If you want a consistent message over the last few years, it is this:  we’ve got to improve the way we practice education in this country.

But, how?

Well, one hint of a change was reported on NPR’s All Things Considered: Teachers Hit The Books To Master New Education Standards by Cory Turner.  I especially perked up at this portion of the report:

For older students who may be accustomed to reading quickly through a handful of novels, “now we’re looking at maybe one or two long texts — we call them extended texts — and we’ll dive very deeply into it,” says Jill Oswald, another “master teacher” who has been teaching English to high school students for 18 years.

Another change, Oswald notes, is that rather than “front-loading the kids and giving them a lot of background [before starting a book], we let them discover the text, and then we kind of fill in blanks and answer questions as they need to.”

In other words, teachers working through The Great Gatsby won’t spend three days talking about the Jazz Age or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tortured past before opening the book. Instead, teachers are told to hold back at the start and let kids work through the text before helping them with biography and background.

“We let them discover the text…  teachers are told to hold back at the start and let kids work through the text before helping them with biography and background.”  I like this.

When I teach my Speech students Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech, I hand out copies of the text.  I make them clear their desks of everything except this handout.  We go through it together, slowly, paragraph-by-paragraph.  They have to circle repeated phrases (there are a lot! of repeated phrases – multiple phrases, repeated many times).  We talk about the difference between text written to be spoken (as is I Have a Dream), vs. text written to be read  (as was The Letter from Birmingham Jail).  But every time I go through this speech, I find something new – new to me – in the text.  And my students are utterly engaged.  And, every time,  students tell me that this was the first time they had ever really looked at the speech itself.  (By the way, this is my favorite class day each semester).

When I prepare a book synopsis, I do my best to let the text itself speak.  That is why I utilize excepts directly from the book in my handouts.  I think we should let the author(s) speak directly to us.  There is no substitute for reading a book fully – the book itself – but when I speak, I try to let enough of the text through that it provides some kind of encounter with the text itself.

I’ve wondered how much an earlier chapter in my life shaped this approach that I take.  I spent twenty+ years in full-time ministry.  My focus, my love, was preaching itself.  And I practiced what they call “expository preaching” — I would preach through the text of scripture.  I would spend months preaching through Romans, or Mark, or…  And I would always strive to be faithful to the text – to let the text itself speak.  You can learn so much when you read, and re-read, text carefully, deliberately, fully.

I still consider myself an “expository preacher.”  I’m just preaching different “texts” when I prepare and deliver my book synopses.  When I read a book, I try to “expose” the words and the meaning intended by the author.  I’m not implying that I always get this right.  But, as weird as it sounds, I love my encounters with text…

Anyway, I resonate with this new approach.  “We let them discover the text.”

I think the text itself is more important than “three days about the Jazz Age.”  Oh, learn about the Jazz Age, for sure.  But first, and primarily, let a text speak.  What could be better, more educational than that?  This sounds like a good idea to me.