Huffing and Puffing: Overcoming the Literacy Gap with Children's Books

In a metaphor about disparity, if we were to compare our district’s literacy problem with The Three Little Pigs, would our students be the little pig that built his house out of sticks? The lucky students – the ones that survive our educational system – started building their academic literacy early, reading children’s books and having their parents read to them. Parental involvement in a child’s reading development has proven to increase student literacy in later years. However, access to fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs, nursery rhymes, and children’s books is limited, albeit assumed universal. Students in high school that are still tested as Limited English Proficient (LEP) often do not have the same extensive reading background or parents with proficient levels of English literacy. In Los Angeles, the population of LEP students is mostly low-income, minority students, making the literacy gap a social justice gap. If the metaphor extends, the future is bleak for the little pig that did not have enough time or resources to build a strong foundation. The Big Bad Wolf usually gets that one.

A California Teacher of the Year winner once taught my education class an engaging lesson on how to teach story grammar. The lesson requires students to have prior knowledge about the fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs. When I tried the lesson in my classroom, only half of my students knew the story. Educators often assume that students have had as extensive a background in childhood reading. However, many students are not born and raised in English-speaking homes or in homes populated by print materials.

When a high school student’s literacy is founded in reading at a young age, students with parents who are not proficient in any language are at a disadvantage. Literacy can be increased when parents participate in shared reading with their children. In the classroom, students face a number of literacy challenges from reading comprehension to literary analysis. Exposure to books at home would better develop their reading skills, which in turn, will better develop their skill set. Reading more will help students develop a decoding system, but that may not guarantee comprehension of what they read.

As a high school English teacher, accepting that early childhood experiences (or lack thereof) in reading have irrevocably affected their literacy is difficult. Understanding why students are grade levels below in reading is frustrating. Expecting parents with little education and no English language proficiency to teach shared reading strategies with their children is impractical. Our solutions to battling low levels of literacy may need to start with our current high school students’ parents and younger siblings. Change is generational, after all. After school, schools need to teach parents the necessary reading skills that need to be transferred from parent to child. Many schools have parent centers that can do more than teach life skills and English.

High school teachers can assign their students more projects that ask students to share their learning with younger siblings and students in the elementary school. For example, last year in my 9th grade English class, my students made their own children’s books on stories from the Odyssey and Greek Mythology. We then walked across the street to Gratt’s Elementary School to read our books to first and second graders. The younger students loved the visit and were impressed by the bigger students’ skill and knowledge about the stories. My students finally recognized that our two themes for the year – voice and agency – could be realized in themselves. Some versions of that famous tale of the three pigs have a happier ending. The wisest pig – the one that took the time to build a strong foundation – saves his unluckier friends by inviting them to seek shelter with him. We must recruit our older students to help younger students become strong readers and ultimately literate citizens.

I Am From . . . the poetry of my students

This year I am teaching five classes of 9th grade English. Each student wrote an "I am from" poem. Here is our class poem, built from their disparate and echoed lines . . .

I am from the ordinary things; ordinary places; ordinary feelings; ordinary life.
I am from the letters in the word “Latina,”
And brown skin, black hair and dark brown eyes,
From the hard work my grandfather did on the farms,
The effort that my dad put to finish his education for a better future for his and our lives,
From the mother that came across the border to make my life better.
I’m from California and hardworking ranch ancestors,
From tortillas and avocados,
From lumpia and pancit;
I am from aguas frescas, from mangoes and watermelons,
From tamales and pasole, cooking in the kitchen.
I’m from playing soccer with my family and going to church every Sunday,
From Santa knows you’re awake and put your tooth under the pillow.
I am from the ocean,
The seaweed, drifting, shifting, always restless,
From the alarm clock that won’t stop.
I’m from the love of El Salvador y Guatemala;
I am from the 15 de Septiembre.
I am from the heart-filling moments when everyone is together, united as one,
From stop fighting with your sisters, make up, and say sorry.
I’m from the proud . . . and the humble.
I’m from fights that never seem to end and from feelings you hold back,
From hola mijo and que onda.
I am from the rain and thunder, cold air and water that have not poured since last year,
From have pride in your culture and give respect to get respect.
I’m from love is patient; love is kind, and the whole verse of how love should be,
From photo album after photo album in the overwhelming bookcase,
Each with many faces in many places,
With a memory and story behind them all.
I am from home,
A place where I can find myself close to care, truth, hope, enjoyment, happiness, affection,
And love.

