This is the third installment in what began as a reflection piece after reading Oliver Sacks’s book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Sacks’s seminal work in neurology, this book revisits, by way of case study, some of Sacks’s more memorable patients during his practice. One of these patients is Mr. McGregor from the chapter, “On the Level.”
If you are just joining this three-part series, Mr. McGregor comes to Dr. Sacks with a report of a “tilting” as he walks. A tilting that has been shared with him by his family and friends, but one he cannot detect himself. Through consultation and conferring, Dr. Sacks is able to verify the tilting with Mr. McGregor and the two of them come together on a most innovative and therapeutic solution.
But it is in this chapter that Sacks describes the triple control system that governs balance and we have explored these in Part II. What I would like to look at in the third and final installment of this reflection is how we are able to bring readers into the safety, assurance, and ease with which Dr. Sacks finds most patients with balance problems do find themselves–while not with a perfect gait–walking.
Dr. Sacks discusses the triple control system as the labyrinthine, the proprioception, and the visual.
The labyrinthine is the pathway. The very first thing I say to our Room 407 Readers is something that Penny Kittle said during a workshop at Indiana University Southeast a few years ago. Penny said, “The difference between a reader and a non-reader is the reader has a plan.” We have 36 weeks in order to enact upon our plan. The very first thing we do is handout a 40 Book Challenge as found in Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer.
In that first class meeting, the challenge is often met with disbelief. These are students who do not believe that reading 40 books in a year is possible. Though I have little doubt that the idea of genre has been presented to them at some point before the eleventh grade, they do not recognize genres when they come into Room 407. Many of them ask how the project will be graded which I have come to learn is the vocalized idea that a project is something that can be failed vs. a project that could be met with a measure of success. To be open and fair, these students will have been asked to have read up to twelve books a year–three per marking period–within a reading management program. Friends. . .these students have not been reading these twelve books. They excel in the ability to determine how many books they must read to pass the course when the idea of reading three books–one every three weeks–is too much. Each year, these readers tell me the ways and means by which they have met–or not met–the challenge of the reading management program that was marketed as a motivational program for readers.
“The difference between the reader and the non-reader is that the reader has a plan.” If you began the stem of this sentence in Room 407 with our English 11 students, you would be able to see right away that it is more than a platitude; it’s an attitude. It’s more than a mandate; it’s a mantra. And more than lip service; it is the labyrinth in which we will walk all year long.
We’ve modified Donalyn’s 40 Book Challenge to reflect the kind of reading 11th graders might be doing during the course of his or her junior year. We’ve done this after actual consultations with Donalyn to be sure that we are doing this right. And Donalyn, ever encouraging, has said, “You know your room. You know your students.” We add the category of American Classics and American History-Based Titles because the junior year in Indiana sees our students enrolled within a U.S. History course. Many of our students are not aware that the reading that they do in coursework other than their English class is also reading. And I invite them to include their U. S. History Titles on their 40 Book Challenge.
The plan is all around us from the first day of class. Many students find it incredible that I have read almost 90% of my classroom library (I have not read 100% as there is a section of the library for books that I am reviewing and they come in with such regularity that I need to time to read and to process before putting some books into rotation. . .for others, I depend upon the good opinion of those in my extended learning community). There are books on ever shelf of every type. We have picture books in Room 407 and we share them often. As Room 407 Readers begin to walk with safety. . .assured. . .and at ease with the idea of reading, they will often want to take books home to share with his or her sibling(s). We have poetry, graphic novels, non-fiction, periodicals, illustrated texts. I have an example text for every genre listed on the 40 Book Challenge. We invite our Room 407 Readers to frequent the school library, the public library, and book stores to find the titles we want to read, but I would not challenge them to read more than they have ever read while outsourcing their ability to find books wholesale. If this is our plan, then this is our place.
The very first book we share together in Room 407 is Silas House’s Eli the Good. I have selected this text for its big ideas that we will continue to revisit all year long, but I also choose it to put our Room 407 Readers into a place of choosing where they will list the book after we have finished. Yes. We read this book aloud. Together. Yes. We invite our readers to list this book when we are finished. It is a “big idea” book for the year. Kelly Gallagher recently tweeted, if a big idea is not revisited later in the year, it is not a big idea. Students can choose now whether they want to place this title in American History, Memoir (a stretch, but we can defend this), Choice, or Multi-Cultural or Diversity. I encourage students to look at “diversity” in that a main character from the book suffers from PTSD. There are four places that this book can be listed after reading and not all students make the same choice as they strategically begin to look at their own plan for reading and what categories might need the boost of our having shared this book together.
Do you hear it from Part II of this series? Reading through this text together was our “clicker” that modeled rhythm and pace as we begin walking and reading together. And we cannot revisit “big ideas” presented in this book if we have a percentage of students who did not read the book. By reading aloud, I am attempting to communicate to the room that I am in the balance here with the students. We read. . .we walk. . .we share. . .we talk. Together. We model pacing. We model the stamina needed to finish a book (by demonstrating we cannot expect to do it “the night before”).
There is a safety here. Every person in the room knows that we have finished a book. We had some fun with it along the way. We have built in the allusions as we have listened to the music of the era, we have handled model cars referenced within the text, we have built in “teasers” for parts of the book that I knew would be tough or tender for the readers. We have navigated a book, cover-to-cover together. When asked what book they read during their junior year, these students have one they can list without qualification or a need for qualification. Our room read this book. Safely, assured, and at ease.
As the 40 Book Challenge is their “plan” for the year, we refer to it frequently. However, as our Room 407 Readers begin to pick up steam, they often overlook maintaining their 40 Book Challenge. The times that we stop to look at our challenge sheets is a time to look together at titles from different genres that students in the room are reading. We can have conversations around the room regarding for what category this book might be a good fit. This seeming “neglect” of the sheet is a good problem to have–it is predictable and it provides an opportunity to revisit this “big idea” element of the class–but we want this running record (not a reading log) to reflect the reading that they are doing and how they are working toward a challenge that will see them reading more books–independently and by choice–titles than their freshman and sophomore year put together.
1466 words? Good grief. I apologize. . .
Look for Part IV of “A ‘Spiritual’ Look at Levels” tomorrow.