What are some key assumptions that I should make about Immersion Literacy?
n It is not a quick fix. Once teachers begin to immerse their students in literacy, they won’t see the rewards of their efforts right away. It will take months, even years, to help students become highly literate. That’s why we need more people doing it. The more often students practice “high literacy” the more they become experts themselves.
n It is not a product. There are no Immersion Literacy books to buy or sure-fire lists of strategies. This is simply a philosophy of teaching that allows for great variety among teachers. Still, it comes with great responsibility because to do it half-way is to not do it at all.
n It is not a strategy list. The problem with strategies is that teachers tend to use one or two (say a Venn Diagram and two-column notes) and think they are “doing literacy.” They are not. They have been sold a bill of goods. The kids have been too. While a Venn Diagram or two-column notes is great, they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of “real” literacy. No student has ever been a better writer or reader because his teacher has used a Venn Diagram.
n It is not a popular idea. The idea of “real” literacy is so far from reality that it’s easy to ridicule it as impractical or even naïve. In fact, I would be the first to admit that the chances of pulling off “real” literacy in a school-wide fashion are terribly difficult. It’s much easier to sell people on the idea that a one-stop training or a strategy or two from a book is a more palatable fix, even a quick fix. While that “quick fix” approach is popular and more marketable, it’s not going to work. It never has and it never will.
n It is not original. Nothing suggested on this site is original. Almost all of the strategies and concepts, even the philosophies, are built on the backs on many great teachers and scholars who have toiled with literacy instruction for many generations. Like any good teacher, I have stolen generously from the teachers and writers who I admire (always giving them credit when I can).
Has this even been tried before? Has it worked?
Yes, though not on a wide scale. It has, though, worked quite well in a number of limited settings (such as a classroom or grade level). As a literacy trainer for my school district and as an assistant principal at a medium-sized high school, I have worked with thousands of teachers in both large-scale trainings (400-plus people) and in one-on-one tutoring sessions. I have seen the fruits of those labors many times, usually in snippets of lessons and units and rarely in full implementation. Of course, I have also seen it work in my own classroom. As a high school English teacher for 10 years, I taught a pretty typical and largely traditional brand of language arts for the first few years. From what I dare to remember, I read classical tales that were largely over my students’ heads, I went through the motions of weekly vocabulary quizzes and I had students write endless revisions of papers with no clear idea on how they might get better each time. In essence, I went through the motions of literacy – much like I see in our content classrooms. No one was learning how to read better or write better or think deeply.
That’s when I decided to draw on my days as a journalist and neophyte writer back in college. I decide to teach my students how to write. I mean, really teach them. I decided to read the newspaper, poetry, and highly readable non-fiction. I endeavored to help my students know the wonder of words and writing like I did. My goal was to let them in on the secrets that writers knew, the secrets that I was taught. In the end, they became their own editors and critics. They become close readers, more metacognitive. And they no longer needed me.
A few years ago, I shared some of these Immersion Literacy ideas with the other English teachers at my school and we joined in a combined effort to model writing and critical reading for our students. That same year, our 10th graders took the state writing assessment (the FCAT Writes) and 63 of our students garnered a perfect score. The previous year we had only six – a 10-fold increase in one year.
There are many more examples that I will share via the blog, including more about my own personal awakenings and those of my students.
