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Voices in Urban Education
Archives
Adolescent Literacy
VUE Number 3, Spring 2004
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
From the Editor –
The Literacy Needs of Adolescents: Going Deeper
By Robert Rothman
Robert Rothman is a Principal Associate & Editor of VUE at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. > Author's biography
While much of the public attention on literacy has focused on teaching early reading, educators increasingly recognize another critical issue that needs to be addressed: the literacy needs of adolescents. As educators know, high school students cannot learn any subject if they are unable to get more than basic information from texts and are unable to convey information skillfully. And students come to many high schools seriously deficient in literacy abilities.
The efforts underway in a number of cities to redesign high schools ought to provide an opportunity for educators and community members to come to grips with adolescent literacy issues. These efforts stem from the recognition that too many children have been ill-served by traditional high school structures and instructional practice. In response, these cities are creating smaller schools (or breaking down large schools into smaller units) in order to establish environments that are more engaging and more conducive to learning.
While most of the large districts that are undertaking these reforms have succeeded in implementing structural changes, they are struggling to make the instructional changes that will improve teaching and learning. And few have succeeded at linking schools with community resources that will enhance their instructional capacity.
As the authors in this volume of Voices in Urban Education make clear, improving adolescent literacy will require major changes in instruction and substantial links to the community. For schools to continue to do the same thing, or even do the same thing a little better, will not work. Too many students will continue to graduate from high school, if they graduate at all, without the literacy skills they will need to succeed as adults.
Mary Neuman and Sanjiv Rao point out that the view of literacy in many high schools is too narrow. First, schools consider literacy – if they consider it at all – as a matter of reading and writing literature, and consider developing literacy the job of English language arts teachers. In fact, though, literacy is much broader; it involves the ability to comprehend texts and other materials in all disciplines. Literacy is an essential learning element in any subject area and should be the responsibility of all teachers. Second, literacy is more than simply decoding texts; it also involves making meaning out of and engaging with texts and being able to document learning in a written, oral, or visual form.
> Excerpt
Carol D. Lee also notes that literacy is rooted in disciplinary knowledge. And she argues that teachers have a responsibility to understand the structure of disciplines and expose them to students. Lee contends that teachers can do so for urban youths by drawing on students' own language forms – including rap lyrics and unconventional texts – as the foundation for disciplinary knowledge.
> Excerpt
Donna Alvermann argues that, for many adolescents, there is a disconnect between in-school reading and out-of-school reading, and that this gap – which she refers to as aliteracy – poses a significant challenge for schools. Many youths, Alvermann notes, are quite capable of reading, and do so frequently and with enthusiasm outside of school – reading computer and video-game manuals, restaurant menus, and other materials with evident skill. Yet these same youths exhibit poor reading skills and resist reading in the classroom. Why? They do not consider what they do outside of school "reading," because "reading" is what one does in school. And school reading, as it is taught and assigned to them, is completely unengaging to many youths. Only by making classroom texts more engaging, and by drawing on their ability to understand narratives – an ability they exhibit every day outside of school – can teachers turn "aliterate" young people into literate adults.
> Excerpt
The role of out-of-school agencies is a particularly critical one. As Glynda Hull and Jessica Zacher suggest, after-school programs have flexibility schools may not have, particularly now that schools face enormous pressure to raise scores on standardized tests, to engage students in exploring a broad form of literacy. Hull and Zacher describe a program in which students use multimedia approaches to learn new forms of communication. Graphic and visual images, in addition to text, are forms of literacy that young people in 2004 are immersed in, yet they are forms that schools seldom consider.
> Complete article
Significantly, the program that Hull and Zacher describe is not separate from school; it is connected to school in important ways. It is also connected to the community. Referring to one student's project, a digital poem, the authors write:
This seamless web of schools, community agencies, and families, while rare, represents an emerging trend in education. In Oakland (the site of the program Hull and Zacher describe), New York City, Los Angeles, and other cities, schools and community groups are teaming up to create what some are calling "local education support networks," or LESNs. These networks aim to combine the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit of charter schools with the necessary support that a larger organization can provide. This support includes resources from the community.
Are LESNs, with their potential for linking in-school and out-of-school literacy, a viable strategy for helping adolescents develop the ability to read and write well? What needs to happen to ensure that they succeed? Are high schools organized to teach literacy, broadly conceived? Are teachers sufficiently capable to employ the cultural modeling approach Lee describes? Would such an approach work in a culturally diverse classroom? Will the approaches Alvermann discusses be engaging enough to draw the interest of youths when the texts used are less directly relevant to their lives? And how much can after-school programs take on, particularly when their budgets are stretched and they face the same pressures schools face to show improvements on conventional measures of achievement?
