"What do i do with English language learners and inexperienced readers in my class?"

I'm going to rant...

On page 158 in Booth Olson, I was reading the section with the title of this blog. This section offered suggestions for teaching longer works of literature to remedial students, and I have to say that every sentence I read upset me even more than the previous. The author (as well as MW Kaiser and M Lindfors say that "all students whould have access to siginificant works of literature." I definitely agree with this, but I do not agree that such students should be given "budget tours." The author disagrees with "watered-down versions" of texts, but approves of skipping/only reading selected passages? There IS a difference, but I don't think that it's significant enough. "so they all would comprehend 'what is happening?'" Yeah, THAT'S all that's important. Students need not only to know what is happening, but why things are happening, and what they mean. In this situation, the teacher previews the text and decided which sections "can" be read and understood. Especially when it comes to the students who are not English language learners, students CAN do whatever you are willing to help them to do; it just takes a little more effort on the part of you, their teacher. It's good that the activities for these classes were the same as the regular students, but it angered me when it was stated that the ideas expressed by the two groups of students were "remarkably similar." Why is this remarkable? Are remedial students unable to learn and improve and generate ideas that are comparable to those of regular students? "Kaiser noted that hear students' self-esteem was heightened when they were assigned to read the same literature as the high-achieving students." Do you think their self-esteem would be heightened if you told them "You're reading parts of this book because I don't think that you would be able to read the whole thing." Absolutely not. I'm stopping here because it brings me to a point where I can refer to a real-life situation sort of like this.

At our first All-CURE (Cortland's Urban Recruitment of Educators) meeting this semester, we had a guest speaker who actually works here at C-State (I can't think of his name or title at the moment, but I think he is the follow-up coordinator for CURE alumni.) Anyway, he used to teach in Boston, in (i think) the poorest school in the city, or at least one of them. He taught "D-level" 9th grade English-the bottom of the HS English barrell. He was told to teach his class a watered-down version of Julius Caesar(to me, not very dissimilar to taking a "budget tour", and didn't think it was such a good idea, because he, like probably nobody else, believed in his students. He brought the watered-down book to his class and said something along the lines of "This is what they expect you to read because of your level." He told them that the other classes were reading the real thing, and that they weren't expected to be able to. He gave them the choice between reading the watered-down book or the whole thing, and they chose the whole thing. They had to spend a little more time reading the book, esp. on certain passages, but they read the whole book. They did tons of activities such as skits during their reading and loved it. That year, the honors teacher proposed holding a Shakespeare festival and asked if English 9d would be interested. He was almost astonished to hear that they would DEFINITELY be interested. The Shakespeare festival came, and, according to the man who I can't name at the moment, 9d blew the socks off of the other classes. They had such passion and really enjoyed it. Because he believed in them. This is a success story, and It pains me to know that new teachers are reading this to figure out what to do with remedial students, because I feel very strongly about believing in students.


...Way to have faith, Booth Olson.

ps-excuse any typos, because I wrote this in a manic state and don't feel like revising.. haha..