Teaching English, How To.......:: A K-12 Supervisor's Guide to Teaching Secondary English

By Raymond Stopper and Shirley DeLano Ryan

Teaching English, How To . . . . emphasizes three fundamental teaching techniques: directing reading assignments, modeling skills and using students questions to motivate learning and discussion. Three special features are daily ten-minute writing sessions to improve style and correctness, preparing students for the SAT 20-minute essay and a problem-centered grammar program designed to be applied to writing. This book contains specific recommendations for teaching almost every aspect of secondary English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 19, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465331182

Raymond Stopper

Shirley DeLano Ryan writes: In a lifetime, beginning with early motor cars and wind-up phonographs and progressing to an International Space Station, there is a time period so dear to my heart: the days of my childhood, between World War I, when I was born, to World War II, when I was married. Growing up on a farm with my parents, four sisters, two brothers, and older relatives was complicated, humorous and inspiring. In this book, descendants may discover the source of their genes, and perhaps, the reader may also share a memory or two.

Book preview

TEACHING ENGLISH,

HOW TO…  

A K-12 Supervisor’s Guide

to Teaching Secondary English

Raymond Stopper

Copyright © 2004 by Raymond Stopper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Annotated Table of Contents

Foreword

How To Read This Book

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

PART TWO

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

PART THREE

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

PART FOUR

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PART FIVE

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

PART SIX

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Thoughts About Teaching

Students for Whom English Is

Their Second Language (ESL)

PART SEVEN

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Highlights

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

Dedication

To Barbara, my wife,

who taught first grade and helped me to understand

how young children learn to read and write and

who exemplified the dedication of elementary school teachers

for most of whom, I am sure,

there is a special place reserved in Heaven.

She also read many of these chapters critically

and offered sound advice on how to improve them.

Annotated Table of Contents

Part One: Teaching English

Chapter 1. Goals: Why teach English? Somewhere I read that the goals of a college education are to learn how to learn, to learn how to think, to learn how to communicate, and to learn how to solve problems. I believe that that statement is a concise summary of what we try to accomplish when we teach English. In this chapter, I give examples of how to teach each of these skills.

Chapter 2. Active Learning: How can teachers motivate students to learn? Of course, active learning is the goal. Dewey is quoted as saying, We learn what we do. I guess, because education is mandatory in the United States, motivating students is part of the teacher’s role. In this chapter, I suggest a fundamental method for motivating students to want to learn.

Chapter 3. Professional Research: How can teachers use professional research? The value of professional research depends on what readers want to do with it. If they want definite answers to their questions about teaching, I’m afraid professional research in education won’t help much. In my experience, most educational research is essentially inconclusive, with findings expressed as indicates and suggests. Therefore, educational research used as a political device to support certain points of view must be read critically. However, if teachers are looking for ideas that help to answer questions about teaching, published research is a treasure trove. And conducting research in the classroom can help to answer questions about the effectiveness of teaching methods.

Chapter 4. Professional Research Adapted: How can ten minutes a day contribute to writing confidence? The story of how I applied research to a problem in the teaching of writing begins with a girl I am going to call Mary, a student in tenth-grade English. She soon distanced herself from the rest of the students in her ability to write. Her improvement was startling. She was the best writer with whom I had ever worked. One day, I asked Mary about the secret of her success. I knew that my teaching was not the reason because I also taught the other students, and none had progressed as well as Mary. She told me… .

Part Two: Assignments

Chapter 5. Reading: What method helps students read difficult assignments successfully and turns passive readers into active readers? How many times have you heard your teachers in school give a reading assignment something like this: Open your books to page 35 and begin to read? In this chapter, I suggest a better way to prepare students for what they are going to read.

Chapter 6. Homework: What is the most effective method for assigning homework? The class period winds down. Typically, as students begin to gather up their books, papers, and other belongings to leave the classroom, the teacher calls out the assignment for homework, almost as an afterthought: Read chapter 38. Or, Write a paper on a topic of your choice. Or, "We’ll discuss Chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby tomorrow. Be sure to read it." Homework assignments need to be given with care. Students need to be prepared for them, especially long-term assignments, and students should be asked to evaluate them.

