I never was a big believer when, as a Science teacher, I was told, “We are all
Reading Teachers” or the little more tolerable “We are all teachers of reading”. My response was typically, “No we are not and I don’t want my students writing like they are in English class either.” I know that sounds “grumpy”, but I would suspect that any ELA teacher would point out the importance of considering audience and purpose when writing. That being the case, the audience and purpose in Science is very different than in an ELA class, a Social Studies class, Math class, or any other class for that matter. In a Science class, I wanted the students to “cut out the fluff” and write about the facts, be precise in their writing, and reference the data to support their findings when writing. Similarly, when reading a Science text, article, research, etc. I wanted the students to not worry about what the author thought, in fact I didn’t really care about the author, and instead wanted the students to focus on what was stated and if the data in the graphs, charts, data tables, diagrams, etc. supported what was in the text. Confident in my own opinion, I down played this idea of “being a teacher of reading”, but I am now wondering if I couldn’t see the forest because of all the trees.
Now that I have taken the time to reflect on the statement “teacher of reading” I am
allowing myself to take a broader perspective. However, my disclaimer is that I still don’t believe “reading” is the appropriate term, but instead would suggest “literacy”. That is to say, if you asked me, as a science teacher, do I try to help my students read and write (literacy) as a scientist would read and write? My answer would be, "absolutely". So, semantics is going to be my excuse for not getting on board earlier and how I will justify my own shortsightedness. That’s my story and I am sticking to it. Of course, that thought is mostly expressed with “tongue in cheek” to salvage my own pride, but I do think that having the discussion on the difference between what Tim Shanahan would call “disciplinary literacy” and “content area literacy” would be a valuable PLC topic for every subject area.
How does literacy (reading & writing) in your content area look? I already mentioned
how I thought it should look in a science classroom. I suspect social studies teachers will want their students to be able to read and write more like historians by considering the author, the time period in which it was written, and the most probable intent of the author. These, by the way do align with several “signs and signposts” in Kylene Beers & Robert Probst book titled “Reading Nonfiction: Notice & Note” (see Using Signposts As Life Preservers Across the Curriculum for more thoughts on this). I also would wager that, like a science teacher, math teachers don’t spend much time worrying about the author of a text, but will have even higher expectations of the precision of the writing and exam the text with a critical eye when reading. These are all suppositions on my part, which is why it is important teachers have these conversations with other teaches in their subject area (PLC). The point here is that the conversations about “disciplinary literacy” will be different than “content area literacy”. Content area literacy, MAX teaching is an example, has its place because it incorporates key ELA skills into your content. However, it is not going to get content area teachers on board to the importance of literacy as much as conversations about how to nurture the skills for our young people to be Scientist, Historians, and Mathematicians (...and Artists, Businessmen, Linguists, etc. etc. etc.) that is to say the conversations centered around disciplinary literacy. So, again, I encourage all of us (in grades 4-12) to consider those conversations.
The reason why I say grades 4-12 is because it is the “reading to learn” time period our students travel through while in school. That is to say, I understand the importance of focusing on “learning to read” (and write) in PreK-3 in order for students to develop the skills that allow them to access the aforementioned disciplinary literacy. In fact, I am not shy about saying that, “I have drank the Kool-Aid” when it comes to reading and writing. I get that if we want our kids to be better readers (PreK-12) we have to get them reading more and if we want them to be better writers they have to write more. That means in all of our classrooms. Frederick Douglass has been quoted, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” I would humbly add that the addition of writing not only makes you free, but helps contribute to a culture in which all can be free as we learn from each other. It is a pretty hard to argue against “being a teacher of literacy in your content area” when you think about it in that light.
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