The Magic of Reading

Reading is a significant part of my life. In addition to the reading list I mentioned, I studied literature in college, and my continued love of reading, more than any intellectual activity, has helped me grow as a person. But despite its dominant role in my life, the true power of reading did not become clear to me until relatively recently. It was a Tuesday night in late summer 1996 in Chicago, during a 2-hour tutoring session on the 21st floor of the Montgomery Ward building, west of downtown. The building overlooks the city’s Cabrini Green public housing complex, where most of the children in the tutoring program lived.

I was assigned to a boy named Kevin, who was 12 years old. Since we had just met, I decided that we should spend our first session talking. We talked about what he liked to do, how he had enjoyed the summer camp he’d attended through a Boys and Girls Club. He told me that he liked the idea of surviving in the woods. I asked him why, and he said, “Because that’s how I am. I depend on myself and I survive.” Looking back over our 4-year relationship, I realize that Kevin told me something during our very first conversation that clearly defined him as a person more than anything he has told me since. He saw himself as a survivor.

At the time, I did not know more than that. I suggested that we read Gary Paulsen’s book Hatchet, a story of a boy about Kevin’s then age who is going through emotional turmoil from his parents’ divorce. Brian is traveling by air to Canada to visit his father when the pilot suffers a heart attack and crashes the two-seater plane in the remote wilderness. Brian is alone. To survive, he builds his own shelter, makes his own weapons, catches his own food, and protects himself from the elements.

During the next few weeks, Kevin read this book with great attention and interest. Our Tuesday evening discussions were long and intricate, filled with comments from Kevin like “See, if I were that Brian guy, I would have set a better trap” and “Well, Brian’s smart, so he knew that he had to dive down into the water and look for the survival kit in the plane.”

As Kevin and I discussed the book, I became more aware than ever of the magic of literature. I had seen this book unite Kevin’s world and Brian’s in a completely meaningful way. I discovered that Kevin’s own home was in turmoil in ways that are unfortunately all too common for inner-city single-parent families. Kevin could relate to Brian because he too felt stranded, confused, and alone. And, like Brian, Kevin felt resourceful and confident enough to survive despite the enormous odds. Kevin’s real life was a survival story. This book matched his lived experience. It was personally relevant to him, and as a result he was interested and engaged. This offered me an opportunity to talk to him about the book’s key themes. We had remarkably long and in-depth conversations about handling change, taking personal responsibility, and coping with family pressures -- all very common themes in young adult literature -- which excited me a great deal. For me as a tutor, it was a victory. I was getting through to him.

Back to menu

School Learning

Unfortunately, this success did not last. In fact, as the school year progressed, the problems for Kevin continued to mount. Soon, he was expelled from his Catholic school for not completing his assignments and for being continually disruptive and defiant in class. Once enrolled in a new school, his rebellion continued. He was suspended almost weekly. He fought with other students and with his teachers. He failed courses each quarter and, ultimately, during eighth grade he scored too low on the standardized exam to qualify for graduation. He was ordered to repeat the grade, but for him that was out of the question. Instead, he watched his friends graduate, and he has never gone back to school. He is now 16 years old, and he survives in his neighborhood by doing what many school dropouts do -- selling drugs.

This is a sad story. No doubt Kevin’s home life contributed greatly to his difficulties. But his schools played active roles as well. In my opinion, school continually presented Kevin with lessons that he saw as completely irrelevant. Spelling sheets with dinosaur names, dittos asking him to add and subtract fractions, workbook pages on grammar. These had no relation to his lived experience. They were remote and distant, did not appeal to his interests, and were presented in ways that failed to engage and motivate him in the least. The lessons were given with no knowledge of him, and in particular they did not consider his strengths and weaknesses as a learner.