Chapter 7. Modeling Reading, Homework and Writing. Aren’t directed reading assignments, preparation for homework assignments in class and 10-minute writings simply doing the work for the students? What is the purpose for directing reading assignments, beginning homework assignments in class and correcting 10-minute writings? Am I simply doing the work for the students? Or, do I have some deeper purpose?

Part Three: Writing and Speaking

Chapter 8. Teaching formal Writing: How can teachers use models and modeling to teach writing? In this chapter, I will explain how I taught students to write with confidence.

Chapter 9. Grammar and Composition: Why teach grammar? In my experience, the problem with the teaching of grammar has always been lack of clear purpose. As a result, students may be taught grammar, but they soon forget it because they do not apply it. In this chapter, I will discuss the purposes for teaching grammar in English, and I will explain how a knowledge of grammar can help students to polish their written expression.

Chapter 10. Helping Students Prepare for Writing Assessments: How can teachers prepare students for writing 25-minute impromptu essays? Real writers let ideas incubate, write drafts and revise and revise and revise. But state writing assessments and, now, the new SAT requirement for a 25-minute writing sample to begin in 2005, require practically spontaneous writing on assigned topics. Students are given little time to plan their writing and almost no time to revise. I will suggest methods for preparing students to write it right the first time.

Chapter 11. The Computer and Writing Instruction: What problems did word processing help to solve in teaching writing? Computers and word processing changed the attitudes of students toward writing, a change that was the most significant I have seen in teaching English in the last thirty-five years. However, any change raises issues and I encountered a number of issues when I introduced word processing to teachers and students in the early 1980s. The most popular computers at that time were Radio Shack, Apple, IBM and Commodore.

Chapter 12. Computers, Writing Instruction and the Future: How will the computer change writing instruction in the future? I can foresee some changes in the writing program as the result of computer technology, but no essential changes in the nature of the writing process so long as words are the medium of expression. Of course, students can now add pictures to their compositions and can even turn them into multi-media presentations with sound and film. Although pictures, sound and film will be fun for the writer and maybe even helpful to the reader in fully grasping the writer’s message, they do not replace the need to create unified and coherent text, the difficult, essential skills of writing.

Chapter 13. Writing Across the Curriculum: How can English teachers and teachers of other subjects work together in teaching writing? I did not address the issue of writing in the content areas when I was language arts supervisor, K-12, because I felt that content teachers would have trouble dealing with the amount of time required to mark student papers. That view was shortsighted. I now believe that I could have developed a consensus in the English department concerning the nature of the writing process, the use of writing as a method of learning, the structure of expository writing, a scale to evaluate student writing and procedures for teaching the research paper and the essay exam that we could have shared with the rest of the faculty. I now believe that cooperation between English teachers and the rest of the faculty in supporting the teaching of writing was and is possible. Here’s how.

Chapter 14. Professional Writing: What can teachers of writing learn from trying to publish professionally? If your experience is like mine, you will learn humility. You will learn what it feels like to be rejected. You will gain a better understanding of the writing process. You will feel empathy for your writing students. You will become a sufferer along with your students in learning how to write. In short, you will learn to write all over again.

Chapter 15. Spelling: In the age of computers, is spelling still a worthwhile subject in the English curriculum? I’ll never use a word [in writing] I don’t know how to spell, the Syracuse University junior stated candidly."

Bad idea, I responded. "Your writing vocabulary will be slim to none. You won’t be able to deliver your ideas with flair. You won’t use that rich vocabulary you’ve developed over the years. Your sentences could sound like those in the Dick and Jane Readers. In this chapter, I propose a complete, confidence-building spelling program that will be supplemented by invented spelling" and computerized spelling checkers.

Chapter 16. Speaking: How can teachers help students overcome their fear of speaking in public? Over the years I have learned a great deal about how to speak effectively before an audience. Public speaking has always been a stressful experience for me. I used to worry about my speech for hours before giving it, often not even eating because of my anxiety, and would replay the speech in my mind for hours afterward, assessing the strengths and problems of my performance. I have found that certain methods helped give me confidence in speaking. My goal in working with students in speaking is to help them overcome their fear of addressing an audience, of participating in small groups and of engaging in important interviews like those for employment.