Archives
Adolescent Literacy
VUE Number 3, Spring 2004
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
From the Editor –
The Literacy Needs of Adolescents: Going Deeper
By Robert Rothman
Robert Rothman is a Principal Associate & Editor of VUE at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. > Author's biography
While much of the public attention on literacy has focused on teaching early reading, educators increasingly recognize another critical issue that needs to be addressed: the literacy needs of adolescents. As educators know, high school students cannot learn any subject if they are unable to get more than basic information from texts and are unable to convey information skillfully. And students come to many high schools seriously deficient in literacy abilities.
The efforts underway in a number of cities to redesign high schools ought to provide an opportunity for educators and community members to come to grips with adolescent literacy issues. These efforts stem from the recognition that too many children have been ill-served by traditional high school structures and instructional practice. In response, these cities are creating smaller schools (or breaking down large schools into smaller units) in order to establish environments that are more engaging and more conducive to learning.
While most of the large districts that are undertaking these reforms have succeeded in implementing structural changes, they are struggling to make the instructional changes that will improve teaching and learning. And few have succeeded at linking schools with community resources that will enhance their instructional capacity.
As the authors in this volume of Voices in Urban Education make clear, improving adolescent literacy will require major changes in instruction and substantial links to the community. For schools to continue to do the same thing, or even do the same thing a little better, will not work. Too many students will continue to graduate from high school, if they graduate at all, without the literacy skills they will need to succeed as adults.
Mary Neuman and Sanjiv Rao point out that the view of literacy in many high schools is too narrow. First, schools consider literacy – if they consider it at all – as a matter of reading and writing literature, and consider developing literacy the job of English language arts teachers. In fact, though, literacy is much broader; it involves the ability to comprehend texts and other materials in all disciplines. Literacy is an essential learning element in any subject area and should be the responsibility of all teachers. Second, literacy is more than simply decoding texts; it also involves making meaning out of and engaging with texts and being able to document learning in a written, oral, or visual form.
> Excerpt
Carol D. Lee also notes that literacy is rooted in disciplinary knowledge. And she argues that teachers have a responsibility to understand the structure of disciplines and expose them to students. Lee contends that teachers can do so for urban youths by drawing on students' own language forms – including rap lyrics and unconventional texts – as the foundation for disciplinary knowledge.
> Excerpt
Donna Alvermann argues that, for many adolescents, there is a disconnect between in-school reading and out-of-school reading, and that this gap – which she refers to as aliteracy – poses a significant challenge for schools. Many youths, Alvermann notes, are quite capable of reading, and do so frequently and with enthusiasm outside of school – reading computer and video-game manuals, restaurant menus, and other materials with evident skill. Yet these same youths exhibit poor reading skills and resist reading in the classroom. Why? They do not consider what they do outside of school "reading," because "reading" is what one does in school. And school reading, as it is taught and assigned to them, is completely unengaging to many youths. Only by making classroom texts more engaging, and by drawing on their ability to understand narratives – an ability they exhibit every day outside of school – can teachers turn "aliterate" young people into literate adults.
> Excerpt
The role of out-of-school agencies is a particularly critical one. As Glynda Hull and Jessica Zacher suggest, after-school programs have flexibility schools may not have, particularly now that schools face enormous pressure to raise scores on standardized tests, to engage students in exploring a broad form of literacy. Hull and Zacher describe a program in which students use multimedia approaches to learn new forms of communication. Graphic and visual images, in addition to text, are forms of literacy that young people in 2004 are immersed in, yet they are forms that schools seldom consider.
> Complete article
Significantly, the program that Hull and Zacher describe is not separate from school; it is connected to school in important ways. It is also connected to the community. Referring to one student's project, a digital poem, the authors write:
The idea for the poem originated in an art class at school, where, in the wake of 9/11 and the most recent Iraq war, Asia created a collage. This artwork became the second image of Asia's digital poem. In writing her poem she consciously drew on literary techniques that she had learned in school, including the use of alliteration and the repetition of words and ideas. She also relied on her knowledge of and concerns about her own community . . . as she developed her themes and selected her images. At [the after-school program] she acquired expertise in multimedia composing, and she found a social space that allowed her to bring her own interests center stage. Sharing her poem included taking it back to school, as well as sharing it among friends and family.
This seamless web of schools, community agencies, and families, while rare, represents an emerging trend in education. In Oakland (the site of the program Hull and Zacher describe), New York City, Los Angeles, and other cities, schools and community groups are teaming up to create what some are calling "local education support networks," or LESNs. These networks aim to combine the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit of charter schools with the necessary support that a larger organization can provide. This support includes resources from the community.
Are LESNs, with their potential for linking in-school and out-of-school literacy, a viable strategy for helping adolescents develop the ability to read and write well? What needs to happen to ensure that they succeed? Are high schools organized to teach literacy, broadly conceived? Are teachers sufficiently capable to employ the cultural modeling approach Lee describes? Would such an approach work in a culturally diverse classroom? Will the approaches Alvermann discusses be engaging enough to draw the interest of youths when the texts used are less directly relevant to their lives? And how much can after-school programs take on, particularly when their budgets are stretched and they face the same pressures schools face to show improvements on conventional measures of achievement?
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