How to Engage and Not Shame

While reading through this book, Tovani makes a great point to find good examples in less than stellar work.  In the chapter “Moving from Pictures to Text” she decides to have the students read an article (it was about a student who had an overdue library book and ended up having to go to court), and she had her students write in the margins personal thoughts about the article.  She told the students that there were no wrong answers, but rather just an exercise that allowed her to gage where the students reading abilities were at, and where she could better focus the class in the future. 

Anyways, just like any class you’ll always have a bell curve of a few exceptional students, a cluster of average students and a few less than mediocre students.  Tovani would pick a few of the students’ writings and put them on the overhead.  This was the part that I found intriguing, instead of just showing the great examples; Tovani showed the mediocre examples and used them to demonstrate good reading practices. 

One example was from a student that only wrote “Oh well, it’s not my problem”, which sounds pretty disengaging to me, but Tovani showed it to the class and pointed out that the student has done something good readers do, and that is he has decided that the article had no relevance to his life.  In doing so, Tovani is validating the student’s right to not be engaged in everything he/she reads. 

Another example was when a student just underlined passages in the article, but didn’t include any writing of his own.  Tovani told the student that since he underlined the passages he must have found them important, or at the very least made him have a thought on what he underlined.  However, since the teacher is not a mind reader, he would have to write his thoughts down so she would know what he was thinking.

I like the strategy here but maybe not for the same reason as Tovani’s.  I like the idea of calling students out.  Not in the sense to shame them, and not to discredit their work, but putting the students on notice that their work may be presented to the class and that they may have to defend it, I think could produce positive results, and perhaps better engage some of the marginal students. Especially if when the work being presented is shown as a good example, but adding what could be done next time to improve on the work.