From Proof to Presence: Recentering the Reader-Text Relationship

I grabbed my well-worn copy of A Long Way Gone on my way out the door to hear Ishmael Beah speak at an event in Evanston, Illinois. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me how battered my paperback was. Later that evening, when I sheepishly handed it to him to sign, he said, in his meditative tone, “this is a book that has been loved.” His choice of words struck me. I was proud that he could see the curiosity and connection through the abuse his pages suffered in my hands, a unique tough love that I subconsciously apply almost exclusively to books that I teach. Aggressively annotated, held together with binder clips and packing tape, I know these books so well I can quote entire chapters from memory. My annotations are not a necessary reference tool, but rather a record of the many times I’ve played tour guide to wary teenagers cautiously entering new worlds.

When it’s time to begin a new class text, I neatly print my students’ names their books’ top edges and place a homemade bookmark inside each one before I hand over the book that will be our home for the next few weeks. My tattered copy stands in stark contrast to the tidy stacks of brand new books waiting to meet their reader. I suppose I romanticize the moment of text distribution, recalling only the earnest bookish girls who crack the spine immediately and bury their noses, inhaling the pages, or the stoic tough guys who ask “Hey Miss, do we get to keep these? Like, are they ours?”

“Get to.” “Ours.” I hold those words like a new mother, already forgetting the pain of childbirth -and the agony of kids who greet their book with a deep sigh asking if they “have to read the whole thing?” I’ve been teaching literature too long to be surprised by their show of negativity. I know it’s not the story or discussions they’re dreading. They dread being made to prove their presence on the page with annotations. Often, they approach their brand new paperback feeling already defeated, uncertain about what each chapter will hold, but knowing that whatever it holds will need to be highlighted and reflected upon in the margin for someone else’s approval.

Students’ frustration has a way of spreading, so when my friend and colleague, Jamie, Kramered into my classroom demanding “annotations: skill or tool?!” I was undeniably startled, though hardly surprised. She had chosen the right door to burst through; like her, I too felt stuck. For at least as long as I’ve been at this school, the curriculum has required students to annotate their texts and required the teachers to then evaluate and score those annotations. For over two decades, students’ annotations have been a summative assessment common among all English classes at my school. But now, in the context of an impatient world loudly insisting that adolescents no longer read, and a student body that is vastly different from the note-passing young millennials who filled my rosters back in 2004, I cannot understand why annotations remain the sacrosanct practice that has so stubbornly persisted.

Truly, annotations can be useful in writing and discussion, but what about the kids who don’t need them or whose train of thought is derailed by the distraction? What about the myriad of other ways a person can show that they’ve got their head in the reading game? Is our obsession with annotating teaching our students to engage with texts in a way that will be useful in the long run or are we just training them to fill a page with proof that they read it? My frustration is that annotation is often taught as the only tool (when it is even taught at all) and yet it is consistently evaluated as a skill unto itself.

Despite her grand entrance, Jamie initially seemed to be weighing the same simple question of whether annotations were a means or end unto themselves. In truth, though, she was taking aim at our entire pedagogical framework for literacy instruction -a fight I am only too happy to square up for at her side. Why are we so set on making kids prove their engagement with texts in one, oddly specific way? It is especially strange given that we don’t often teach them why annotating is beneficial nor how to do it in a practical way. Instead we continue reinforcing unsustainable, grueling reading habits that build resentment over time and leave bright young scholars daunted by the mere thought of honors track courses.

So, if not annotations, what does engagement with a text look like? How can I tell that a text is “book that has been loved”? And, since we’re talking about American public schools, how do I measure that engagement and use the data I collect? Regardless of the skills and abilities of the reader, to be engaged with a text is to comprehend an author’s overall narrative or argument, actively using repair strategies when necessary. To explore multiple layers of meaning -consciously or subconsciously. To be able to discuss the work thoughtfully; questions being more important than answers. To critically reflect and write about both the text itself and the contextualized experience of reading it. And to approach new ideas, themes, techniques, and language with curiosity.

I’m interested in studying what these values can look like in practice. But while we forge ahead, inviting young readers back to books, and rekindling curiosity on one side of the classroom door, we face demands for accountability, assessment, and commonality on the other. Politicians, academics, edtech giants, and other stakeholders (whose influence often exceeds their investment) may have the time and bandwidth to debate the delicate balance being sought in schools like mine. But I am in the classroom, where the calendar and clock are as unrelenting as the scrutiny from folks on the other side of the door.

This is the machine Jamie was raging against the day she stormed my classroom. Yet, day in and day out, I witness her facilitating authentic engagement by designing opportunities for students to learn and practice a variety of strategies within an age-appropriate curriculum that she has carefully aligned to the needs and interests of the community of readers on her roster. This is a high bar, but with a grounding set of values and a plan in place, it is not outside the reach of committed educators. This is where I am beginning -the call to adventure if we want to be literary, and an open invitation to join me in articulating a new vision for authentic engagement in the literacy classroom.

I’ve grown as a professional in the years since I met Ishmael Beah that night in Evanston. I was wrong to assume that it was my annotations that impressed him. The worn out book itself was only one piece of the puzzle. I was an hour from home on a school night, having survived parking in downtown Evanston, stealing moments here and there to grade quizzes, swapping babysitter woes with other moms, and greeting a cluster of my students who turned up at the event too. In unique and telling ways, all of these facts point to a strong love for the book in my hands and to my commitment to this text as an engaged reader.

Six years later, in 2020, our paths crossed again. Beah was redefining the author-press-circuit to promote his novel, Little Family, in the midst of a global pandemic and invited me to join him on Instagram Live to talk about the power of storytelling, especially for teens, especially in times of crisis. His invitation came, not from his memory of my aggressively annotated text, but from having tagged him in Instagram posts where I share lessons, strategically cropped photos of my students reading Bra Spider stories together, playlists for listening to the songs mentioned in his memoir, and pictures of readers deeply exploring nature imagery in chapter eight from the wilds of a suburban Midwest school courtyard. In short, it came from evidence of students engaging authentically with a text in the day to day bustle of classroom life.

When the afternoon of our Instagram Live arrived, my students flooded the chat. They wanted to know if Ishmael ever reconnected with the nurse who took care of him in the second half of the memoir. They wanted to know why his writing style was so different in his later books than it was in his memoir. They were curious what music he was listening to these days. The frenetic pace and urgency of the comment section had no space for annotations. Their relationship with the text was never a question; rather, it was, as it always has been, the answer.

As educators we are often reminded to build relationships. Stand at your door, greet your students, de-escalate conflict, use restorative practices and repair conferences. We can poke fun, but we also know that it’s true: our professional success or failure lives and dies by relationships. As literacy educators, the relationship between reader and text is at the foundation of all of the content we teach and it deserves our attention and nurturing.

Now is the time to overhaul our approach so as to center the reader-text relationship, impart practical skills for navigating story, and equip our scholars with a wide array of tools to bridge their individual needs with the demands of diverse types of texts in a variety of environments. Looking ahead, I’ll dive deeper into specific engagement strategies, share concrete examples from classrooms, and explore how we can practically balance accountability and curiosity to build a new vision for literacy education.

Big thanks to Jamie, Jen, and my Dear Sweet Wesley.