Pinecone Art, Crummy Neighborhoods, and Other Elements of a Successful Reading Lesson

The Southwest Homeschool Network asked me to give a presentation for parents of Reluctant Readers for their conference last weekend. I don’t live with a reluctant reader anymore (he turned into a book-lover, grew up and left home) so I am lucky to have one who comes and visits me to remind me all about it. J is a first-generation American 12-year-old from a Spanish-speaking home, and he recently had to make the switch from a bilingual program at school to all-English. He told me once how discouraged he felt with it, so I said he could come once a week and we’d see what we could do.

J spent the whole evening here last Wednesday. A lot of that time didn’t seem to have a thing to do with reading, but as I recalled that evening in the light of preparing for my presentation, really it ALL had a lot to do with reading. For example, when J’s mom drove him to my house, she had most of the family with her – four kids and her 80-year-old father. She and her teenage daughter needed to talk to me in the kitchen, so Grandpa stretched out on the grass under the mulberry tree in the front yard, and J ran off to the back yard with his two little sisters. There they found our granddaughters’ abandoned makeshift sandbox, their plastic containers, and a bucket of water. So they made a fancy cake out of wet sand in one of the plastic containers. They smoothed it and decorated it with pinecones – very artistic. And then of course, they had to show it to me when I finished talking to their mom. And of course, we conversed about it.

That’s where the first reading connection came in.

The foundation for reading and writing in English is talking in English. When my children were young, they were learning English just like J is. We talk-talk-talked a lot. Children need more than simple exposure to language, more than passively sitting in front of a TV, for example, watching a program, in order to develop the language base they need for reading and writing. They need to USE the language. They need warmly responsive conversation partners.

Art helps with reading, too. Art engages a child’s mind, building their attention span and ability to notice details. Art also supplies other ways of communicating that children need to express themselves. And, when they are finished creating or dancing or dramatizing or singing – whatever form of art they are using – their project offers an opportunity to use words to talk about their art-making experience. So my conversation with J and his sisters about creating their cake was really helping to form the foundation they all need for reading in the English language.

After J’s family left, J and I enjoyed a relaxed, homeschool-style reading lesson. He and I sat in the glider on the back lot and looked together at a book I’d picked up for him that day from Cinco Puntos Press. I had been looking for something fairly easy for J to read that didn’t seem babyish to him, a living book that would grab his attention and feed his imagination. The book I chose was Vatos, a collection of photographs of ordinary Latino men in their neighborhoods and workplaces used to illustrate the lines of the “Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never be in a Poem.”

Vatos is a collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer José Galvez and poet Luis Alberto Urrea. The Vatos title comes from a slightly disreputable, slang Spanish word meaning guys, dudes, or pals. The text is lilting and sprinkled with Spanish slang. It uses simple, clear English vocabulary to evoke a rich sensibility of the Latino culture. The poem has a chanting rhythm, with each line but the last beginning “All the vatos…” If you can read that, you can read almost half of the words in the entire poem.

I read the book aloud to J because it is important for all readers, reluctant or avid readers, to hear good books read well. J was drawn into the text through the photographs and poetic images, and a couple times he said he liked the book.

A lot of middle-class Anglo teachers look at this book and think, “Eeuw, this is about a bunch of people who live in a crummy neighborhood.” Well, J lives in a crummy neighborhood, and he related to those pictures. This is his world, and someone thought enough of it to write a poem about it and take photographs to illustrate it, revealing the hidden beauty of the lives and culture of a people who live on the margin of American society, frequently misrepresented and misunderstood.

Choosing the right book for a particular child is important for helping children learn to enjoy reading. I picked this book for J first of all because I like it myself. It celebrates the Latino culture I have come to love living here on the border. Second, I know J. He is artistically gifted, so I thought the photographs would appeal to him. I also thought the images of men in their roles as fathers, sons, brothers, buddies, and lovers would appeal to him because he is a boy on the cusp of manhood, living in a houseful of sisters, struggling as boys his age do with what it means to be a man. Besides, he is small for his age, and he has to be scrappy, living in a rough neighborhood full of competing gangs. I also chose this book because I know the publisher of Vatos and so I heard when the book was honored with a YALSA Reluctant Young Adult Reader Quick Pick Award for 2002.

