Reconfiguring the Reading Experience: Using Pop& ...

UNLOCKING LITERACY LEARNING Evan Ortlieb & Yolanda Majors | Editors

Reconfiguring the Reading Experience: Using Pop-Culture Texts to Shift Reading Narratives Leigh A. Hall In this column, I highlight the reading narratives of three 8th-grade students who were defined as struggling readers by themselves, their teachers, and their peers. I met and worked with these students over a period of one academic year in Ms. Winters’ English language arts classroom. Additionally, I collaborated with Ms. Winters on designing lessons that would create positive reading experiences for all students. In the following sections, I share an example of a lesson that Ms. Winters constructed that she hoped would help these students reconstruct their reading narratives in more positive ways, along with each student’s response. The example will highlight how teachers can configure reading experiences in ways that support the development of struggling readers.

I just want to enjoy what we read in class, slow down, and get into it. (Louis, an eighth-g rade student; all names are pseudonyms)

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rom the moment they enter school, students have a wide array of experiences with reading. Ideally, these experiences are constructed and organized in such a way that they build on and extend their learning (Dewey, 1938). Reading experiences should foster growth in ways that students see value in reading, and should support them in ways that allow them to evolve into the kinds of readers they want to be (Skerrett, 2012). Students’ experiences with reading are not simply situated inside learning and enacting a specific set of skills. Rather, they are situated inside the social and cultural contexts of classrooms, which include their histories in school and with teachers, texts, reading instruction, and their classmates. Not only do their experiences shape them into particular kinds of readers, but collectively their experiences also form a narrative about their lives as readers and contribute to a narrative that is constructed by and about them (Hall, 2012; Holland & Lave, 2001). For students who have regular academic reading difficulties, typically referred to as struggling readers, the narrative that their experiences tell is often one of failure and inability to succeed in school (Hall, 2016). From the moment these students enter school each day, they may be hit with a set of experiences that continually tell a negative, and often inaccurate, story about who they are, what they can do, and what they value. In working with such students, I have found that they are generally unhappy about their narratives as readers in school and tend to disagree with the story that is told. They would like others to know that these narratives are limited, and they would like their reading experiences to change in such a way that new narratives can be constructed both by and about them.

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The Narratives Louis, Miguel, and Kayla held similar narratives about their histories with reading in school. When I spoke with them, each began the tale by returning to their elementary school days and citing examples that, to them, provided an early indicator that reading in school was going to be an unpleasant experience. For example, when Louis told me his history of reading in school, he began by starting with the second grade: “That’s when I knew it was hard for me [to read], when I first remember not being able to do it like everyone else.” Louis explained that his teachers wanted him “to read everything quickly.” However, he wanted to move at a slower pace and have time to think about what he read: “It’s always ‘Read this and answer the questions’…, and then you move on to reading the next thing LEIGH A. HALL is an associate professor of literacy studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; e-mail [email protected].

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UNLOCKING LITERACY LEARNING

and more questions….We move too fast…, and I never get it.” Miguel and Kayla also cited similar examples of realizing early on that reading was difficult for them and that they were unable to do things at the same speed as most of their peers. These early examples were not isolated incidents. As Kayla noted, “This is just the way it’s always been. Reading is hard, it’s always been hard, and I’ve always failed.” However, the school-b ased examples that they discussed were only a piece of their reading narratives. Each student had a love of reading, read outside of school, wanted to improve their abilities to read in school, and wanted their teachers and classmates to see them as more than, as Miguel explained, “someone who never seems to know what’s going on.”

■ What is the focus memory in the Dahl text?

Constructing Experiences That Support Change

After students had explored the questions with a partner, Ms. Winters had them discuss their understandings of the Dahl text as a whole class. She told me her intention for doing this:

■ D o all the details included in the memoir support and directly relate to the focus memory? ■ L ocate three details that you think are very important to developing the memoir. ■ L ook at the introduction of the memoir you just read. How does the author hook the reader’s attention? ■ I dentify at least four places where the writer used techniques to catch and hold the reader’s attention, including sensory language, imagery, dialogue, descriptive details, and figurative language. ■ W rite down the examples you selected. Label them and explain how they work together to help make the piece interesting.

