The Gradeless Classroom: Learning to Ask the Right Questions

I sit down next to David on the couch. It’s reading workshop time, and as usual, he’s staring around the room, over the top of his book, at other students in class, pretty much anywhere else, trying to avoid looking at the page in front of him. He’s reading Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, but he also fidgeted and stared over the top of Snitch by Allison van Diepen, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, The Living by Matt de la Pena, and pretty much every other book I’ve placed in his hands since day one.

We are halfway through the school year, and I have tried a lot of strategies to help him find books he will enjoy. Most of them have failed. We just finished a mid-year reflection and goal-setting assignment, and I need to talk with him about his answers, in particular his answer to the question “What do you do during independent reading time?”

His answer was illuminating: “Wait for it to end.”

Each year it seems that my professional reading life bends toward a particular idea, and this year the one that keeps coming up is the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. I know, I know… this year’s buzzwords. Words used so heavily in PD sessions that they become meaningless, but hear me out. I really think that in this case we are onto something.

What does David’s answer mean?

It means it’s not the book. The book doesn’t matter. His mind is closed to the possibility that the process of reading itself can be enjoyable, so he will not give any book a chance. I’ll admit, this is the first year that I put any real thought into what to do about those students who carry their negative attitudes about reading like a badge of honor. They are the few who still, at the end of the year, have read very little, and even that is begrudged. My own fixed mindset saw these students as an unsolvable problem. I simply accepted that there were some students who just won’t enjoy reading.

I was happy that my reading workshop has been successful with most of my students. Many of them discover the joy in reading for the very first time, and I can usually find books to help my most skeptical readers overcome their doubts.

But every year, there are one or two students that I cannot seem to reach, no matter what book I put in their hands. I think that David’s answer to the question “What do you do during independent reading time?” is key to understanding those students, and why my usual solutions aren’t working for them. I had been trying to solve the problem by assuming I just needed to happen upon the right book. But sometimes that’s not good enough.

Unfortunately, understanding a problem doesn’t make it any easier to find a solution. What do we do for those students whose reading experience has been so overwhelmingly negative that they refuse to give the process a shot, no matter how many great books we put into their hands? How do we overcome the baggage that school has handed to them over the years? How do we change a fixed mindset?

The implications for teachers

I have been guilty of writing these students off because I don’t know what to do to help them. I don’t know how to overcome their mindset. But this year, I decided that I was, in my own way, being just as rigid and fixed as they are. If the methods I usually use to get students past a dislike of reading are not working, even if it’s only with one or two students each year, it’s time for me to find a new method. I cannot let my mindset become fixed either. I refuse to believe that there are students who cannot be reached.

So, I sit down beside him. I know that the way I open this conversation can make or break its success. I have been reading Opening Minds by Peter Johnston, which has made me more aware of the way I approach students and start conversations in the classroom. I have been asking the wrong questions, and I’ve been frustrated with the answers. So I lead with, “Can I ask you a question?” I have to be okay with the answer, even if it’s no. This is about his journey, the baggage he carries with him, and me meeting him where he is. But he says yes, and we start talking about reading. Not his current book, but reading. And I learn.

I learn that David has no positive memories of reading. He does not remember his mom reading to him as a child. He cannot remember hearing stories in elementary school, or having the opportunity to read picture books. Reading is something that has been done to him, not something he has done. The one positive experience he can come up with was from the beginning of this year, when he forgot his book at home and read The Rose That Grew from Concrete, Tupac Shakur’s poetry book.

So I find my “in.” Together, we browse my Amazon account. We start from Tupac’s book, and look at related works. Many of them are nothing he’s interested in, but we find Eminem’s autobiography, The Way I Am. He’s interested, so even though it’s out of stock on Amazon and expensive from third party sellers, I order it anyway. His reading life is worth it to me. I leave our conversation twenty bucks poorer, but when I look back at him from across the room, he’s reading The Crossover. Not fake reading, but real reading.

He finished The Crossover the next day, and when I handed him Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, he took it and immediately started reading. Since then, there have been a few days of fake reading, but not like before our conversation. I know I haven’t made a reader of him (yet), but we’ve made progress, and I learned something along the way. He needed me to know him as a person first, his past experiences with what I am trying to get him to do, and as a reader second. I tend to do the opposite.

Maybe next year, if one of his teachers asks him about positive experiences with reading, he will remember this moment. But we have to care enough to ask. How has this student come through ten years of school without having a single positive experience with reading? This is unacceptable. And why has no one asked him about his reading before now?

The Way I Am just came in the mail yesterday. It’s not my usual kind of book, but I am reading it so we can talk about it. I can’t wait to share it with David, and thank him for helping me to overcome a little of my own fixed mindset. So many problems can be solved with a conversation. Students are waiting for us to approach them, but it can’t always be on our terms. Sometimes we need to stop, rethink what students are telling us with their behaviors, and figure out the right questions to ask.

Are there places where you are exhibiting a fixed mindset? What are some ways you have found to help those students who don’t have a negative attitude about books, but about the process of reading? I’d love to hear from you in the comments, or connect with me on Twitter @Mrs_J_of_EAMS or Facebook @Cristi Lackey Julsrud.