After reading the book aloud once to J, it was time for me to make supper. J helped me make a quick batch of quesadillas for supper (a quesadilla is a kind of Mexican grilled cheese sandwich using a tortilla instead of bread slices).

“I think you’re cool,” he announced suddenly.

I was astonished. “Why, thank you, J!” I said. “What a nice thing to say!”

“Well,” he said, “you don’t have to help us, but you do.”

I was going to leave out that incident in this description of our reading lesson because it’s self-serving. But now, as I’m dissecting that evening lesson in my mind, I realize that this exchange shows another vital element in a good reading lesson: trust. The child has to trust the teacher. Learning to read well is hard, much harder for some than others, and it takes courage to try to do hard things. A child needs to trust that his teacher isn’t going to make fun of him or put him down for making mistakes, but will suffer alongside him through the tough parts of doing this hard thing. It can take time to build trust. I’ve known J since he was five because for seven years his mom has done my ironing and helped me clean house a couple times a month. When her children were out of school, she brought them along, and they ate lunch with our family and played with my kids’ outgrown toys in the den. J knows that my house is emotionally safe.

J and I chatted away while we cooked and then we shared the meal with my husband Dennis. The cooking and meal sharing gave J more opportunities for talking, this time opportunities to converse with another responsive English speaker.

After the break, we resumed the formal reading lesson. This time I read each line of the poem out loud, and J echoed what I had read. We also talked about the pictures and the meanings of the words. One nice thing about this particular book was that, as an Anglo, I wasn’t the expert doing all the teaching. There were parts of the poem, especially the Spanish slang, that I didn’t understand and that J could explain to me.

We were sitting on the front porch, and while we read, several Gambel’s quail showed up in the driveway to peck at the grain that my husband and I throw out for them in the evenings. We interspersed our reading lesson with conversation about the quail. Then, after a half hour, I called it quits. There’s nothing to be gained and a lot that can be lost by pushing a reluctant reader to stay at the reading task too long.

My husband drove with us to take J home, giving J not only another conversation partner, but a good male role model who takes an interest in him. On the way home, J announced, “I like that book. I like it better than the one you gave me last time.” When he came to our house this time, he had forgotten to bring along the book I gave him last time, and he had also forgotten to bring along the recording device I’d lent him for reading practice. (I thought that he might practice reading more enjoyably using a little technology.)

When we arrived at his family’s mobile home, J went into the house to get the book and recording device. His mother and all the other children spilled out the door and came to the car to greet Dennis and me with hugs. Then we drove off, and I started listening to J’s practice reading on the recorder. I realized that although the book I had given him had beautiful illustrations to appeal to his artistic nature, it was written at his frustration level. During our previous lesson, before I started reviewing my past articles on reading for this talk at the homeschool conference, I had forgotten that there is a simple way to determine a reader’s reading level, to avoid giving him the kind of material that will make him want to give up on reading. For our next lesson, I will go to the library and try to find books that we can try out so I can send home a book written at his comfort level.

I made a mistake with the book I sent home with him last time. But the trust is there, so I think he’ll be willing to keep on trying to do this hard thing with me. Besides, he really likes Vatos, and there is a lot we can still do with it. A couple days after our reading lesson, I learned that Cinco Puntos Press has a helpful teacher’s guide for the book.

Here is a list of some of the important elements for introducing reluctant readers to the joys of reading:

• Showing an interest in the young person’s activities
• Being a warmly responsive conversation partner
• Sharing experiences and conversing about the shared experiences
• Encouraging the young person to express him or herself through whatever forms of art appeal to him or her
• Talking about the art-making experience
  
• Building trust with the student
• Using living books (books that engage the student and give him or her mind-food)
• Knowing the student well enough to find the particular living books that will appeal to his or her interests
  
• Reading aloud so the young person hears good books read well