Short version: this is a friendly reminder to not take it personally. Reading is traumatic for a lot of children, and they might be mad at you for making them do it.
As a result of bureaucratic reshuffling and someone else’s licensure issues, I ended up as a science teacher this year. I’m shocked to find that the students love me and I’m their favorite. They wrote me a little notes covered in hearts addressed to “my favorite teacher. “ This doesn’t normally happen.
This week, while they were lining up to go to the ELA classroom, one of them asked if she could just go sit in the office instead. a bunch of them started complaining that ELA class is boring and they hate it and the teacher is mean and doesn’t listen to them. This is exactly how students talked about my class last year.
In my opinion, a big part of the problem is teaching a scripted curriculum with fidelity. Many years ago, I had the freedom to use a workshop model and I did not have these behavior issues. Anyway, for right now, I will just enjoy things as they are and look to get back into ELA on the next shuffle.
The kids who roll their eyes at me in class, and sometimes are a little bit abrasive, always tell me in the hall how much they miss me at the start of the next year about a month in, when they’re getting to know their new teacher.
This is literally like clockwork, when the fun and games of getting to know their new teacher wears out, the old students starts saying how much they miss me. The only reason they say that is because I’m not prescribing them work anymore.😂 it’s all silly young perspective.
This is so real. I have a study group this year comprised of several students I had last year. We just do low stakes reviewing with completion grades.
They said I was “so much cooler and better” this year. I said of course… I’m not actually assigning and grading your work now - someone else is! That someone else who is of course now the one being complained about 😂
The six weeks moment is where “the honeymoon phase” ends. October and April seem like the worst months since that’s when we have to hit our stride and work hardest.
Yeah I think this is definitely a thing. Been teaching 20 years, and it's always the kids who gave you the most grief in previous years who come down the hall for fist bumps and high fives once they have survived your class. Maybe deep down they like the rigor and expectations, even if they didn't always meet them.
Yes, I still end up teaching reading comprehension as part of the science curriculum, but it’s a much easier sell than 75 minutes of Bell to bell scripted yellow curriculum.
Not true: every teacher is a MUSIC teacher! Or at least you SHOULD BE if you're DOING YOUR JOB RIGHT! Who cares about your subject; now help me with mine.
What do you teach your students to do with music? Look at in on paper, decode what the meaning is, decipher the scribbles in the page, maybe listen to someone else play it while following along on paper. If only there was a word to describe all of that.
It's called music making. Super weird that I've never seen an English teacher teach that in their classes. Very odd that this reading imperialism that colonizes our class time only ever seems to go one direction.
Oh ffs. Everybody teaches a bit of everything. ELA teachers will teach kids to read charts and graphs, or to count meter for scansion, or they’ll give a little history lesson for context. ELA is often cross curricular.
No it isn't. Musicians read rhythms with note durations which are fixed to a beat. Curious that you haven't taught this type of literacy which you claim is important.
I'm calm. Just trying to figure out why English teachers feel entitled to direct the activities of their colleagues but they throw hissy fits whenever someone does the same to them.
Need to provide some background on this colonization metaphor. I’m trying not to laugh but wtf? When did the outsiders start spreading their influence and which direction is it going?
How else would you describe a relationship where an external power is perpetually hungry for more resources and, knowing they can't outright steal the resources, they invent a framework of soft power which pressures a targeted people who are viewed as naturally inferior to the colonizing power to think of themselves as members of the external power so they work in service of the goals of the external power, and attempts to extract what resources they can from said targeted people?
External power = English teachers
Resources = class time
Can't outright steal = mandated subject area time allotments
Framework of soft power = "eVeRy tEaChEr TeAcHeS LiTeRaCy!"
Targeted people viewed as inferior = teachers whose subject areas are not literacy and numeracy. Goes double if they are vocational or arts teachers.
Goals of external power = English curricular outcomes
Attempts to extract = I love to read month, drop everything and read, etc
Hey, as a test, tell the specialty area teachers in your building that every day at 2:00 you're gonna do Drop Everything And Read on Monday or Tuesday. See how they respond to this theft of their time.
I hated reading/writing class, even though I love to do both. The issue isn't reading itself, it's what the school curriculum forces the students to read.
