Reading Across Cultures

Hands are waving in the air. Some of them are holding books. At the end of our independent reading time, I’ve asked 6th and 7th graders to get out their world map and consider what countries they are learning about or have learned about by reading books set there.

I see books from Korea (When My Name Was Keoko), Pakistan (Amal Unbound), and Japan (The Last Cherry Blossom).

“What about that book we read last year—A Long Walk to Water?” a 7th grader volunteers.

“Oh! I read one about a refugee, too!” a 6th grader chimes in.

I know the one he’s talking about: “Right—you read When Stars Are Scattered.” I draw in a couple of the 7th graders who read it last year. “The author is from Somalia,” I trace the outline on the world map projected on the whiteboard, “and spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya.” More tracing.

“And then he went to America!” a student adds.

Students bend over their maps to add countries. We’d started by locating the countries we’d read pieces from: India and Indonesia. Then we added the places class members had lived: Japan (where our school is located), the US, Peru, Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the UK, and Austria.

One of our school goals is for students to collaborate with people from different cultures. As an international school, we contain a variety of cultures already. As a Christian school, we believe that all of those cultures display the diversity of ways that people, God’s image bearers and our neighbors who we are to love, have developed the potentials of creation. My hope is that students will use their learning to be part of restoring the flourishing shalom that is God’s goal for creation. One important way my English class does this is through the books I engage students in reading. I can’t take students to Pakistan, Vietnam, South Korea, South Sudan. But I can provide novels that will take them there.

This past week, I read the newspaper headline, “Survey shows only 17% in South Korea and 20% in Japan like each other” (The Japan Times, 26 May 2021). I’m guessing Jesus as well as the Samaritan in his parable about neighbor love and God’s requirements would be in that 17 or 20%. How can I help my students join them there? In part, by the books we read.  

Learning Language Alongside My Students

When is reading with students NOT actually reading with students? I found out this month.

One of the biggest indicators for whether a silent sustained reading program will be effective is whether the teacher also reads. It sets an example and confirms that this is indeed a valuable activity. So I’ve always read with my English language arts (ELA) classes. I love to read. Why wouldn’t I grab every minute I can?

So this year when I expanded the experiment to my English as a foreign language (EFL) class, I continued to set the example of reading English books. The students were compliant. There were even two students who were already reading English books on their own. Still, there wasn’t the same total buy-in I’d gotten in my ELA class, with every student buried in their book before the period started, groans of disappointment when my phone alarm signaled the 10 minutes of reading were over, some students asking for a new book every few days. In fact, in the EFL class, I could detect a distinct restless at about 7 minutes, and two weeks into the year, only one student had finished a book. What’s more, the vocabulary words some were picking seemed to be the most obscure they could find rather than the most helpful. 

Finally it dawned on me that to truly understand what my students were experiencing, to demonstrate my value for what I was asking them to do, and to discover how to practice it most effectively, I couldn’t be reading an English book like they were. I’d have to be reading a book in my second language—Japanese. So a couple of weeks ago I announced that’s what I’d be doing, and I showed up to the next class with an elementary level Japanese book about Jean-Henri Fabre, the father of entomology. I committed to reading an additional 10 minutes per night. And I even did the vocabulary record—4 words per week. 

Here are a few of my discoveries:

1. I started getting restless at the 7-minute mark, too! Reading is a completely different experience when you're decoding language.
2. It’s really hard to write a definition of a foreign word in the foreign language. A translated definition is not cheating—it’s enlightening. Inferring from context only works up to a certain point of understanding.
3. Google Translate is my friend—not for writing, but definitely for reading. Once I’ve entered an opaque phrase in it, suddenly everything makes sense. Being on the computer is not avoiding reading--it may be trying to get back into it 
4. Re-reading is also my friend. The first time through a page is pretty confusing and slow. I’d of course re-read the page after I’d struggled through it the first time. But I was really excited to finish the book and go back and read it again—straight through, understanding the whole thing.
5. A pattern of words emerges in a book, given the topic. Words I came across repeatedly in this one: observe, research, specimen. My favorite phrase: “observe on hands and knees.” Fabre was a real field-research type of scientist.
6. Flow can still happen. Just because I don't get into the flow of unselfconscious reading the same way doesn't mean that puzzle-solving doesn't have its own flow state. Sometimes now the 10-minute timer startles me out of it.

Well, that’s my own bit of field research for this year. As I said in the essay on why and how to learn another language that I wrote alongside my students: 

One of the ways I will work to become a successful language learner is to persevere. I will persevere by reading a Japanese book at least 10 minutes a night at least 5 times a week. Sometimes I feel like I have lived here too long, I will never get any better. Or I feel like I am too busy to study. However, this is not a good attitude for a student, so it is not a good attitude for a teacher. I want to continue to learn Japanese, to set an example of learning for my students, and to understand what it is like for them. 

I wonder how much my Japanese will improve this year? I wonder what else I’ll learn about language learning?

