Reading and wRiting---two-thirds of the "3 R's," which many of us worry are increasingly neglected by teenagers. However, there are many studies and websites that show both scientifically and anecdotally that this assumption is not true. I was inspired to do a post on this based on Paulette Rothbauer's writings in Becoming a Reader (chapter 3.)
One way that libraries can increase their relevance to teens is to promote writing clubs. Many schools have literary magazines that are produced in-house, and the library should be a partner in this endeavor. Many schools also have "poetry" clubs where students prepare to go to poetry slams and other venues where they can share and perfect their craft.
I think that libraries should sponsor, advertise, and offer online access to as many writing programs as possible. Since "writing is an extension of reading (Rothbauer) it is only proper that we as youth services librarians support this interes and need through the library.
One such site that I am aware of that does an amazing job of promoting the reading-writing connection is Figment (the newer, way-sleeker version of Inkpop.) This site has everything from book reviews to fan-fiction to personalized recommendations. Its visually appealing and easy to use--plus it doesn't attempt to be too "cool" or seem forced, it looks like teens really made it. I know the director of the Figment project received a huge grant within the past year to continue to improve the site.
Libraries should use these tools to help empower kids to share their experiences and increase their literacy through writing.
Link for Figment: http://figment.com/
"40 of the Best Websites for Young Writers" (fully linked!) http://education-portal.com/articles/40_of_the_Best_Websites_for_Young_Writers.html
9.29.2012
9.23.2012
Canned Reading is probably not the best thing since sliced bread
I often refer to the many reading programs out there as "canned." These programs come in very neat and attractive packaging, they are linked to every standard you can think of, and have "compendiums" of research attached to prove their effectiveness (some examples are Scholastic's Read 180 program and Renaissance Learning's Accelerated Reader Enterprise.) Some teachers do like them, and I know that over the years these programs have seen many positive improvements. In many cases the days of "leveled" and color coded books are gone and they now use both classic and modern fiction and non-fiction as their base.
I think the problem with many of these programs is that the kids see it as a task, something to get done rather than to enjoy. Stephen Krashen argues against this idea when he asserts the claim that "free voluntary reading" is one of the best (if not the best) way to help students with vocabulary acquisition and retention. The larger question for classroom educators and youth services librarians is how do we blend the two ideas? School districts have spent thousands of dollars investing in these "canned reading" programss, so its not a good idea to suggest that we can them all together, however I think librarians can help teachers advocate for a more balanced approach.
Furthermore, we need to make sure that the research provided to support such programs is done by independent groups. It is far to easy to make the numbers look good if you are trying to turn a profit, and we forget that most of these programs come from for-profit, mega-publishing companies.
One idea I have to fix this problem is to separate the ideas in the students minds of reading as a skill and reading for pleasure. Schools that promote and put time aside for sustained silent reading, (or reading with your ipod in your ears!) might be able to help in this battle. Teachers need to model this, show enthusiasm for the reading of all types of literature-from fiction to popular magazines. If we can show young people that "fun" reading will help them with the "skill" of reading, perhaps things would change for the better.
What do you think? Other ideas? Creating lifelong readers should be one of the most fulfilling parts of our job, how do we do it?
I think the problem with many of these programs is that the kids see it as a task, something to get done rather than to enjoy. Stephen Krashen argues against this idea when he asserts the claim that "free voluntary reading" is one of the best (if not the best) way to help students with vocabulary acquisition and retention. The larger question for classroom educators and youth services librarians is how do we blend the two ideas? School districts have spent thousands of dollars investing in these "canned reading" programss, so its not a good idea to suggest that we can them all together, however I think librarians can help teachers advocate for a more balanced approach.
Furthermore, we need to make sure that the research provided to support such programs is done by independent groups. It is far to easy to make the numbers look good if you are trying to turn a profit, and we forget that most of these programs come from for-profit, mega-publishing companies.
One idea I have to fix this problem is to separate the ideas in the students minds of reading as a skill and reading for pleasure. Schools that promote and put time aside for sustained silent reading, (or reading with your ipod in your ears!) might be able to help in this battle. Teachers need to model this, show enthusiasm for the reading of all types of literature-from fiction to popular magazines. If we can show young people that "fun" reading will help them with the "skill" of reading, perhaps things would change for the better.