Part Four: Reading

Chapter 17. Speed Reading: Is speed reading a myth? I have trained people in speed reading a number of times. In approximately forty-five minutes, I can confidently predict that readers without reading problems will double, triple, or even quadruple their reading speed. I have concluded that probably this training is worthwhile. However, I would use the technique as only one small part of a course in reading efficiency.

Chapter 18. Efficient Reading: How can students find information quickly? Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. This view of reading was expressed by Francis Bacon in his essay, Of Studies, in 1625.

While among professional reading educators, this advice has become almost a cliché, I believe that few students are actually shown how to set purposes for reading or how to determine the extent to which a book or a chapter or an article needs to be read to achieve their purposes. In this chapter I will show how previewing the material to be read will save readers time and improve comprehension.

Chapter 19. Reading in the Content Areas: How can teachers of subjects other than English help their students read assignments successfully? Reading in the content areas refers to helping students read their assignments successfully in such subjects as social studies, science, home economics and even industrial arts in which students are required to read textbooks.

Instructing students to read chapter 33 and answer the questions at the end of the chapter is probably the worst way to give a reading assignment. This method of assigning reading ignores motivation for reading. Such an assignment also assumes that the student does not need any help in reading. However, most students will know very little about the topic, and the topic will more than likely be unrelated to their experience. Experience and background information have a lot to do with how well people comprehend what they read. Students can also be puzzled by a heavy concentration of unfamiliar, specialized vocabulary. Finally, an assignment like this one leaves students wondering what the teacher thinks is important and guessing about what information will be on the test.

Chapter 20. The First Grade-Secondary English Connection: What should secondary English teachers know about beginning reading and writing instruction? What is a discussion of elementary reading and writing instruction doing in a book about teaching secondary English? I include this chapter for four reasons. First, secondary teachers should know how children learn to read. Second, the method for teaching comprehension in the elementary school, beginning in the first grade, is the directed reading assignment, the technique I recommend throughout this book for secondary teachers in all subjects to help their students read difficult assignments successfully. Third, the issue of phonics and the basal vs. whole language is typical of issues in education that become either/or arguments. A similar either/or issue occurred in secondary English in the 1990s when proponents of the writing process battled fiercely in professional journals with the proponents of the writing product. Fourth, the issue of invented spelling in the early stages of learning to write is actually an issue for every grade level, including the high school.

Part Five: Literature

Chapter 21. Reading Aloud: Why is reading aloud to students of all ages important? How can students learn to read aloud effectively? I don’t care how old students are; they love to be read to. In my first year of teaching, I discovered the power of reading aloud to my high school students. I actually discovered it because I had given a fairly smart class Poe’s short story The Pit and the Pendulum to read silently. I remembered reading The Pit and the Pendulum when I was in high school and Poe’s description of the prisoner’s experiences was so vivid that I had almost lived the experience of the prisoner myself. Therefore, I was surprised when my students finished reading it with glazed eyes and a definite air of boredom. What was wrong?

Chapter 22. Reading, Teaching and Studying Literature. What is the purpose of reading literature in school? The scene was a meeting of parent representatives from each school in the district. The purpose was to review a new part of the language arts curriculum. Before the meeting began, one of the parents asked me a question that I had never had to deal with: Why is the literature we read in the schools so depressing? Lamely, I tried to explain that even when the literature involves tragedy, it affirms life and is not pessimistic. Other parents around the table looked at me as if I were speaking Greek, and the chairperson of the group made it clear that she wanted to begin the evening’s main business. I knew I hadn’t answered the woman’s question satisfactorily, and I was troubled. I would like to answer that question now. However, the question Why is the literature we read in the schools so depressing? becomes Why read literature?

Chapter 23. Organizing a Discussion of Literature: How can teachers organize literary discussions in which most of the students participate? I encountered the model for good literary discussions when I took the Great Books training course, a program that changed forever the way I organized discussions. The key was the requirement that the group leaders, in formulating the questions, could ask only questions about which they themselves had some element of doubt as to the answer. The Great Books Foundation calls its discussion technique Shared Inquiry because everyone can participate in the search for answers; no one is designated as the expert, not even the leaders.

