Middle School Science teacher teaches students how to read

News flash: middle school and high school teachers all become certified reading specialists. Apparently, it is in fact true, according to Cris Tovani. I have found myself having difficulty this quarter maintaining motivation for all these classes that I see as irrelevant to my chosen career path: middle school science teacher. Every day I spend with my fourth grade class, I am more and more certain that all I want to teach is middle schoolers, and all I want to teach is science.

I chose to pursue a K-8 certificate with Middle Level Endorsements so that if I could not find a job in middle school, I would be able to work in an elementary school. I don't particularly want to teach high school, primarily because science in high school is very discipline-structured. You either teach biology, chemistry, or physics--not any ecology, geology, soil science, or other earth science which is where my passion is. Anyways, as someone being certified to teach K-8, I have to be able to teach all the subjects, so I am taking lots of classes that are not science classes. With my growing certainty that all I want to teach is middle school science comes a disengagement from math and, sorry, literacy.

I must be honest: I did not complete all my readings for literacy this past week. I carpool with two cohort-mates, one of whom is utterly fascinated by language and literacy, and I was discussing my disengagement from school with her. She told me that if I read any of the literacy readings this week, I should read Tovani, because Tovani talks about how all teachers, even middle school science teachers, are reading teachers. So, I took her for her word and read Tovani today.

I must be honest, her book is really relevant to me. I had more of a purpose for reading Tovani (as Tovani herself says, if a student does not see the purpose of the reading, than they won't act as a good reader and find all the meaning). I was surprised by her information, but at the same time, reflecting back on my dyad experience in the junior high school, I can visualize many fake readers and I also remember hearing teachers complain about how the material is too hard for the students and they have to tell them the nuggets, because kids can't get those on their own.

Well, looks like I'll be a reading teacher after all. I will need to show students how to make sense of the nonfiction content science text. I will also need to seek out engaging science writing. I have one dilemma with this--how do I know that something that I enjoy reading about a topic is not too hard for my students to read? Most of the science text I find interesting is targeted at adults--National Geographic articles, PCC monthly newsletter, nonfiction books about science, environmental articles at sightline.org, journal articles from researchers, case briefs from appeals and Supreme court cases, etc. How can I know if it's too hard for my students? I heard multiple times from teachers of science who have been teaching middle school science for 10-20 years that regular National Geographic and other science magazines are written at an inaccessible level for students. Are they really, truly, inaccessible, or are they just inaccessible because students do not know how to read for meaning? Do I really need to pay for kid versions of articles?

Another thing I found very interesting in Tovani's book was the bit about resistant readers: readers who know how to read for meaning but choose not to because they know that teachers will tell them the stuff they need to know anyway. I myself was a resistant reader at various times in my life. In college, I never read the assigned text before biochemistry class, I waited for the professor to tell me what I needed to know and took good notes during lecture. I only consulted the text when I was studying and reviewing for a test and I had not taken good enough notes to feel like I understood a specific part. Often, the science text in college, if I read it before class, it just confused me and made lecture really confusing. It was stressful, not helpful. For my law classes, on the other hand, I read the cases before class, almost always. Why did I choose to do this? I have no idea. It is kind of strange to read a text for a class in school and recognize yourself in the text.