What do you think? Other ideas? Creating lifelong readers should be one of the most fulfilling parts of our job, how do we do it?
9.14.2012
Once upon a time, children were empathetic...
...but then they stopped reading fiction. In our culture of testing, something that the general public might not know is that on a standardized test such as the ACT, the reading portion contains only non-fiction passages. Why am I telling you about standardized test reading sections? Because this has led to many schools focusing on the teaching of non-fiction almost exclusively, rather than exposing students to all types of writing and reading. In Maryann Wolf's book, Proust and the Squid, Wolf speaks to the importance of reading when it comes to developing a sense of empathy:
"This period of childhood [3.5-5 years old] provides the foundation for one of the most important social, emotional, and cognitive skills a human being can learn: the ability to take on someone else's perspective...Through stories in books we can learn what it feels like. In this process we step outside ourselves for ever-lengthening moments and begin to understand the 'other,' which Marcel Proust wrote lies at the heart of communication through written language" (Wolf, pages 85-86.)
So, if young people don't read both real and not-so-real stories from an early age, they are less able to empathize with their peers, their elders, people who they see on TV that live thousands of miles away. I find this to be a fascinating idea. I know that I personally love to read fiction because it allows me to see in to other people's world's (both real and imagined,) but I certainly never thought that it might actually be helping my moral character.
I found a number of articles and other blogs that have compiled serious scientific studies, and some more casual experiments that seem to prove this. Here are the links, with my annotations in parentheses. This is certainly not exhaustive, a simple google search for "empathy deficit teens fiction" yields too many articles to list here!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/07/reading-fiction-empathy-study (very recent experiment that used excerpts of JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer novels, short read from a UK newspaper.)
http://cogscilibrarian.blogspot.com/2008/07/reading-fiction-improves-empathy.html (Cognitive Science Librarian's blog, with a good overview that speaks to how reading fiction improves empathy, she also has a brief bibliography that would be great to help with further reading on the subject.)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-me-care (focuses on empathy deficit in teens and where in comes from.)
"This period of childhood [3.5-5 years old] provides the foundation for one of the most important social, emotional, and cognitive skills a human being can learn: the ability to take on someone else's perspective...Through stories in books we can learn what it feels like. In this process we step outside ourselves for ever-lengthening moments and begin to understand the 'other,' which Marcel Proust wrote lies at the heart of communication through written language" (Wolf, pages 85-86.)
So, if young people don't read both real and not-so-real stories from an early age, they are less able to empathize with their peers, their elders, people who they see on TV that live thousands of miles away. I find this to be a fascinating idea. I know that I personally love to read fiction because it allows me to see in to other people's world's (both real and imagined,) but I certainly never thought that it might actually be helping my moral character.
I found a number of articles and other blogs that have compiled serious scientific studies, and some more casual experiments that seem to prove this. Here are the links, with my annotations in parentheses. This is certainly not exhaustive, a simple google search for "empathy deficit teens fiction" yields too many articles to list here!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/07/reading-fiction-empathy-study (very recent experiment that used excerpts of JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer novels, short read from a UK newspaper.)
http://cogscilibrarian.blogspot.com/2008/07/reading-fiction-improves-empathy.html (Cognitive Science Librarian's blog, with a good overview that speaks to how reading fiction improves empathy, she also has a brief bibliography that would be great to help with further reading on the subject.)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-me-care (focuses on empathy deficit in teens and where in comes from.)
9.09.2012
Popularity Contest
"...hey, don't take away all my printed books either, or make it harder to locate them." So says a "composite" 7th grader in Dresang and Kotrla's School Libraries and the Transformation of Readers and Reading (2010.) After reading that line, I sighed an "amen." The library at the high school where I teach has, as of this school year, transformed itself in to a "learning commons" format. Books and magazines have been weeded and moved without a lot of input from the librarian. And in the most horrifying move of all (do I sound like a dramatic teenager?,) the fiction collection has been moved across the hall from the main library room. The space in to which said fiction was moved is not large enough to accomodate our entire collection, so only books that were checked out last school year made the cut to be placed in the new fiction stacks. The rest are in the high school's archives room. Students can still check them out, but no one has figured out yet how we are going to indicate which room the book is in (900 tag anyone?) By librarian-to-be heart is broken.
