KAndersen
Dec 3, 05 - 12:00 AM |
For the Love of Reading: Letting English Students Take Ownership of their Learning
Silva, Peggy. (2003). Can we read today, or do we hafta do English? English Journal, 93, 1, 29-32.
It’s extremely apparent that Peggy Silva loves to read. Stepping out on a limb and probably defying her school district’s curriculum standards, Silva throws traditional unit planning away and lets her students read.
Accountability?
Peggy Silva is definitely a strong teacher who can defend herself against parents’ questions. In fact, she almost attacks questioning parents during parent-teacher conferences- asking them what their own reading habits at home are like and telling them that their family choices can not be replaced by work at school (p 31). Could I talk to a parent that way? And what do her fellow teachers and school administration think about her teaching methods? Some teachers are required to have everything pre-planned and authorized before teaching their lessons. How would Silva deal with a working condition such as that? In an era of “accountability mania ,” I find that teachers like Peggy Silva are the out and out defying the “No Child Left Behind” act in the US. What does she do about the tests at the end?
Curriculum?
It really scared me when Silva’s students said “We couldn’t just read the books” (p 29). When did reading stop being an activity these students could enjoy doing? When did reading become a task they had to do at a certain time in effort to get certain answers?
Peggy Silva’s open curriculum can have many benefits. While students are required to read some novels in order for whole class discussions, the students are also allowed to choose books that interest them. However, Silva mostly talks about reading in her English class. While English should include reading, it should also include speaking, listening and writing too.
Community building?
Silva also shows us that reading can have a community building effect. In a beginning of the year activity I hope to one day duplicate, Silva showed her students that they have several things in common. For example, “when the brightest student says he likes to be read to, the student with the most limited ability feels included” (p 30). By learning what they had in common, Silva’s students could stop labelling themselves as bad or good readers.
Meaningful Reading
Peggy Silva says on page 31: “if students are reading, I need to get out of the way so that they can.” I have also seen students happily reading, pouring over pages as they need them to survive. Nine times out of ten, they are reading a book they see as fun and something I did not ask them to read. I need to make sure that all my students get daily opportunities to “just read” so that they too can love to read whatever type of book they connect to. We teach students to decode and comprehend text so that they can extract meaning from it and use that information. In my opinion, in order to be really able to use that information, the information itself students do should be meaningful to them.
Unanswered questions…
I would love an update on how Peggy Silva’s students are progressing. Is she still teaching in 2005? Has her “open, in progress curriculum” become solid and prepared after a few years of teaching her classes in the same manner? Did her students pass the NCLB/state/provincial requirements as well as other students form more traditional English classrooms?
I have many questions left unanswered from this article. Nevertheless, I really admire Peggy Silva for teaching the way she is, and I hope she and her students are flourishing.
Karen Andersen
November 2005
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