Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative PART 1

This past week I started reading Everyday Advocacy: Teachers Who Change the Literacy Narrative (2020) by Cathy Fleischer and Antero Garcia. This is a very fast read that encourages you to keep paper by your book with exercises and thinking to complete as you read. I would like to do this work, here with you all as part of this blog for two reasons. One, I feel that the publication of my thinking breathes it into the universe and simultaneously holds me more accountable. Two, I feel that this work will be part of my dissertation at some point, and working through it in a more formal way than scribblings in a notebook can only help my thinking and writing work later.

Fleischer and Garcia (2020) open up with three "core ideas" in the first chapter:

• The Importance of Story
• Story of Self
• Story of Us
• Story of Now
• The Importance of Identifying and Framing an Issue
• The Importance of Grass-roots and Situational Approaches to Change

Their ideas about starting with stories begin with Ganz (2011) and are related to dominant narratives told by everyone other than teachers about teachers and teaching. The authors ask, "What would happen, however, if another story of education contributed to the public narrative—the actual story of teachers told by teachers themselves?" (Fleischer and Garcia, 2020, p.13). They invite teachers to grab power with writing these stories for themselves and in the process of doing so, create a "new public narrative" (p.15). 

Write for a few minutes about an individual story of teaching, one that reflects a successful teaching moment. After you write, look back at the story and think about two sets of questions:

1. What made it successful? Were there challenges involved in reaching that success? What are the values that underlie the success of that moment?
2. How does that moment compare to the current narrative on public education? Does it rely on the same values that underlie the narrative? If not, what’s different?

I've never done book groups. It has been a goal of mine in the classroom for the past half-decade, yet I never tried to do them. I'm not really sure why - I think it was fear, mostly, that prevented me from trying. Ironically, this did not stop me from building a ridiculous classroom library. At the start of the year, I had nearly 1000 YAL books on over five shelves that surrounded the perimeter of the classroom. Wire displays neatly housed the most popular, or books that I was trying to get into the hands of students ASAP. Book talks were a regular part of the week, and I had hundreds of books checked out last year alone. But...our classes had never experienced book groups.

Grants, Donor's Choose, and Angie Thomas herself helped build the library in our classroom too. Thomas sent me a class set of On the Come Up (2019) and The Hate U Give (2017) during the pandemic. I added about ten copies of Concrete Rose (2021), and these are the texts we started the year within our book groups. Across 4 classes of Tenth Grade Language Arts, students read a Thomas novel (of their choice) for twenty minutes at the start of class for the first month. Without help - this library would not have happened.

At the end of the reading cycle, I did a survey of students to gauge their feelings and to create an opportunity to reflect. Over 20% of my students said that they had never read a book like this, that they learned that they could enjoy reading, or that were surprised at how much they liked it. Several reported that it was the first time they had ever felt that they could relate to the characters in the novel, and one said that it was the first time they read a book with a main character that was like them. Their responses were heartbreakingly wonderful. Many reported that they could tell that they were becoming better, stronger readers, that they enjoyed the collaboration with other students with their books, and that they looked forward to reading time every day.

Kylene Beers has published a great deal on young adult literacy. She has said that the only way for a child to get better at reading is to read books.

This seems like such a banal answer to all of the "problems with education" that are discussed - but I truly believe that this is it. It really is this simple: give students books to read that they want to read, and then time to do it. In a culture that is at odds with teachers, where politicians and corporations think that they know what is best for our students when the current narrative is that teachers do not know what is going on in classrooms, my students would like to say otherwise. My students said that one of the best parts of what we did every day was that the reading was not tied to reading logs, worksheets, or activities that would take away from them focusing on the characters, their stories, and the moment and act of just reading. We did work after we read, which often involved the pages they had just read - but not while we read. That time was sacred.

This is at odds with the current narrative around teachers, reading, books, and scripted curriculum. As I am typing this, questions are bubbling up.

1) How do we get libraries like this for every teacher?

2) How do teachers learn how to have successful reading programs in their classrooms?

3) How can we help students access more stories that reflect their realities, identities, and perspectives?

4) How do we create space in our schools for students to read?

These are not new questions or new challenges. I know that much of Penny Kittle's career has focused on these issues with amazing books like 180 Days (2018) that she co-wrote with Kelly Gallagher, and Book Love (2013), one of the most foundational texts advocating for students to enjoy and grow from their classroom reading experiences. I think that is what makes questions like the ones above seem so daunting and impossible. If these challenges haven't been solved yet, what makes me think that I can chip at them? If those great minds couldn't come up with the answers, then how can I?

Fleischer, C., & Garcia, A. (2021). Everyday advocacy: teachers who change the literacy narrative (First edition. ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. 

Ganz, M. (2011). Public narrative, collective action, and power. In Odugbemi, S. & Lee, T. (Eds.), Accountability through public opinion: From inertia to public action (pp. 273–289). Washington DC: The World.

Gallagher, K., & Kittle, P. (2018). 180 days: two teachers and the quest to engage and empower adolescents. Heinemann.

Kittle, P. (2013). Book love: developing depth, stamina, and passion in adolescent readers. Heinemann.  

Thomas, A. (2017). The hate u give (First edition. ed.). Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Thomas, A. (2019). On the come up (First edition. ed.). Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 

Thomas, A. (2021). Concrete Rose (Large print. ed.). Thorndike Press.