Making the case for Representative, complex texts

This piece was originally published by Achieve the Core as part of their Peers and Pedagogy blog. Tina De La Fe is a Director of Content and Coaching at Leading Educators where she supports educators in West Michigan to advance equitable opportunity in the classroom.

As an instructional coach, I get to work with dozens of educators every year who are passionate about fair opportunity. It’s inspiring to see how teachers are questioning what makes literature worthwhile, reflecting on their own mindsets, and including a greater variety of authors in their classroom texts. With greater representation, these stories can disrupt the narrow, dominant narratives prevalent in the English canon.

It gives me pause when I consider whether this movement is actually improving student outcomes. We have all seen the data about how ELA proficiency continues to decline, especially for students of color.

When faced with the impacts of a pandemic, a devastating teacher shortage, and curricular wars about balanced literacy and “three-cueing,” diversifying texts feels like an achievable goal. Adding to our classroom libraries can be a quick win. New, engaging books convert reluctant readers and boost teacher morale. “More representative texts” is a checkmark we can make on our concrete action lists toward more abolitionist institutions.

The question I’m wrestling with is this: When teachers are selecting new texts — or allowing students to choose texts — where and how does the Science of Reading play a part?” 

What to Consider When Selecting Texts

Teachers are doing exhaustive analyses of texts or entire curricula for adoption, using culturally responsive evaluation tools that center intersectional representation across identities. But if the analysis ends there, what results is a swapping of priorities rather than an expansion of strong instruction.

If we truly believe in and hold high expectations for our students, we must also provide them access to rigorous, grade-level materials and tasks. The texts we offer must build their content knowledge, their willingness to grapple with complex text, and their ability to independently make meaning from text.”

If we are switching out Macbeth for The Hate You Give, is it because there are too many “dead white guys” in the 9th-grade canon, or is it also because we’re hoping for a “more accessible” text that is a whole lot easier to scaffold? Are we sacrificing rigor and cognitive struggle for texts with language that is more “on the students’ level”? Are we assuming that “these students” are not interested in Shakespeare because of who they are and where they come from?

Recently, I completed a Student Achievement Partners course and was ecstatic to see how closely the facilitators interwove the ELA standards with the “windows” and “mirrors” we all love to embrace. The new qualitative complexity rubric is a useful tool for planning instruction around texts. And I couldn’t help but notice the closing reflections of participants in the course, which skewed heavily toward the challenges of representation.

Few seemed ready to discuss the appropriate text complexity or scaffolds required to move all students to proficiency. It makes me think of a tweet from Zaretta Hammond:

The truth of your commitment is evidenced in your literacy rates for Black and Brown children.” 

If the books we provide to children aren’t advancing their literacy proficiency, how might we be replicating the centuries-old patterns of oppression in our schools? If our African-American texts center around “engaging, low-lift” stories of violence or our Latinx stories are all about immigration, what messages are we sending about how we honor our students and their rich lived experiences? Do James Baldwin, Angela Davis, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez get equal time with Jason Reynolds or Sandra Cisneros in our syllabus?

In my collaborations with teachers this year, I am striving to avoid a “single story” about how to provide all students access to literacy. High-quality, standards-aligned materials cannot do the job alone. Neither can representative texts.

Supporting teachers to connect literacy to purpose

This year, I am supporting educators in envisioning their instruction holistically. I am starting with The Opportunity Myth and connecting it to the Michigan Department of Education’s literacy guidance, which aligns nicely with Gholdy Muhammad’s literacy model. We investigate how our instructional practice reflects our mindset. We invite teachers to connect literacy to purpose with The Civically Engaged Classroom.

In the lower grades, my colleagues use science-based approaches to foundational skills with Equipped for Reading Success. 

For my part, I will continue to savor every bite of the “low-hanging fruit” of texts that reflect every learner while also promoting expertise in the scientific and technical aspects of reading.