However, the Great Books program requires discussion leaders, not the students, to formulate the questions and insists that the literary work should not be introduced, that the students should just begin to read without any preparation. I disagreed with both restrictions. Therefore, I have used the Great Books technique with some modifications, and almost everyone becomes involved.

Chapter 24. Censorship: How Can English Teachers Prepare for Possible Censorship Challenges? Dealing with censorship issues involves two fundamental procedures: a questionnaire to be completed by the challenger and a representative committee to consider the challenge and to recommend future use of the challenged material. However, even more valuable in preparing for censorship challenges is writing rationales for teaching potentially controversial literary works, a technique that will help teachers decide on the appropriateness of the literature they teach in class.

Part Six: Language and Vocabulary

Chapter 25. Exploring Language: How can teachers have some fun with language in English class? One of the most enjoyable language activities I ever used was to cut maps of the United States into quarters, giving each student a portion of the map. Students looked at the place names in their section of the map and copied down names of cities and towns that they found to be interesting. Next, in small groups, students tried to classify the origins of the names—people’s names, geographical characteristics, biblical references, language of the American Indian, etc. Finally, students attempted to express generalizations about how Americans named their cities and towns. This activity is just one example of how students can have fun exploring the English language. However, in having fun, they will also learn a great deal about how the English language works.

Chapter 26. Building Word Knowledge: What should a complete vocabulary program consist of? The problem that most students have with the Verbal Section of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) is vocabulary. Even when they are dealing with sentence completions or analogies that are supposed to be vocabulary free, I have found that with the harder items, the students know the process for solving the problem but often do not know the words. Vocabulary development is an important part of the English program, not just because of the SAT, but because knowledge of words extends a person’s range of ideas and is related to IQ, is related to the ability to express one’s ideas with precision, and, of course, is related to success in reading. In this chapter, I offer three methods for helping students build their word knowledge.

Thoughts About Teaching Students for Whom English Is Their Second Language (ESL): Most techniques that I have discussed in this book as helpful for students whose native language is English will also be helpful for students whose native language is NOT English, for whom English is a second language (ESL), especially the ten-minute writings.

Part Seven: Supervision: What are the characteristics of a successful supervisor of language arts?

Chapter 27. Supervision Lesson #1. Listen. Why is listening important to successful leadership? So much of success in leadership comes from listening to others and helping them carry through on their ideas. My willingness to listen to others was probably my greatest leadership strength, but at the end of my career as language arts supervisor, K-12, my failure to listen was the cause of my greatest mistake. After learning about my experience in refusing to listen, maybe the reader can avoid making a similar mistake.

Chapter 28. Supervision Lesson #2. Inservice. How can teacher inservice programs be improved? When I took courses in education, I noted that professors often lectured about teaching practices without using the techniques themselves. For example, instructors would recommend that teachers individualize their instruction but would not individualize their own teacher education classes. From my first position as an administrator, I have made it a fundamental principle to teach teachers as I wanted them to teach their students. An example of how I practiced what I preached occurred in a workshop for teachers new to a large suburban school district.

Chapter 29. Supervision Lesson #3. Change. What is needed for successful change in education? During my years in education, I have watched administrators make changes because of prevailing enthusiasms in the profession. The use of learning centers, behavioral objectives, whole language, the writing process—all of these changes were, in my experience, imposed on teachers from above. All were based on some good ideas, but all had some harmful effects as well. And the results of pressure for change on the staff were about what one would expect: a small core of enthusiasts embraced the change; the large majority went along with it but not enthusiastically, and, as soon as the pressure was off, dropped the procedure from their teaching; and a minority fought the change because they felt that it was not right, that it could even hurt students.

In this chapter, I discuss what happened when the need for change was clearly understood by just about everybody. But even with a clearly defined need for change, watch out for the side-effects. Evaluation is necessary to help avoid and correct the problems that are inevitable with change.

Chapter 30. Supervision Lesson #4. Authority. Does leadership without authority work? The trouble with Mary was grammar—not her use of it but her teaching of it. The setting was a junior high school in the mid-1960s. My role as instructional consultant in the building was to help teachers improve their instruction—but I had no authority to demand change. Whatever change I was able to accomplish had to occur because of my personality and methods of persuasion.

One morning, the principal came storming into my office. He was angry. He had just come from Mary Jones’s English class with seventh graders. She had been teaching, no, drilling, the students in grammar. What is a noun? What is a verb? etc.

