"Real World" Skills and Strategies

The thematic all-call for EJ (due Sept. 15) addresses "real world" skills, etc. that students may learn in the classroom, and this is an opportunity for me to present something on the book. An overview of where I'm at right now with "Beyond Doing a Text": How can teachers show students how to read, interpret and respond to texts in ways expected? In classrooms, teachers assign texts for students to read and expect particular interpretive practices and responses from these, what I'll call, "reading events." Typically, a teacher assigns a text, students take it home and presumably read (or not) the text, and return to school prepared for an activity where students engage with the text for some purpose, e.g., a quiz, a discussion, a group project, etc. Of course, students do not always read the text, or at least not in expected ways, and subsequent classroom activities flitter away time in the guise of "doing" the text. Yet, teachers claim that learning to read, interpret and respond to assigned texts will prepare students for the "real world." And, of course, students are in school to learn strategies, skills and content that will enable them to participate and contribute to the multiple communities they will be a part of, including the possibility of post-secondary education.

For students the real world includes school and assigned texts. So how can students learn how to read, interpret and respond to texts in school? How can these practices in school lead students to read, interpret and respond to texts in other contexts--or the other "real world" reading events?

If we accept that school and classrooms present a real world context for students to read, interpret and respond to texts, how do we first show students how to prepare and engage with these texts for purposes outlined by teachers, schools, districts, and personal, among others? A beginning point is the context for where the assignment originates and with how to show students how to read multiple layers of context in which the reading event is embedded.