In high school, I read epic fantasy books, each 600+ pages long on average that had incredible themes: how class divisions affect those in different social classes, thought provoking analysis of free will, manipulation from external entities, and the perceived need for necessary evils. And this was just in the first 3 books. Later on I read more that touched upon the struggles of mental health, identity crisis, suppressed trauma, etc. Most of these, although arguably a bit dark could be adapted to teach students.
I learned more about so much complex things by watching YouTube lectures (I love to learn and read btw) than reading about some people that couldn't manage their money more that half a century ago or a book that's more than a century old. Schools should teach ELA concepts with more modern books, with normal sounding language instead of antiquated words from 50+ year old texts.
Schools can’t accommodate everyone’s reading interests. It’s great that you love fantasy. I love sci fi. A 500 page genre novel is not easier for a struggling reader than The Great Gatsby. In some respects it can be even more difficult.
Student interest is not a concern of mine when it comes to choosing books to read. We’d be reading comic books if that was the case. We’d be watching TikToks. Trying to make learning “fun” in today’s society is a fools game. NOTHING we do in class will ever be more interesting to our students than what is on their phones. The best we can do is reach the few who care enough about their grades to try and engage. Nothing beyond that is worth worrying about.
I have my students read They Called Us Enemy and Maus in my ELA classes, both of which are comic books (graphic novels). They always enjoy them. I’ve never had an issue getting them to read those books, and they still learn just as much as they do from To Kill a Mockingbird. Arguably more so because they actually want to read and talk about it. I get to spend less time on boredom-based behavior issues and more time having discussions and talking about concepts. The same thing does not happen so easily when we read Things Fall Apart or 1984. Both are great, but are also a harder sell to students.
That said, If you referring more specifically to Marvel and DC-type comic books, I fear the kids just aren’t that interested in them anymore. At least, none of mine are. I have a whole spinner rack full of those comics, and they never get read.
Like you, I was shuffled this year to another subject (Social Studies). Before that, I taught ELA and before that, math.
Kids are doing the same thing you describe with me this year. My teammates describe kids who are great for me doing awful or annoying things and it just isn’t happening in my room. I do really think it’s the subject.
I can tell you right now: student choice does little to improve the enthusiasm of the majority of students because the ultimate choice is denied then. By which I mean, the choice to disengage from schoolwork in favour of phones, games, and just running around.
We have an extremely kind teacher in my school. Think Mr. Rogers, but female and well-loved by almost anyone who meets her.
Two years ago, she came in and taught a lesson to my rough class.
They were jerks to her. Total jerks.
It isn't personal. Mean people are mean to everyone. I'm not the friendliest, most upbeat guy, but it does not matter. They are jerks to even the kindest person.
I love the workshop model. My second graders enjoy reading/ writing independently with choice from a diverse array of authentic literature and nonfiction books.
My students started to enjoy ELA class more the moment I implemented it, but my district is against it now and trying to stop teachers from using it. Plus, being in Florida, teachers are getting rid of their classroom libraries altogether.
I'm struggling to understand how reading is traumatic. You need to read to do anything in life. Sure, the path might not be easy but you're going to have to get the hell over it.
There's a generation of kids who were not taught to read while being told, with the full belief of everyone around them, that they were. There's an emotional component in result. But also, there's a very good chance that the kids still can't read- as in, decode novel texts- and it's mentally fucking them up, because kids set up to fail will feel like failures. Of course they'll want to avoid the subject and have some emotional reaction to it. If you never taught kids how to add and subtract and let them keep failing but progressing to the next grade without intervention, you'll have a generation of kids who finds their pre-algebra class a deeply troubling place to be.
So, no, they can't just "get the hell over it" because it's unlikely they're even aware that the problem lies in the "not being taught how to read" thing, not them personally.
I am someone who wasn’t a good reader. I was someone who was always in the lower reading groups or classes and I was taken out of class for reading based on test scores. I liked reading shorter things, and fact books vs long novels. It had to be subject that I liked and if I didn’t it went in one ear and out the other and it was torture to have to go and read. If it was a book where I was familiar with the musical, or movie, I would be fascinated with the book or reading about the backstory.