Kevin was at odds with everything associated with school. As a young teenager, he was, like most kids his age, trying very hard to figure out who he was. He was establishing his own identity. He wanted to assert himself as an individual, and he struggled with this a great deal. Unfortunately, he created his sense of himself in part by opposing school, by rejecting everything school put in front of him. His rebelliousness became a central component of his identity. The school’s ditto sheets, textbooks, and workbooks were meaningless to him, so he tossed them aside. He had no interest in these lessons and as a result, school offered him no opportunity to learn, to inquire, to discuss, and to discover. Ironically, what Kevin learned in school was that school was no place to learn.

I am certainly not making a statement here about all schools. No doubt many schools do an excellent job of helping children learn, but for Kevin that was not the case. For him, school was an utter and complete failure.

Something that was particularly noticeable to me was that Kevin had attended schools that stressed remembering over thinking and acceptance over inquiry. The late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire describes what he calls “the banking model” of education -- what goes on when the teacher “deposits” knowledge into students’ heads. Education, Freire (1988) states, then becomes a process in which students “patiently receive, memorize and repeat” (p. 67). No inquiry can take place because there is no questioning, and there is no questioning because people rarely bother to remember, much less question, anything that is completely irrelevant to their lives. Freire’s harsh critique of these methods describes how the banking model resists dialogue, inhibits creative power, and turns students into objects: receivers, not creators; listeners, not speakers; obedient repeaters, not active thinkers and problem solvers. Education of the type Kevin experienced fails to acknowledge students as individuals, as living beings with unique and important histories.

This is central to why the survival book Hatchet resonated so well with Kevin. It explains why so much conversation, questioning, and commenting occurred during our initial Tuesday night sessions. It also helps to explain, in my mind, why he had so much anger toward school. Faced with the prospect of being turned into an object that memorizes and repeats irrelevant information, Kevin chose to rebel. His rebellion -- acting out, not doing his work -- amounts to what some educational theorists believe is ultimately an act of hope (Fine, 1989; Giroux, 1989). Some schools, they argue, impose work onto students that denies their life experience, their individuality. This forces children to choose between themselves and school. Kevin chose himself. The dittos, workbook pages, standardized assignments, and tests were a one-size-fits-all method that he could not handle. Hatchet, however, acknowledged his individual lived experience and allowed him to learn. It provided him with motivation and it engaged him. On Tuesday nights, Kevin was the star. The novel gave him a sense of his own place in the world. It gave him a companion. As a result, the lessons delivered in our tutoring sessions had a chance of helping him grow intellectually and emotionally.

Back to menu

Bicycles, Angles, Friction, and Rockets

Seymour Papert of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology places enormous emphasis on creating learning environments that are personally relevant. In his book Mindstorms, Papert (1980) describes his childhood fascination with bicycle gears and how they helped him discover and learn about math: “Several qualities contributed to their effectiveness. First, they were part of my natural ‘landscape,’ embedded in the culture around me” (p. 11). This so sharply contrasts the conflict, hostility, and animosity that I observed in Kevin’s school learning environment. The difference, it seems, is that Kevin was being told to do things for no apparent reason.

One of our Tuesday night sessions in 1997 demonstrated for me the power of personal relevance for learning. Kevin sat at our desk with his arms folded sternly over his chest. He was slouched down in the metal chair with a particularly disdainful expression. On the desk was a worksheet from his seventh-grade math teacher on supplementary and complementary angles. When I asked him what he knew about angles and geometry, he said curtly, “Nothing.”

I told him I disagreed. A week earlier and with a great deal of enthusiasm, Kevin had described how he and his friends would do bicycle stunts, skidding and “doing 360s.” So I asked Kevin to describe the stunt, which he did with some pride because he considered himself rather good at it. I told him that I couldn’t exactly understand the trick and asked him to draw it. He looked at me like I was an idiot, but with a gruff air took the pencil from my hand and drew a circle. I had him divide the circle into four parts, one for each corner of the neighborhood intersection where he rode. We spoke about going halfway around the circle and three-quarters. We talked about what the trick would be called if you spun around a full two times. This intrigued him. It was a new trick! As he was talking, his eyes lit up. He began drawing on the back of the worksheet and tossed out what he might name the new trick -- “double stuff” or “double dare.” But then, in animated midsentence, he stopped drawing, stopped talking, and looked at me. Then, with a knowing expression, he said, half-smiling, “You tricked me!” This was true. We both laughed pretty hard, but it was a big breakthrough.

