Subjects Matter- "Reading for Real"

Okay! Anyone that knows me, knows that I love to read and that I am a quick reader. I am a huge fan of YA literature, and basically the whole contemporary realism genre. Although I LOVE to read the book has to interest me otherwise I will spend weeks trying to get through a novel. I also have a really hard time with textbooks because they are usually written in a dry, dull tone that I have struggled with for years. I researched every book that was on the book list for this class and after reading all of the reviews on Google/Amazon I decided on, Subjects Matter, by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman. The reviews for the book all said the same thing, the book is humorous, practical, and for those that hate textbook teaching styles; after I read the reviews for this book I knew it was the perfect fit for me. After reading the first chapter I must say I am very happy with my choice. 

http://www.amazon.com/Subjects-Matter-Teachers-Content-Area-Reading/dp/0325005958/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214315124&sr=1-17

Daniels and Zemelman do an excellent job of providing real life examples to support their teaching claims. Both authors helped design a school in Chicago named, Best Practice High School, and the lessons explained in the first chapter came from lesson plans used in the school. Daniels and Zemelman explore the differences in learning to read and reading to learn. The first section focused on a fast food project that the school implemented; the students read the novel Fast Food Nation, but the instructional process did not stop there in Biology students were expected to read specific chapters on digestion, bacteria, and nutrition, the students also read magazine articles that discussed lawsuits on food chains, obesity, animal cruelty, and the students were encouraged to do their own research relating to these topics and bring the articles to class. The teachers focused the students as they read on reading strategies like "visualize ideas and situations in the text, make connections, draw inferences, notice and analyze the authors craft" but once the students began to not only understand the subject, but get passionate about it the projects became more complicated. Students went to McDonald's and handed out flyers about the unhealthy food people were eating, wrote letters to government officials asking for cleaner sanitation in slaughterhouses, interviewed fast food workers, kept health diaries, illustrated picture books that made direct statements against the food industry and even made lifestyle changes like becoming vegetarians. The students read and as they did they learned about the food industry and used their own research to make an educated statement about that industry, this is a perfect example of reading to learn. "Like other lessons at Best Practice High School, the fast food project was built on the assumption that teenagers should not be 'getting ready' to be lifelong learners-but should be acting like them right now." The students at BPHS learned about a serious issue from a variety of sources, not just English class, and this reinforcement helped the students learn from their reading. However, learning to read did take place when the teachers helped the students analyze author strategies and make connections from their reading. I personally believe that a student can not read to learn if they do not already know how to learn to read and this was clearly described in Daniels and Zemelman's lesson review.

The second half of the first chapter focused on the difficulty we as teachers have in getting students to read. The authors played out the all to recognizable story of assigning reading homework, warning of a pop quiz and when distributing the pop quiz getting less then pleasing results. The book discusses the frustration we as teachers feel when students don't do the reading. "He wants to awaken in young people a sense of complexity of life." Teachers don't want students to just be prepared for tests, but to get as excited about the subject as they are. "We didn't sign up for this occupation, go to school for four or five years, get ourselves certified, and agree to this pitiful pay scale, just to push some state assessment up half a percent." It is not wrong for teachers to feel passionate about a subject and want students to feel that same passion, but they need to understand that students are all going through different challenges either developmental, personal, or past experience will hinder their excitement and that is okay too. Being a teacher is a challenge, but a rewarding one.

So far I am enjoying my journey with this book, until next time....