An anecdotal entry, since I've been really busy lately with grading, travelling, and writing this past month....

Today as my Freshman Composition class was getting ready to discuss an essay, I saw some tired eyes across the room and threw out a rather innocuous question to show my empathy: "So how much reading do you guys have to do in your other courses?"

No one answered. My question was probably too broad. "Do you have to do what we usually do?" I asked. "You know, read a chapter for homework and then discuss it in class? If so, raise your hand."

Only 1/3 of the class raised their hands. My eyebrows jumped off my forehead.

I assumed this meant that either, a) they were too tired to participate in my straw poll, or, b) something disturbing was happening. I called on those who didn't raise a hand. They gave me the typical reasons you'd expect. "I'm a business major, so we don't have to read" -- that sort of thing. Another student said that his teacher just recapitulates what's in the book, as if taking notes and putting them on a PowerPoint, doing the work for them. A few students reported that their teachers don't use the required books at all, or expect students to even read it, except perhaps for some homework problems.

I was still aghast. Textbook literacy is really at issue for me, not the various methods that teachers can use to facilitate their teaching. Books aren't necessarily all used in the same way, but I think many professors might be working under the assumption that their students know how to study or read them, without bothering to guide them through the process. Some of these freshman, too, are going to be in for a surprise when they get a test that covers the book even though the teacher didn't spoon feed it to them. I tried to sell the class on the idea that they need to take charge of their own learning and use the textbook as a tool and a study guide -- or as a means toward raising issues in their chosen fields, when not simply a matter of information. I brought up the notion that READING teaches you how to process information that rotely copying notes cannot. I even tried, in so many words, to get them to talk about Friere's "Banking Model" of education to some degree, to encourage them to stop limiting themselves to copying notes just for passing the test.

But still I was horrified at the lack of reading going on in some of their classes. The teachers who aren't requiring reading are also the ones who somehow are shocked when their students can't write well. They forget that the two go hand in hand. They forget how some Freshman, especially, might never have been taught how to learn independently, armed only with a book and a cup of coffee.

I felt less upset with them for their lack of "close reading" abilities -- and more compelled to teach them how to develop the skill of reading itself, beyond what they've already learned from High School. The longer I teach, the more I let go the grip I had when I first started on the notion that to be a good teacher, I must teach the most complex and advanced material -- that to be a good teacher I must have the highest of standards and not give in -- that to be a good teacher meant never having to dumb things down but demand students rise up. But it's the ability to teach the basics well and cultivating the ability to springboard students into those higher echelons of disciplined learning that often tests the teacher's true mettle. To find the level that students are working at and recalibrate accordingly -- without dumbing down -- is the challenge. I hope I can at least inspire students to look for the answers in books rather than solely in the red pencils of their teachers.

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