On Learning Spanish Para Mejorar Mi Trabajo

I went to Guatemala for three weeks this summer to relearn my long-lost Spanish language skills. Last year, when I (rarely) met the parents of my students during parent nights, school activities, and chance encounters at the neighborhood grocery store, I always said the same thing: "Hola, mucho gusto, lo siento pero mi espanol es muy horrible." I am not stupid (other than in Spanish). I know that the reason parents rarely attended school events is because of the big fat language barrier between the home and the school. Almost all of the teachers at my school do not know how to speak Spanish. Almost all of the parents do not know how to speak formal English. Their (fear? embarrassment? resistance?) towards school events matches my (fear! embarrassment! resistance!) towards calling parents at home, scheduling conferences, and making small talk during those chance encounters at Trader Joe's. "Hola, coma esta? Estoy bien, gracias. Si, yo estoy comprando mi comida para la semana . . . Bueno, mucho gusto. Hasta luego." [when, in my head, I'm screaming: Hi, how are you? I'm doing well, thank you. Yep, just buying groceries for the week. I am glad I ran into you; I wanted to talk to you about Edwin's recent behavior in class. As you know, he is such a bright student, his ability to read a passage and know exactly what the author is getting at is really impressive. He is one of the best students in my class at analyzing evidence. But despite his intelligence, he has not been doing any work in class. I am worried about his recent behavior: talking back to the teacher, refusing to complete assignments, distracting other students from working. Have you noticed any change in your son's behavior at home? Yes, I see. Well, I would love to speak to you later at your convenience. Maybe after school on Monday. Would you be able to speak on the phone? Excellent. Good to see you. See you later."]

There are a thousand things I can do differently next year to improve my teaching. I know because I had plenty of time to reflect in Guatemala, by myself and in English, which let's admit, is a medium that presents a heck of a lot more verb options for me than Spanish. Number one on my list of new and improved strategies: communicate with parents. If I could somehow communicate with parents using every euphemism and respectful tense I want to use, I would see positive changes in my classroom. Student motivation would increase and behavioral problems would dissipate. Those ellipses in my conversations with parents would fill with the words that rattle in my brain, lost in translation.

And so I went to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala for three weeks of Spanish immersion, living with a host family and taking 25 hours of one-on-one Spanish instruction per week. Can I have that Trader Joe's conversation in Spanish now? Hahaha. Excuse me. Jajaja. No, of course not. I improved my listening skills. I relearned verb tenses: conditional, imperative, reflexive verbs, past progressive, etc. I just did not have enough time to speak in these tenses and really cement them in my mind.

Next year, when I meet the parents of my students, I will be able to say: "Hi, nice to meet you, thank you for coming. My Spanish is not very good, but it's not bad either."

El ano proximo, cuando yo encontrare a los padres de mis estudiantes, yo podria decir: "Hola, mucho gusto. Gracias por venido. Mi espanol no es muy bueno, pero tampoco no es muy malo."

And we'll see what happens.

The Montebello-Born, Texas-Raised South Asian American Who Loves to Read

On the first day of school this year, while completing our “I am From” poems, I told my students that I was born in Montebello, California. “You’re from East LA, miss?!” Their voices were filled with admiration and surprise. I felt validated by my birthplace. For some reason, feeling so often an outsider in this community, I played up my Montebello ties – far more than my New York or Texas suburbia upbringing.