Ray, he said, I haven’t seen teaching like that since I was in grammar school a long time ago! Some kids actually had their heads down on their desks and were sleeping. Try to show her another way to teach that stuff.

Then he strode out of my office, his job done; mine was just beginning.

Foreword

For Whom Was This Book Written?

This book is intended for students who are about to become secondary English teachers, English teachers who will remain teachers throughout their careers and English teachers who will eventually become supervisors or administrators. Parts of this book could be useful to college teachers of writing. Parents who are home-schooling their children should also find interesting ideas for helping to develop their children’s language skills.

What Questions Does This Book Answer?

This book suggests answers to a number of questions about teaching English effectively. Before reading this book, try answering these questions yourself. You could write your own book by answering these questions.

Why teach English?

How can teachers help students learn how to learn?

How can teachers help students learn to think critically?

What is the formula for effective communication in formal writing and speaking?

How can teachers help students solve problems?

How can teachers motivate students to learn in English class?

How can professional research help good teachers become even better?

What is the most effective method for helping students read difficult material?

What is the most effective method for assigning homework?

How should writing be taught?

How can grammar be applied to composition?

Why teach grammar?

How should teachers prepare students for writing assessments like the 25-minute SAT essay to be administered beginning in 2005?

How did the computer affect writing instruction?

How will the computer change writing instruction in the future?

What can be learned by trying to publish professionally?

In the age of computers and spelling checkers, is spelling still a worthwhile subject in the English curriculum?

How can teachers help students overcome their fear of speaking in public?

Is speed reading a myth?

How can students gain the most information in the least amount of reading time?

What is the best method to help students read their content area assignments successfully?

What is the best method for teaching beginning reading?

How are first grade and secondary English related?

Why is reading aloud to students of all ages important?

How can teachers help students learn to read aloud effectively?

Why read, teach and study literature?

How can teachers organize a literary discussion in which most of the students participate?

How should censorship problems be dealt with?

How can students have some fun exploring language in the English class?

What should a complete vocabulary program consist of?

What are the characteristics of a successful supervisor of language arts?

What is the role of listening in successful leadership?

How organize successful teacher inservice programs?

How can the supervisor promote successful change?

Does the supervisor need authority?

What Is the Purpose of This Book?

This book is a summary of my career as English teacher and supervisor of English/language arts, K-12. This book is about turning theory into practice. This book is about what worked for me in teaching English and supervising the teaching of English—and what did not work. This book is about both my successes and my mistakes.

I have seen all kinds of teachers. I have seen the put-on-a-show-and-dance-about-the-room teacher, full of enthusiasm. I have seen the quiet, careful, thorough teacher who never raises her voice and never needs to. This book is not about persuading the reader to be like them or me. This book is about ideas, ideas that can be useful for every kind of English teacher.

What Are the Essential Techniques for Teaching English?

I am afraid that some readers are going to accuse me of merely repeating the same ideas over and over. The directed reading assignment, for example, appears at least seven times in the book. I describe this teaching technique in several different contexts, explaining how it was applied in different situations, helping the reader to understand more clearly why this technique is fundamental to the successful teaching of English.

First, I introduce the directed reading assignment as a method for motivating students to read. Second, I suggest that the directed reading assignment helps students read difficult materials successfully. My third discussion of the directed reading assignment reveals how the method transformed a group of 7th-grade passive and bored science students into active readers. Fourth, I use the directed reading assignment as a modification of the Great Books program’s Shared Inquiry. Fifth, I describe the steps in the directed reading assignment in much greater detail in the chapter on reading in the content areas. Sixth, I show how the directed reading assignment can be used to help learning disabled students read successfully. Finally, I explain how I used the directed reading assignment with teachers so that they could evaluate its effect on their own reading and thereby understand how effective it might be with their students.

In fact, I emphasize three teaching techniques in different contexts throughout the book as essential to the successful teaching of English:

1.    Directing and previewing reading assignments

2.    Modeling or demonstrating writing, reading and other language skills and processes

3.    Using students’ questions to motivate learning and discussion

In this book, each of these teaching techniques is presented a number of different times in a number of different situations. These teaching techniques are fundamental to teaching English successfully because they practically assure students’ learning and they show students how to direct their own learning.