From this point, I regularly brought our conversations back to bicycles. He loved talking about bikes and about fixing them. I had Kevin describe in detail his repair procedures for changing flat tires, replacing the chain, and changing the ball bearings. He talked descriptively and with more enthusiasm than I had ever seen. He still tried to remain cool and unaffected like most 13-year-olds, but it was impossible for him to mask his interest completely. He often drew pictures. When I asked him what the ball bearings did inside the wheel hub, he paused and didn’t say anything. He was curious, but he didn’t know the answer. We talked about the grease the bearings were packed in and this led us into talking about friction.

The next tutoring session, I brought in some materials that I thought would help explain the concept of friction. It was a simple experiment I had read about that uses two different sized pickle jars, a pencil, a handful of marbles, and a small chunk of modeling clay. Kevin insisted on doing all the work. I helped him by describing the steps to assemble a sort of spinner with the two lids loosely fitting together, one inside the other. The pencil was nestled firmly in the clump of clay and rested atop the smaller lid. Kevin spun the pencil, and the small lid spun inside the big lid two or three times before stopping. After we talked about this a bit, Kevin put the handful of marbles in between the two lids and taped them together. When he spun them this time, the lids rotated very quickly over a dozen times before stopping.

For the next hour Kevin was immersed in this simple little gadget. As during the conversations we had had about Hatchet, Kevin was focused and engaged for a long period, and he had the same glimmer in his eye. After he saw the enormous difference the marbles made, he kept calling people over to our desk to have them predict the number of times the jars would spin around. He loved it, and he loved having this new knowledge that he could show to other kids. He felt smart. This was because the lesson started with bikes -- a place familiar, understandable, and interesting to him. It was in marked contrast to the sullen, slouching, and often-combative tone he so regularly adopted when faced with school work. Kevin was a different person. He was, in my opinion, himself -- and he was learning.

Following on this success, I let Kevin pick the next experiment we’d try from the book where I’d found the first. He chose to build a water-powered rocket out of simple household materials. On a Saturday, we met at my house, collected the materials, and started building. Again, he was the builder, and I chimed in if he had a question. This was mandatory because I had seen that if he was the focus -- the star of the activity -- the level of concentration and determination he devoted was enormously high. Kevin partly filled a large empty plastic soda bottle with water. He then shaved down a cork to fit in the bottle’s opening. Using tape, he attached a straw to the side of the bottle. He then threaded a long piece of string through the straw, tying one end to a high point on the second floor of the back porch of my apartment building and the other to a fence post at the far side of the yard and pulling the line taught. He then pushed an inflating needle into the cork, attached a bicycle pump to the needle, and began to pump and watch with great interest. The air pressure soon built to a point at which the cork burst out, shooting the soda bottle rocket about three-quarters of the way along the string up to the second floor balcony. It was amazingly great! We both yelled out loud and jumped in the air. For several hours, Kevin continued experimenting with different amounts of water, different sizes and types of corks, and even different bike pumps. He wanted to reach all the way to the top of the string. I sat by and asked questions every so often as he fine-tuned the rocket.

The contrast again was so glaring. The “school Kevin” was completely gone. He was in no way defiant, bored, or angry. He was decidedly curious, proud, and active. More than anything, he was the happiest I had ever seen him.

Back to menu

Why This Worked

As I think about why Kevin was so alive and vibrant at these times, three themes are apparent to me. First, the hands-on lessons made an enormous difference to him. As opposed to reading text or listening to the voice of a teacher, he was infinitely more comfortable doing. Being actively engaged was absolutely critical to him. I had noticed that when we read together, Kevin often struggled, transposing words in sentences and substituting incorrect words for the ones on the page he could not figure out. He also appeared to have some level of hearing loss. Even in close quarters he needed me to repeat myself regularly, and this problem would certainly have been exacerbated in a noisy classroom. So for Kevin, recognizing text and speech -- the primary mediums of instruction -- posed major problems. Having his hands on the materials aided him greatly, no doubt making him feel more in control and more confident.