I was not lying. I was born in Montebello, CA in 1985. Two years later, my family moved to Rye Brook, NY because of my father’s job with Citibank. The next seven years were spent in idyllic suburbia. I do not know how to explain to anyone in my new life that, yes, our house did have white picket fences with an apple tree in the backyard and a weeping willow over the driveway. In New York, my parents carefully strategized my older sister’s and my language acquisition. My parents spoke Hindi and Gujarati (a Western Indian dialect), but they were adamant that my sister and I learned perfect English. So instead of speaking to us in their native language, they only conversed with us in English. My older sister showed a flair for English. A voracious reader, she would read to me every day. Her ability to assimilate in the classroom made my parents proud.

My mother was born in Gujarat, and my father was born in Uttar Pradesh, India. He came to America in 1971 to attend college, and my mother soon followed when she married my father. Despite living in America longer than they lived in India, they are both very culturally Indian. I, however, consider myself South Asian. In college, I had Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Afghani friends. Making the mistake of assuming they were Indian was a huge insult. It was safer to identify as South Asian. This experience is not unlike what I witness at my school. My Salvadorian students and Guatemalan students take offense if you assume they are Mexican. I have learned that the complicated history of India and Pakistan can be as divisive as the history of Central Americans and North Americans. In short, I refer to my students as Latino – a term both vague and inclusive.

My dad came to America in 1971 not knowing a single person. He came with a hundred dollars and a golden ticket. He loves to tell that story. He then goes on to say that the golden ticket was priceless – a college admission letter to USC. His whole life, and therefore my life, too, has been centered on the value of education. Our implicit belief in education as the means to success and happiness has determined a lot of the decisions we make in our life.

One of the biggest differences between my experience and what I see in my students’ lives is the importance of education. My parents assumed I would go to college. My dad even made a cheeky comment about not wanting to go to my sister’s college graduation (“isn’t that the point of going to college, anyway?”). High school was a GPA race to finish first. Each point on each test tormented us. So many of my students are apathetic about grades. Many are excited just to pass let alone argue that their 88% should really be an 89%.

I am respectful and proud of my English students’ ability to navigate a new language. They do it with more confidence than I could muster for my experiences at language acquisition. Having immigrant parents allows me better insight into their lives, but I do not pretend to know everything. Perhaps a more telling way of how I value the diverse backgrounds and languages of my students is in that “I am From” poem from the beginning of the year. I shared my poem with them:

I am from bicycles,

from Oreo cookies and marginal utility.

I am from the heat and swagger of Texas

(burning, big

it smells of barbeque.)

I am from the weeping willow,

the backyard apple tree

who sat three young girls

dreaming, scheming.

I’m from touching feet and fair skin,

from Kavita and Jane Austen.

I’m from the yell when angry

and the silent treatments,

from Dal Mein Kuch Kala Hai.

I’m from incense and aarti

taking off my shoes

entering a temple.

I’m from Montebello and Uttar Pradesh,

mangos and "chai" tea.

From the broken nose of my sister’s

crash at Macy’s

the lost hair of my father’s stress.

I am from the bookshelf in the white room

holding my best friends

torn covers, notes in the margin

I am from those pages

that have made me cry and let me fly.

I took some lines from the "I am From" poems of my students and combined the lines to make a class poem that I enlarged to fill a wall in our classroom:

I am from those moments

that when I laugh, I can’t stop laughing.

I’m from the loud and the rude.

From AplacateYa and

Toda Se Paga en Este Vida.

I am from quincianeras and Brown Pride.

I’m from the shut-ups and pass-it-ons

from quiet and forgets.

I’m from being impulsive at times and having

to scream almost everything I say.

From I have to work hard and always respect.

I am from the green, white, and red.

I’m from El Salvador, pupusas and tortas.

From believing in God and listening to elders.

I am from a family that is proud of

their nacionalidad.