Why Have I Published This Book?

In this book I share with the reader what I learned, in a thirty-five-year career, about the essential techniques needed to teach secondary English. My perspective is that of a K-12 supervisor. When possible, I have tried to show how elementary, middle and junior high schools contribute to the education of high school students in English.

Another reason I wrote this book is that I think all English teachers should write about what worked—and did not work—for them. The list of questions on the preceding page that are answered in this book could be a model for books by other English teachers who have the desire to explain what they have learned about the successful teaching of English. If all English teachers wrote books about their experiences in teaching English, English programs might improve significantly.

I also wrote this book because nothing like it existed when I began to teach English. The methods courses that I took did not prepare me for the real world of teaching English. (This book is also a model for a methods course in English.) My hope is that teachers new to the profession will find useful methods in this book for teaching a complete program in English. I hope that they will not need thirty-five years to learn what I have learned.

What have I learned? I am confident that the teaching techniques of directing and previewing reading assignments, modeling or demonstrating language skills and using students’ questions to motivate learning and discussion will help secondary students to become independent learners, thinkers, communicators and problem-solvers—and to pass high-stakes examinations in reading and writing. I am also confident that these teaching techniques will remain current regardless of changes in educational fads because they are fundamental both to students’ learning to read, write and speak and to learning how to learn.

This book contains chapters on the goals of teaching English; on motivating students to learn English; on using professional research to improve the teaching of English; on helping students read difficult assignments; on organizing homework assignments; on modeling or demonstrating revising and editing in writing; on teaching students how to write with confidence; on how grammar can be applied to composition; on preparing for 25-minute writing assessments; on writing across the curriculum; on writing professionally; on teaching spelling and speaking; on the values of training in speed reading and reading efficiently; on reading successfully in the content areas; on the relationship between first grade and secondary English.

On reading literature aloud to students of any age; on teaching students to read aloud; on reading, teaching and studying literature; on organizing literary discussions; on dealing with censorship; on exploring and having fun with language; on developing vocabulary; and on working with students whose native language is not English. I have also included chapters on the characteristics of successful supervisors: they listen; they provide inservice by teaching their teachers as they want their teachers to teach their students; they promote change through evaluation of curriculum and practices; and they work cooperatively with teachers to solve problems without the authority to tell others what to do.

Why Did I Teach English and Supervise the Teaching of English?

As I looked back on my career through writing this book, I realized that my purpose in teaching and supervising can be summed up in just two words: Empowering others.

Raymond Stopper

West Chester, Pennsylvania

January 2004

How To Read This Book

Readers can take advantage of a number of ways to find the interesting ideas in this book without reading it entirely. For example:

The Foreword lists most of the questions to be answered in this book. The Foreword also lists the three techniques essential to teaching English and gives a brief summary of each chapter in the book.

The Annotated Table of Contents will give readers an introduction to the basic ideas in every chapter of the book.

Each chapter’s title page contains questions answered in the chapter and an excerpt from the chapter designed to arouse curiosity about the chapter’s ideas. Reading these questions and excerpts on the title page of every chapter will give readers a good overview of the ideas in the book.

Beneath the title of each chapter is a brief overview of the ideas in the chapter. They are like the sub-heads beneath the headlines in a newspaper story. Reading just these explanatory summaries of the contents of each chapter will give readers a good overview of the ideas in the book.

Reading just the first section and the concluding summary of each chapter will give readers the main ideas of the book and could suggest which chapters will be of more interest than others.

Each chapter contains bold-face headings that should enable readers to gather the main ideas of the chapter quickly. Simply read the bold-face headings in order throughout the chapter.

And, of course, surveying the chapter by reading the first paragraph, the first sentence of each intermediate paragraph and the summary will give the main ideas and details of each chapter.

Finally, in a section entitled, Highlights, following the final chapter, Chapter 30, on supervision and authority, the reader will find a list of ideas covered in each chapter.

Any one of these methods can help readers find quickly the important, useful and interesting ideas in the book.