The second theme I noticed was the way in which Kevin made sense of these activities. Because he could touch them and recognize them, he would use one of his biggest strengths, which was his ability to think logically and order information. I had noticed this in his description of bicycle repairs. He was very meticulous about steps. Steps made sense to him. When I asked him in casual conversation about how he got around on buses through the city, he would link together four different bus lines and describe the most efficient path of travel. He also had a very impressive memory. He remembered characters and events from books with stunning accuracy. He memorized the lyrics of dozens of lengthy rap songs. Using his logic, his memory, and his hands, Kevin was in his element. He could work, make adjustments, and find answers. In Mindstorms, Papert (1980) says that intellectual activity is characterized by “the constant need for course corrections” (p. xiii). When Kevin was at the center of the activity -- when he was the star -- he was the tenacious experimenter, making constant corrections in pursuit of the right answer. Mistakes suddenly were a good thing because they revealed another glimmer of the truth. Mistakes were markers on the path of discovery, rather than stern reminders of his misjudgments.

The third theme was Kevin’s feelings about the lessons in our tutoring sessions. He cared about them because he could bring about immediate results. He felt valued because he was the center of the action. This filled him with confidence. These lessons arose from and connected to his lived experience and were made accessible to him in ways that accounted for his individual strengths and weaknesses. He found himself enjoying the activities. He could adjust his thinking, try again, and succeed. Success naturally made him feel good, and it transformed his attitude completely.

These themes are, not coincidentally, aligned with the three interconnected systems or networks of the human brain that Harvard University professor David Rose describes (see, e.g., Meyer & Rose, in press):

1. The recognition system
2. The strategic system
3. The affective system

The strengths and weaknesses of Kevin’s recognition, strategic, and affective brain systems had an enormous impact on the success or failure of his educational lessons. In Rose’s view, in order to provide the best opportunity to learn, all three systems need to be working: our senses need to recognize the material; our strategic system needs to make sense of the material; and our affective system needs to allow us to care about the materials in some way.

Back to menu

Techniques in Interactive Software Design

Since 1994, I have worked as a software designer at Jellyvision in Chicago. My experiences with Kevin showed me very clearly that when a student is at the center of an activity, the chances that real, engaged learning can take place are greatly enhanced. In my work as a designer of educational software, I have tried to keep this in mind.

The role of computers in schools is a hot topic for debate. I consider computers just one more way to deliver lessons. I don’t believe even the best designed computer program can ever rival the effectiveness of a talented teacher. But I also know that for many students, computers offer a nonthreatening, engaging, and effective tool for learning. I think computers need to be used intelligently, of course, and programs need to be designed with the student’s needs in mind. As with all lessons, the student needs to be the star of any software program.

Our approach at Jellyvision has been to create computer experiences that place the focus squarely on the individual user. Our educational CD-ROM series That’s a Fact, Jack! Read immerses students in a television game show environment in which they answer thematic questions about a literature title they have just read. In creating the program, which includes questions about some 450 works of young adult literature, we used interactive design techniques that we believe better ensure that the student can recognize, make sense of, and care about the material. Because the game pays particularly close attention to the student, the star of our program is the one sitting in front of the screen -- unlike television or movies, where the star is on the screen. To achieve this, we used design techniques such as the following:

• Dynamic leveling
  Questions in the game are ranked according to difficulty. Based on how students respond, the program dynamically adjusts the questions students see. This technique, used in many games, helps ensure that students struggling with the material do not become alienated and frustrated while those who are performing well are continually challenged. In this way, the program pays close attention to the student -- as a good teacher would do.
  
  
• Personalized responses
  Our interactive design is modeled after a human conversation. We use computer programming language to sequence thousands of individual sound files to create the illusion that the user is having a conversation with the game’s host. This allows the game to respond to the student’s every action. Right answers receive customized praise and additional explanation. Incorrect answers receive thorough explanation, delivered in a positive tone. Inaction from the user also gets a response from the program. For example, if, based on the passing of time, it appears that a student is confused, the program will deliver additional instruction.
  