Inside Ms. Winters’ English classroom, we chose to create reading experiences that centered on using pop-c ulture texts to help students learn the curriculum. Pop-c ulture texts are often mass-produced, mainstream texts that encompass both print and nonprint formats, including film, television, music, and video games, as well as fiction and nonfiction books (Goble & Goble, 2016). Ms. Winters shared with me that she believed she could get more of her students interested in reading and discussing books if she could find a way to connect them to the students’ interests outside of school. I suggested that we could use pop-c ulture texts in ways that would help students explore and extend on the ideas presented in the academic texts.

I want them to take apart the piece and examine it, really dig into the writing. You can’t write a good memoir unless you’ve had time to read some and then think about how they are constructed. I want them to pick up some tools and techniques they can use in their own writing.

Memoir as Poem: “I Can’t Read” Next, Ms. Winters introduced a video of a spoken-word poem by Lamont Carey (2007) entitled “I Can’t Read.” Carey is an internationally known African American spoken-word artist. His performance that Ms. Winters had selected had been featured in an episode of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. The video shared Lamont’s experiences of getting injured in a basketball game as a teenager, learning he would never be able to become a professional athlete, and grappling with what to do because he had never learned to read or write. Ms. Winters introduced the video to the class and explained,

Reconfiguring the Reading Experience: An Example Ms. Winters began her foray into using pop-c ulture texts w ith her memoir w riting assignment. The assignment required students to identify a specific, distinct memory from their lives and develop it into nonfiction narrative. To foster students’ understandings about memoirs, she first had them read, analyze, and discuss an excerpt from Roald Dahl’s (2009) Boy: Tales of Childhood, within which he tells of getting his tonsils removed. This activity was intended to help students learn techniques for constructing their own memoirs. As they read, Ms. Winters asked students to work with a partner and consider the following:


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Memoirs are about thoughts and feelings and experiences. Poetry is a different form for expressing a memoir. This poet is telling us a story. We will watch this three times. For the first time, just watch it and see what you think.

After the first viewing, Miguel noted, “I didn’t like it. I don’t like rap.” Louis nodded and responded, “I don’t like rap either, but I liked the story he told.” Kayla, who had called out, “That was neat,” when the video ended, added to what Miguel and Louis had said: “For people who didn’t like the rap part, Def Jam is

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Carey’s performance. Although Ms. Winters had told me that she did not “see Dahl’s chapter as a pop-culture text,” he was a pop-culture figure, and the students recognized him as such. Louis explained, “I have seen all his [Dahl’s] movies [about his texts] and read some of the books. It was interesting to read about his life.” Kayla, who had been the most vocal participant during the discussions surrounding Carey, told me that she learned a lot from both experiences:

a record company, and it’s based on hip-hip. So, maybe you don’t like rap, but look at what he’s saying.” The second time students watched the video, Ms. Winters gave small groups a specific task. “We’re going to listen to it again and evaluate it as a memoir,” she explained. “Ultimately, he’s recalling and communicating an experience, just like Roald Dahl did in his chapter.” Kayla’s group was asked to consider what Carey did to draw viewers into his story. Miguel’s group was assigned the task of identifying the details that Carey used to convey his message. Finally, Louis’s group was asked to examine the “so what” aspect of the story, or why viewers should care about what Carey was saying. During the follow-up discussion, Louis and Miguel remained quiet. Kayla, however, shared her thoughts on how Carey drew viewers into his story:

It’s interesting because you can see how what we are learning about writing memoirs appeared in both. They both gave me some ideas about how to do my assignment, especially around tone. And I might see if, after I write my memoir, about turning it into a poem. It would be cool to see if I could make it into a shorter piece that could be performed.

