wrote a lot of fantasy stuff – read a lot of Tolkienesque (nice word right?) books and it was very much reflected in his writing. Other kids really liked to write about their story – the personal narrative I suppose. Humor is huge, I have had kids write a line for a cartoon, make a cartoon in response to another cartoon that speaks to their expectations or experience. The hip hop “class” after school – we have a kid who hardly writes in class and is way behind in english and she cranked out a two page rhyme that was really good in 15 minutes – head down the whole time. It was great to see.
I have found that the adventure experiences create fertile ground to grow peices from – caving and rafting especially. Journaling and talking about expectations before, and reflection and sharing after the experience enhance what kids get from the experience as well as have a place to write from. Its good stuff. Add in some short passages and qoutes to help frame things – and it can have a powerful and long lasting impact.
-D
I can’t say enough about that VIKING post and the idea of a place where boys are celebrated for who they are and allowed to find safety in reading and writing. Of course they get to important experiences in their writing because they have finally found a place where they feel they can write it, share it, etc. What a gift to the small number that have been able to attend Viking Camp with Darron and Ryan. Now how do we create a true alternative reading/writing course that allows for that experience? Jake Moore taught an all boys English course in Berlin. Are we willing to try one here?
Penny
I full heartedly agree with Newkirk’s article. I see this first hand every day. I have a class full of non readers and non writers who are afraid to admit they can’t read a math problem. I do not directly teach reading in my content area but I have found some things that work with my Academic Support students. I require that if they are finished with their work they must find something to read. The most common response I get is “I don’t know how to read.” It is sometimes hard for me to tell if the books we are offering them are too hard to read or if they are just not interested. I thought outside the box and began to allow the boys to look up their favorite topic on the internet. They have to show me the page they found so I can approve that there is some text to be read. I then require them to fill out a summary sheet on what they read each day. They are so excited to find articles about hunting and music and they actually are reading. Many of them have been keeping a weekly log of what they have read and seem proud instead of ashamed that they have been reading.