First, let's think about the symbolic nature of this decision. Only the most "popular" titles are in the new fiction room. Popular by who's standards? The non-checked out books are with all the old, dusty, ephemera of a 100+ year old suburban high school. Does this relegate them to the past, and also, label them as out-of-date, irrelevant, something to be marveled at like a museum piece rather than revered as part of the literary canon of mankind? I know that the "popular" fiction was inspired by the fiction now sitting in the archives; there's an awful lot of The Bible in the Harry Potter Series, Orwell and Rand in Collins, and Dickens in-well anything about children and young adults struggling for their place in the world. And you can guess where those books are now shelved?
Next, instead of bemoaning this, what are some solutions? Dresang and Kotrla also inpired me to think about the role of a librarian to motivate readers ("School librarians...might use youth literature to teach a concept, but their pirmary concern is to movitvate the child to read the book presented and to link that reading to a wide array of related literature available in the library.") So how can we work around this new situation in our library? Some ideas I have suggested:
1. Have Read-Alike "tabs" in the stacks with the "popular" books, for example, by Lois Lowry's The Giver, a "tab" that says, "If you like The Giver, you might like Ayn Rand's Anthem, its in the Archives, ask your librarian to help you find it!" Novelist would be invaluable for this.
2. Rotating displays or spinning racks or books that say something like "hidden books, discovered in the York Archives, and only available for a limited time!"
3. Have students create an "in the archives" book trailer series to highlight books that haven't made it to the main fiction stacks, yet.
4. "Free a Book" campaign; once a book is checked out from the archives room, the school has agreed to then put it in the fully accessible fiction stacks, students could be credited for "rescuing" a book from the archives and get to do a little write-up, put it on a bulletin board, etc...as to why they read the book and why it is worthy of "rescue" from the archives.
5. School History connection; have a themed book talk along the lines of, "what was York like in the 1920s?, items from the school archives could be used (show students yearbooks from the 20s, school newspapers, etc...) then tie it in, "what were York students READING in the 20s?"
Non-library professionals making library decisions, at least where I work, is turning much of what makes libraries grand-exposure to ALL literature at ALL times-a thing of the past, but I know I will do everything to stop this from happening! I'll be the nerd, who saves the classics.
First, let's think about the symbolic nature of this decision. Only the most "popular" titles are in the new fiction room. Popular by who's standards? The non-checked out books are with all the old, dusty, ephemera of a 100+ year old suburban high school. Does this relegate them to the past, and also, label them as out-of-date, irrelevant, something to be marveled at like a museum piece rather than revered as part of the literary canon of mankind? I know that the "popular" fiction was inspired by the fiction now sitting in the archives; there's an awful lot of The Bible in the Harry Potter Series, Orwell and Rand in Collins, and Dickens in-well anything about children and young adults struggling for their place in the world. And you can guess where those books are now shelved?
Next, instead of bemoaning this, what are some solutions? Dresang and Kotrla also inpired me to think about the role of a librarian to motivate readers ("School librarians...might use youth literature to teach a concept, but their pirmary concern is to movitvate the child to read the book presented and to link that reading to a wide array of related literature available in the library.") So how can we work around this new situation in our library? Some ideas I have suggested:
1. Have Read-Alike "tabs" in the stacks with the "popular" books, for example, by Lois Lowry's The Giver, a "tab" that says, "If you like The Giver, you might like Ayn Rand's Anthem, its in the Archives, ask your librarian to help you find it!" Novelist would be invaluable for this.
2. Rotating displays or spinning racks or books that say something like "hidden books, discovered in the York Archives, and only available for a limited time!"
3. Have students create an "in the archives" book trailer series to highlight books that haven't made it to the main fiction stacks, yet.
4. "Free a Book" campaign; once a book is checked out from the archives room, the school has agreed to then put it in the fully accessible fiction stacks, students could be credited for "rescuing" a book from the archives and get to do a little write-up, put it on a bulletin board, etc...as to why they read the book and why it is worthy of "rescue" from the archives.
5. School History connection; have a themed book talk along the lines of, "what was York like in the 1920s?, items from the school archives could be used (show students yearbooks from the 20s, school newspapers, etc...) then tie it in, "what were York students READING in the 20s?"
Non-library professionals making library decisions, at least where I work, is turning much of what makes libraries grand-exposure to ALL literature at ALL times-a thing of the past, but I know I will do everything to stop this from happening! I'll be the nerd, who saves the classics.
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