  
• Synchronized text and speech
  The text displayed on screen in our game is also spoken. By providing two modes, we increase the ability for students of different learning needs to recognize our material. The host appears both in video and in audio throughout the game.
  
  
• Strong engagement and motivation
  In order to give the students a positive affective experience, we have written a great deal of praise and enthusiasm into the script of the program. The show’s charismatic host is always glad to see students, and he makes them feel good about their efforts in reading the book. He shares “inside” jokes with them about the book and is their coach and partner. For a student struggling to read and dealing with low self-esteem as a result, this is a needed boost. The host always ends with an encouraging message to read another book and come back.

While these techniques individually are small things, together they create an inclusive, supportive, and challenging environment for learning. The computer program is best used along with a lively classroom discussion and debate over the themes of the book. Figuring out effective ways to integrate technology well in the learning process is a huge challenge. But the success or failure of any learning experience -- on the computer, in a tutoring session, or in a classroom -- depends to a large extent on how well the lesson considers each student’s unique needs.

Back to menu

Conclusion

There is no doubt that focusing on individual children as unique learners takes time and a great deal of effort. Those who firmly believe it is impossible are quick to provide the same type of instruction to all students, assess them with a standard exam, and call some winners and some losers. I believe that is sad, irresponsible, and vastly ineffective. I believe it is possible to address the specific needs of every child if we design our lessons with foresight, intelligence, and creativity.

The use of literature as a learning tool supports my belief. Books are incredibly inclusive. They allow an unlimited number of readers access to their meaning and their message and thereby provide vast numbers of young minds opportunities to learn and grow. The fact that Kevin -- a young African American boy in the city, struggling to learn and grow emotionally and intellectually under extremely trying conditions -- could connect so closely with a young white teenager like Brian as he struggles to survive in the Canadian wilderness demonstrates the power of literature.

Books provide children with a mental place apart from the physical conditions around them. This is a place where they can feel safe, valued, and important -- things that are all too uncommon in a great many other homes. This mental place is one where children like Kevin feel understood, smart, and strong -- not misunderstood, dumb, and weak as he felt in his classroom. Books help a child live in a place that is unique, new, and intriguing, yet at the same time familiar and comfortable. The chance to read and explore another child’s life lets children like Kevin gain enough distance and perspective on their own lives to reflect and explore their true feelings. This ability to explore feelings is crucial for children as they grow. At the same time, books give children the needed language to express those feelings. Books also offer characters who become trusted friends, companions, and guides. They offer a bond and a sanctuary. Books offer fictional circumstances that allow children like Kevin to understand their own unique life circumstances a little bit better. This increased understanding, this feeling of sanctuary, and this sense of intrigue build a child’s confidence, a sense of self-respect, and a sense of worldliness. The personal growth that arises out of these feelings is truly what education and learning should be all about.

Back to menu

References

Freire, P. (1988). The pedagogy of the oppressed. In The Paulo Freire reader. New York: Continuum.
Back

Fine, M. (1989). Silencing and nurturing voice in an improbable context: Urban adolescents in the public schools. In H.A. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Back

Giroux, H. (1989) Schooling as cultural politics. In H.A. Giroux & P. McLaren (Eds.), Critical pedagogy, the state, and cultural struggle. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Back

Meyer, A., & Rose, D.H. (in press). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Back

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. New York. Basic Books.
Back (1st citation) | (2nd citation)

About the Author

In addition to his work as a designer of educational and entertainment software programs at Jellyvision, Inc., in Chicago, Terry Hackett is a former journalist who reported on education in Illinois. He is a long-time tutor and mentor, and in June 2000 he received a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he studied technology in education.

Back to top

To print this article, point and click your mouse anywhere on the article’s text; then use your browser’s print command.

Citation: Hackett, T.C. (2001, May). Making the student the star. Reading Online, 4(10). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/hackett/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted May 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232