His style, the way that he dressed, I think that was important ’cause he was on national TV and he came in with just a T-shirt. Like he wasn’t going to change for anybody, and he changed his voice, too, as he went. At the end, he sounded real serious. I would like to see another one so I can see how someone else does it.

For the third viewing, Ms. Winters asked students to focus on how Carey delivered his message. She asked them to “look at his delivery style and tease out some of the decisions he made in his delivery.” When the video was over, she asked students to consider the tone that Carey used: “Do you really think he was trying to rap?” Kayla immediately addressed Ms. Winters’ question: “I don’t think he was trying to rap, to be honest. Usually when you rap—usually, not all the time—you rhyme. He was using different voices [tone], and there wasn’t a lot of rhyme in there.” At the end of the discussion, Ms. Winters’ explained, We watched this so you could see a different way of delivering a memoir. It doesn’t always have to be written like this [holds up Dahl text]. He does it with clothing, voice—there are things that hook you in. We know the details. We know his feelings.

As the class ended, Ms. Winters reminded students to continue thinking about the memory they wanted to focus on for their own memoirs. She asked them to come to class the next day with three to five memoir ideas that they could examine and discuss as possibilities.

Students Respond to the Experiences Louis, Miguel, and Kayla each explained to me that they generally enjoyed reading the Dahl text and watching


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Although Louis and Miguel had remained relatively quiet during the Carey discussions and expressed that they did not like his style, they also shared that they were able to learn from it. Miguel told me, “It wasn’t for me. It’s not my thing, but it did help me think about how I might talk about some of the difficulties I’ve had in school, when I write my paper.” Louis shared how the video allowed him to learn more about how Dahl structured his memoir: Watching the video helped me with the chapter [Dahl] because I went back and reread it after and could see some of the things we talked about in class. Like, I could find the details he used to talk about when he got his tonsils out, and I think that will help me when I write.

Shifting the Experience and Changing the Narrative The experience with using Carey’s performance as a way to understand how to read and write memoirs created a new pathway for struggling readers to engage with reading and writing. Analyzing a video provided them with a different way to read something. It also potentially helped them better understand the concepts that they had been exploring in the Dahl text so they could write their own memoirs. When struggling readers are provided with new ways to read and discuss texts, they are, ideally, provided more positive experiences with reading in school. Such experiences can open up the possibility for them to rewrite their narratives as readers in school. If we want struggling adolescent readers to improve, then we have to acknowledge that their histories and narratives play an important role in how they approach texts. Helping struggling readers create change is not a matter of identifying and teaching a particular skill in




a particular manner but rather designing experiences that allow them to see a place for them in the classroom, and give them the chance to rewrite their narratives as readers.

Skerrett, A. (2012). “We hatched in this class”: Repositioning of identity in and beyond a reading classroom. High School Journal, 95(3), 62–75. doi:10.1353/hsj.2012.0008

LITERATURE CITED Carey, L. (2007). I can’t read. In R. Simmons (Executive producer), Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. New York, NY: HBO. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB yDfPOG0LA

REFERENCES Dahl, R. (2009). Boy: Tales of childhood. New York, NY: Puffin. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Goble, P., & Goble, R. (2016). Making curriculum pop: Developing literacies in all content areas. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit. Hall, L.A. (2012). Moving out of silence: Helping struggling readers find their voices in text-based discussions. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 28(4), 307–332. doi:10.1080/10573569.201 2.702037 Hall, L.A. (2016). The role of identity in reading comprehension development. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 32(1), 56–80. doi: 10.1080/10573569.2013.861332 Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2001). History in person: An introduction. In D. Holland & J. Lave (Eds.), History in person: Enduring struggles, contentious practice, intimate identities (pp. 3–36). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

The department editors welcome reader comments. EVAN ORTLIEB is a professor and the coordinator of the Literacy Programs at St. John’s University, New York, NY, USA; e-mail [email protected].

YOLANDA MAJORS is the associate director of adolescent literacy and learning at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA; e-mail [email protected].

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Reconfiguring the Reading Experience: Using Pop& ...

Reconfiguring the Reading Experience: Using Pop& ...

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