Connecting Independent Reading and Classroom Instruction

I love the first 10 minutes of 6th and 7th grade ELA period. Students are generally in their seats and reading their independent books well before the period starts. I also love our tiny classroom library in the corner where students hunt for a new book and make recommendations to each other. And I love when independent reading and classroom instruction meet for double the learning impact. Here are some of those moments from this week.

Students were taking notes on literary terms—specifically, conflict. I told them that the problem can be between people, like in the short story we had just read. “But what if there’s only one person in the story?” I asked. “Like Hatchet—who has read Hatchet?” A couple of hands went up, with a murmur of excitement. “In that book, a boy has to survive on his own in the Canadian wilderness.” 

One student’s eyes grew big: “Woah! That sounds cool! Do you have that book?” 

Another student pointed to the bookshelf in the corner: “The green one down there.” 

I retrieved it, deposited it on the desk of the student who received it eagerly, and returned to the person vs. nature conflict discussion. I’m excited that I’m becoming familiar enough with middle school books that I can make those connections, and I love having a classroom library on hand to get books in hands on the spot. 

A different day, when the 10-minute timer went off, I announced, “Before you put your book away, I want you to look through it and see if you can find a sentence that doesn’t start with a capital letter.” (Since Japanese doesn’t have the equivalent of upper and lower case letters, it’s really hard for students to think they’re that big of a deal.) A few students—mostly the native English speakers—just stared at me like I was crazy. The rest of them started searching their books. Gradually it dawned on them. Maybe in their independent reading now they will have a little more of a writer’s eye for capital letters and their significance.

On yet another day, part way through our initial 10 minutes of independent reading, a 6th grader raised his hand. “Mrs. Essenburg,” he whispered, “I found two of our vocabulary words on this one page!” At the end of the 10 minutes, another 6th grader raised his hand and said, “I found two vocabulary words, too!” We are learning to pay attention to the powerful word choices that writers make, and along the was we realize how what’s on the quiz intersects with the larger world.

I’m only in my second year of devoting classroom time to independent reading, but I’m so pleased by the results. Students are reading, and instances of connection between the independent reading and classroom instruction turbo-charge learning. Sometimes those moments happen serendipitously, and sometimes I plan for them. I want to plan even more—which also tends to increase the rate of serendipity.

What do you do to connect independent reading with classroom instruction?

Talking about Books

This Thursday, I had so many book conversations that my little literary heart just overflowed!  (Full disclosure: It helped that we were coming off a five-day break including the weekend.)

It started before school, the minute I walked into the office I share with 6 other teachers. A colleague greeted me, “That new e-library is really great! I checked out Death on the Nile and read 40% of it over vacation!

As 6th and 7th grade English language arts students flowed into the classroom before first period and settled into their 10 minutes of independent reading, here are the conversations I had:

Student returning Front Desk: I loved Mia! She’s a Chinese immigrant to the US, and she has some really big struggles, but she just never gives up.

Student returning When My Name Was Keoko: This was really good but really sad. The characters in the book are like me and my Korean friend: I’m teaching her Japanese and she’s teaching me Korean. 

Me: It was a very sad time in history, and I think it’s really important to know what happened so we can work to not have it happen again—working to understand each other, like you and your friend. 

Student: (Solemn nod)

Student returning Eragon: I finished this… 

Me: Would you like the next book in the series. 

Student: (Visibly perking up) There’s another?!

Student surveying Percy Jackson 2-5 on my shelf: Do you have the first one? 

Me: I had it at the beginning of the term—I’m not sure who has it right now. You’re interested in fantasy? (nod) You could give this one a try. (Handing him The Ranger’s Apprentice) 

Student: (Eyes light up) This looks good!

Student scanning classroom library: I left my book at home. 

Me: So you like fantasy? 

Student: I like all books. 

Me: (Handing him Ender’s Game) Here’s one that I love. And if you like it, there’s a bunch of related series. (He’s already immersed as he wanders back to his seat.)

After my last period of the day, a middle school EFL class, I returned to my office and shared with another colleague how I’d just started reading a Japanese book during the reading time that my Japanese students were reading English books. He said, “That’s a great idea. Only I’m just about to start an 800-page biography….” “Really? What’s the biography?” “Alexander Hamilton.” A fellow fan discovered and fan-like conversation ensued. Plus I was able to offer him my copy of Hamilton: The Revolution—the full libretto annotated by Lin Manuel-Miranda and interspersed with articles about various aspects of the development of the show. 

When I got home, I connected on Skype with an old friend who greeted me, “That book you recommended last time we talked—Everything Sad Is Untrue—I’m only about a quarter of the way through, but I’m loving it!”

After that conversation, I put Hamilton: The Revolution in my backpack so I wouldn’t forget to bring it to him the next day. Then I got it back out and re-read the first 30 pages. I'd forgotten just how great it was.

The best way I've found to teach a love of reading is to love reading. And talk about it. It's contagious. And fun.