Take Brittney as a prime example of what time and patience can accomplish. This slightly built young lady had scars from “cutting,” a new pastime of students who are disturbed about their lives but have no one and/or no way of expressing this, so they use sharp objects to cut their skin. Her father had been in jail for most of her life, and her mother held a job in the “entertainment” field. The sneer on her face the first day was not unlike most of the other students in the class; our work was cut out for us. Mistake number one: making assumptions about what Brittney would want to read based on her turbulent past.
The university provided us with a very comprehensive list of books on the students’ level and that appealed to struggling high school readers. I did as I was taught in graduate school: analyzed my students’ data from the state test and informal assessments, determined their reading levels, put together big crates of books based on high interest “concepts” (based on a reading interest inventory), and set off to conquer the world of failing readers.…