A reminder. The three main ideas explained and illustrated repeatedly throughout this book are what I call the techniques essential to teaching English:

Directing and previewing reading assignments

Modeling or demonstrating writing, reading and other language skills and processes

Using students’ questions to motivate learning and discussion

Prologue I: Teaching English

In 1956, I was hired to teach English in a rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, high school.

By paying me $3200 a year, the board of education assumed that I would motivate my students to want to learn English and would teach them how to learn independently and to think critically.

The board also expected me to teach my students how to read and discuss literature, to cover the chronology of American literature, and to teach them to write clearly, concisely and correctly (at the expense of 15 minutes per paper x 125 students [5 classes] or 31 hours per week. Marking 8 compositions a year with 5 classes added 241 hours to my work schedule in addition to lesson planning (several hours a night) and teaching (about 7 hours a day) and overseeing an extracurricular activity (2 to 3 hours per night in the spring). I was also required to assign at least one research paper.

Of course, the board expected me to teach grammar, spelling, vocabulary and public speaking and assumed that I would prepare exemplary lesson plans and would mark and return tests promptly so that students would know their grades and understand their mistakes.

To accomplish these tasks, I was given one American literature anthology and one grammar text.

No, I did not know how to accomplish all those tasks when I began to teach. It took me a career lifetime to learn. The purpose of this book is to share what I have learned in a career lifetime about teaching a complete program in English.

Prologue II: Supervising English

In 1970, I was hired to coordinate and supervise the English/language arts program, K-12, for a suburban Philadelphia school district. The superintendent expected me to help the district’s teachers define the total language arts curriculum, expected me to help develop grade-level curriculums, and expected me to orchestrate communication among all the grade levels from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

The superintendent also expected me to offer workshops that would help teachers improve their instructional skills, to organize a K-12 writing program, to help teachers relate grammar to writing, to show content area teachers how to help their students read difficult assignments, to institute a secondary reading program and to revise the high school English program, which had drifted into a formless haze of English 10, English 11, and English 12. In 1980, the computer came along, and he expected me to show English teachers how to incorporate word processing into the writing program.

To help me accomplish all these tasks, the superintendent, in his infinite wisdom, gave me—no authority.

He was right.

This book is about what I learned when I tried to make changes without the authority to tell people what to do.

PART ONE

Teaching English

Chapter 1: Goals

Why teach English?

[Suggestion: Take a moment to think about how you would answer the following questions before reading my answers in this chapter.]

Why do you teach English?

How do you help students learn how to learn?

How do you help students learn to think critically?

What is the formula for effective communication?

How do you help students learn how to solve problems?

The Purpose of Schooling in Education

Lloyd Alexander, the noted author of children’s books, once made the distinction between education and schooling. You spend a lifetime educating yourself, he said. Schooling is designed to help you learn to educate yourself. Learning how to learn, learning how to think, learning how to communicate and learning how to solve problems are four important goals of education. As Alexander said, we spend a lifetime achieving these goals. We continually learn how to achieve them in different circumstances; we never finish learning how to learn, learning how to think, learning how to communicate and learning how to solve problems.

Chapter 1

Goals

Why Teach English?

Goals for teaching English include helping students learn how to learn independently, think, communicate and solve problems.

Why Teach English?

When I began teaching high school English in 1956, I was given a Tressler-Christ grammar textbook and an anthology of American literature. My goals? Teach six weeks of grammar followed by six weeks of literature.

When I retired from teaching and supervising the teaching of English 35 years later, I wanted my students to learn how to organize their own learning, to learn how to think and to think critically, to learn how to communicate and to learn how to solve problems.

Specifically, I was teaching students how to organize their own learning by having them engage in independent study. They were learning how to think by organizing their thoughts in writing and speaking, by relating literature to their own experience and by comparing and contrasting literary works; they were learning to think critically by recognizing propaganda techniques in attempts to persuade. They were learning how to communicate by organizing formal writing and speaking according to the Tell them… formula for effective communication: Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; and tell them what you have told them. They were learning to solve problems by asking questions, especially in conducting research designed to identify and solve problems and by discussing problems in interpreting literature.

I would not hesitate to display these goals—independent learning, thinking, critical thinking, communicating and problem solving—prominently in the classroom and to refer to them during activities designed to utilize and to develop these skills.

Helping Students Learn How to Learn

Independent Study: Learning