Foreword:
I had just stuffed a bleached cow skull into a box along with a handful of
paintbrushes, some frayed pieces of burlap, and a packet of bulletin board
letters. Such is the behavior of a teacher dismantling his classroom for
the summer. I was eyeing a thirty-gallon fish tank filled with giant
tadpoles, each swimming about ina different metamorphic state on its way to
full bullfrog maturity. How on earth was I going to persuade my wife to let
me keep them in our garage all summer? What would I do with the tank of
crickets on which the mature frogs fed? And what about poor Mildred, the
salad-plate—sized Argentine frog that spent her days in a smaller tank
perched atop a heating pad? Worse yet, what about the cage of perpetually
perpetuating field mice on which Mildred fed?
A ringing phone provide
reprieve from these nagging questions. On the other end of the line was a
person from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for
Washington State. She wondered if I would be interested in helping with a
series of institutes for elementary teachers during the coming summer.
Margaret Mooney would be working with the teachers to develop a cadre of
solidly trained mentors who in turn would help train teachers in their own
school districts over the next two or three years. Would I be interested in
facilitating small group discussion with these teachers as they were being
trained by Margaret? I gasped. A tadpole splashed. Mildred let out a
bark. I uttered an excited and nervous “yes,” and the world turned upside
down.
Several weeks later on
the campus of Western Washington University , one hundred teachers and
reading specialists came together for their first institute. To observe
Margaret Mooney with a room full of teachers is to see the very art of
teaching itself. She can bring a group to the edge of their chairs and to
the cusp of the own understanding in a flash. Once there, Margaret advises,
challenges, probes, and propels her audiences to ever deeper understandings
of their own profession and practice. With the delicacy and precision of a
scalpel and the force of a jackhammer, Margaret asks questions. “How does
the structure of your classroom and your use of time reflect your personal
philosophy of reading instruction?” “Whose room is it anyway, yours or
theirs?” “During guided reading, how does the text form support meaning
making?” “Are your struggling readers needy or worthy?” “Who is
responsible for children learning to read? The products and books you buy,
or you, the teacher who uses them?”
Traditionally, elementary
students have been raised on a fare of fantasy fiction. Margaret challenged
the teachers with whom she worked to question that practice. If students
were going to be expected to master more complex text forms by fourth grade,
then why shouldn’t they be exposed to them in kindergarten? If we were going
to expose students to the same text forms they would be encountering later
in life, which forms and what about each of them should we teach?
To these questions
teachers offered a variety fo answers with varying degrees of self-assurance
and self-doubt. After all, these were teachers who had been acknowledged by
their peers and administrators as outstanding. Each came with a solid
reputation and a history of successful teaching. Yet each was challenged by
Margaret’s questions. Never had they been asked to define their beliefs
about literacy instruction so precisely, or to articulate exactly how those
beliefs were made manifest in their daily interactions with students.
Intermingled with these
questioning sessions, Margaret taught techniques for shared and guided
reading. The group marveled at her ability to instruct. In doing so, she
used this same questioning strategy, but changed the focus of the reading
act. “If I tell you we are about to read a biography, what do you already
know about the text?” “How does this information help you to make meaning
of the text?” “How does the author manifest his or her biases as the text
progresses?” “To what extent are biography and autobiography alike?” “In
what context is one more appropriate than the other as a reading
selection?” As the group formulated responses to these questions, Margaret
pushed them further still. Each answer was greeted with a smile, a nod, and
a quizzical prod: “And what else?” That summer Margaret stretched each of
us to the very limits of our own understanding.
I returned to my
classroom the following fall feeling like a first-year teacher. How could I
incorporate all of Margaret’s strategies and questioning techniques into my
reading instruction? Why was I putting the bleached cow skull up? Which
expository texts would I house next to the tadpole tank and which by
Mildred? As so often happens, some of the these questions answered
themselves. For one, poor Mildred met her demise when an overly large mouse
got stuck in her throat. The first graders and I buried her in a pizza box
with all the pomp and circumstance that her noble girth deserved.
Seven-year-old Cory summed her life up best during his inspiring eulogy:
“Mildred was a good frog, but she was a bad pig. That’s why she’s dead.”
I’ve always been a “good”
teacher, but that year I became a purposeful one. As a result, my students’
reading skills and strategies and their ability to articulate their own
reading behaviors were deeper and richer than anything I’d seen in nearly
twenty years of classroom experience. My teaching was more focused,
intentional, and self-reflective than ever. As I met with the reading cadre
and Margaret throughout the school year, I heard stories similar to my own
from every participant. Margaret’s teaching had made a profound difference
for everyone.
Throughout the following
couple of years, as we worked with Margaret and the teacher leaders from
Washington State, a common frustration was expressed over and over. In
their preservice training, teachers had not focused on the variety of genres
and text features that we were expecting our students to master. As such,
they were spending an inordinate amount of time seeking appropriate texts
and making links between them. Most felt their instruction lacked the depth
it could have because of a gap in their own experience as readers and as
teachers of reading. As always, Margaret’s response was decisive, deep, and
completely practical. She developed a manual of text forms and features to
serve as a guide for Washington State teachers facing this dilemma. This
book is an elaboration and continuation of that earlier work.
In the past few years,
teachers and publishers have risen to the challenge of providing elementary
students with a rich array of fiction and nonfiction texts. Similar to
Margaret’s incredible teaching style, this reference book gives classroom
teachers the information to push further and to extend their skills even
deeper. As with all her work, Margaret’s questions ring loud and clear
throughout this volume. “Here is the information you need about text forms
and features and how they work together. Now, what are you going to do with
it? And what else?”
The very best teachers
share more than information and classroom experience with their students.
They inspire and provoke thought and introspection. They deliver just the
right amount of support and challenge for each stage of cognitive
metamorphosis. They model both the excitement and the satisfaction of
learning. In short, they change lives. Margaret Mooney is just such a
teacher!
Jerry Miller