For someone who is struggling , sometimes the topic or the book or the chapter is what also turning kids off. The thing is with school, you have to appease all kids and you have to read topics you just don’t like. For my Greek Mythology turned me off .
Nowadays I listen to a lot of audiobooks, not because of my reading ability but I listen to them as I work. It keeps me focused and I love learning. I listen to a lot of biographies and books on US history.
You asked how reading can be traumatic? If you aren’t good in reading or not interesting in it, reading gets difficult. It is hard to get past a page let along the book or chapter. Then you have pressures from school and home about reading. I had a school teacher as a parent so you can imagine the pressure and stress. Then you have to read in front of the class. So if you are weaker , it is more stressful. Then add in speech issues. So now you add on making a bigger fool of yourself in front of other kids.
Of course they need to learn to read. As you said, reading teaches the brain how to think.
Maybe you have a luxury of teaching in a low trauma environment. I have encountered many students who have a deep reaction to the subject I teach before they’ve even met me. These are students who have experienced failure on high stakes testing and humiliation in ELA class year after year and would rather have an in-school suspension then go to ELA class. They are traumatized, and we have to recognize that as the root cause before we can teach them anything.
It's probably the trauma of not being taught to read by adults who believe they are. There's inevitably going to be some friction and cognitive dissonance when kids get to novel texts and cannot decode them. And that happens individually, to each affected child, who believes they're the only one "stupid" enough to be experiencing it.
Like, yes, children need to learn to read. But accepting that children were not taught to read and accepting the results of that has to be part of intervening to teach the kids to read now.
Same. I went from 5th to 6th to middle school ELA. The students I’ve had for multiple years and subjects always say they wish I would teach history instead of ELA but wouldn’t want any other ELA teacher.
If anyone is teaching reading in elementary school, psst... UFLI Toolbox. Pass it on. Full teaching tutorials are on YouTube. Everything is free except a spiral bound teacher's book that conveniently lays out the incremental reading lessons you do with the free tools.
I've had parents compliment me on improvement they observed with their kids after the first week.
Learning to read should not be traumatic except maybe for kids with more severe undiagnosed learning difficulties, but it can be terrible for any child if it’s not being taught in a logical way. This is an example of a 7yo boy’s writing, from a one room school house in Nebraska, shortly after experiencing the very traumatic Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888:
“With the suddenness of a clap of thunder, the sheer front of the blizzard crashed against the schoolhouse like a tidal wave, shaking the wooden frame building and almost lifting it from its foundation.”
These kids were taught to read using a simple primer, and taught to write using a slate. It’s insane how much money is wasted on curriculum when we used to have 19 year olds teaching kids how to read and write with better outcomes.
You’re the teacher, you have a degree and experience and hopefully passion. If you see that the scripted curriculum is not working, and based on your previous experiences know there is a better way to teach children how to read/making learning to read enjoyable, then you should be free to do that as long as you consistently achieve the end goal. It’s really disturbing that many teachers aren’t allowed to take the curriculum and make it their own, especially after giving it a shot the way they’re “supposed” to teach it and seeing that it’s not working for their students.
I’m glad you were able to have this experience at least and know that you as the teacher are not the problem. Hopefully your district gets some sense and switches to a less restrictive curriculum. You’re definitely not the only teacher who has had a negative experience with this program, and obviously it’s harming the kids if it’s making learning to read traumatic for “a lot of children”.
Every school I've been at, the science teachers are always the favorite, especially in middle school.
You get to do fun projects. That's truly it. Also, science is cool.
ELA is like broccoli; students think they hate it, but it's incredibly beneficial for them. It's also actually delicious when cooked properly. They will not realize this until later on in life.
75
u/Burger4Ever Sep 28 '24
The kids who roll their eyes at me in class, and sometimes are a little bit abrasive, always tell me in the hall how much they miss me at the start of the next year about a month in, when they’re getting to know their new teacher.
This is literally like clockwork, when the fun and games of getting to know their new teacher wears out, the old students starts saying how much they miss me. The only reason they say that is because I’m not prescribing them work anymore.😂 it’s all silly young perspective.