NORTHWEST
EDUCATION
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VANCOUVER, Washington—Like a tent revival preacher, Jeffrey Wilhelm has his audience hanging on every word. The high-energy English Education professor from Boise State University bounces around the cavernous atrium of Hudson’s Bay High School, exhorting secondary teachers to connect literacy with their classrooms.
Lucky for Wilhelm, most of the audience has already joined the fold. Maybe that’s because they’ve seen the district’s reading and writing scores steadily climb as the result of a four-year literacy initiative. Or, maybe they’ve seen reluctant students come alive during lessons that incorporate Wilhelm’s dramatic techniques like “hot seat,” “talk radio,” or “good angel/bad angel.”
Many of these teachers have spent the school year reading up on Wilhelm’s strategies, practicing them, and discussing the results in small study groups. They’ve also had the opportunity to hear Wilhelm and watch him model lessons on three different visits to the Vancouver School District. Like faithful congregants, they keep coming back for more.
Wilhelm, who somehow finds time to teach university classes, direct the Boise State Writing Project, author 14 books, and conduct research in middle and high schools, is understandably picky about the coaching services he offers. He’s agreed to add Vancouver to his dance card because of the district’s commitment to literacy.
“I only go into schools where it’s understood by the administration, the principals, the curriculum director that everybody’s got to be a teacher of literacy,” he explains. “I’m very clear before I come to a school district about what the research base shows is necessary for success: administrative buy-in and knowledge; active support for making changes and an evaluation system that encourages risks; and multiple layers of assistance over time. If those things aren’t in place, then I’m not really interested because I want to spend my time doing things that I think will work.”
Vancouver clearly has the scaffolding in place to make it work. Each middle and high school in the district employs at least one literacy specialist. They coach other staff members and teach special classes for students who are below benchmark but don’t require intensive interventions. At the high school level, literacy classes not only focus on developing stronger readers but also target skills needed to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL)—a requirement for graduation starting with the class of 2008.
Coupled with all those student options is a hefty dose of professional development for teachers. In the past, faculty members here have worked intensively with national reading expert Cris Tovani and Washington school reform researcher Duane Baker. Layne Curtis, the district’s curriculum director, estimates that about half of Vancouver’s 300 high school teachers are taking advantage of the latest round of trainings by Wilhelm. The sessions, paid for by a federal smaller learning community grant, are also open to select middle school teachers and literacy coaches.
During his May visit, Wilhelm gets down to business by addressing problems in instructional practice. “Research shows that in the typical classroom the teacher talks 80 percent of the time and when students talk, it’s usually off-task,” he tells the assembled teachers.
One way to turn that around is to force students to “make moves,” like a chess player or baseball hitter up at bat. Wilhelm stresses the need to “front load”: activating students’ prior knowledge and building personal connections to the text. By way of example, Wilhelm adopts the role of Ted Turner as he introduces a short story called “The Chaser.” He asks the teachers to pretend they’re CNN reporters being offered a dangerous assignment.
He explains there’s a new pheromone-based perfume available on the black market. If you wear it around someone for an extended period, the person will become delirious and think he’s in love with you. Then he asks which “journalist” is brave enough to go undercover and try to purchase and use the perfume. The question touches off a heated discussion about the pitfalls and possible benefits associated with such an assignment.
This segues into a role-play. “Students” talk to their best friends about why they should or shouldn’t buy the perfume for an upcoming date with someone whose affection they’re trying to win.
Now it’s time to read the story, which revolves around a man who buys a love potion, despite the potential for disastrous consequences. A series of questions helps the reader gain entry, starting with the choice of the title. Students circle words in the text and write or draw their impressions in the wide margin. In pairs, they talk about what they were thinking as they read. Later, a volunteer comes to the front of the room and represents the main character of the story. Teams of “good angels” and “bad angels” offer arguments urging him to buy the potion or resist the temptation.
In yet another extension, the group imagines what happens six weeks after the character uses the potion. The students write letters to the mysterious old man who sold the mixture, describing the aftermath. Trading letters, partners circle a phrase that seems especially intriguing or apt. To everyone’s delight, Wilhelm combines the random phrases into a surprisingly coherent chorale reading that’s performed in front of the class.
The time flies by and the demonstration ends. A short story has been transformed from a half-dozen lifeless pages into a modern morality play that probes the nature of love, the qualities of a good relationship, and the unforeseen costs of getting what you want: All topics guaranteed to spark the interest of the typical hormonal teenager.
Sally Kroon, a language arts teacher at Vancouver’s Alki Middle School, knows firsthand how Wilhelm’s approach can light up a class. Last year, she based her master’s thesis and reading endorsement work on Wilhelm’s text, Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension: Using Drama Strategies to Assist Improved Reading Performance (2002, Scholastic).
Kroon experimented with more than a dozen action strategies, keeping a detailed journal and asking her students to reflect on the lessons as well. Among the favorites were the “hot seat,” where one student adopts the persona of a character and fields questions from the entire class; “talk radio,” where the teacher poses a question and students “call in” as literary characters, newsmakers, pop culture heroes, or local personalities; and role-plays, where students reenact scenes from a book or predict what happens next.
“It changed my teaching,” admits the five-year veteran, who was able to observe Wilhelm modeling lessons in her classroom. “I had never tried using drama before with my kids. The positive results I saw and all the students’ comments sold me on it: I’m going to use it from now on.”
Kroon drew three conclusions from her research:
Kroon’s colleague, Alki Literacy Coach Rebecca Lofgren, has also borrowed successfully from Wilhelm’s repertoire of research-based strategies. As the new term begins, she demonstrates a “think-aloud” in first-year teacher Ryan Coffey’s classroom.
Coffey has invited Lofgren to “change things up” in his seventh-grade block classroom. “I have a strong writing background,” Coffey confides, “but she’s the reading expert. I might as well take advantage of that resource.”
Lofgren starts with an “opinionaire,” asking the kids to respond to 10 true or false statements about the behavior of powerful readers. The exercise will help Coffey and Lofgren construct a baseline of how the class regards reading.
Then, in a think-aloud, Lofgren shares a colorful newspaper article about the death of Steve Irwin, television’s “Crocodile Hunter.” She talks about how the author’s word choice affected her emotionally and how Irwin makes her think of her own daredevil brother. Students chime in with their own observations and analyze the reading strategies that they’re using—from visualization to prediction and clarification.
“I’m trying to unlock the key to your brain,” Lofgren tells the class. “There are probably 15 things going on [when you’re reading] that you’re not even aware of.”
Later she explains, “Wilhelm does a good job of unveiling the mystery of reading for teachers and kids. I can’t teach the same way after hearing him speak.”
At Fort Vancouver High School, Kathy Wolfley faces the challenge of making reading palatable to a Benchmark Literacy class: juniors who did not pass the 10th-grade WASL in reading, writing, or both. As the school’s literacy specialist, Worley teaches two classes and spends the remainder of her time as a resource for other teachers—“the coalition of the willing,” she calls them.
In a sixth-period class filled predominantly with males, Wilhelm’s research on literacy in the lives of young men seems especially resonant. Wolfley tries to grab students’ attention with a role-play—posing as a documentary filmmaker who’s interviewing the author of a memoir.
To model questioning during a writing exercise, she places a ticket stub for “So You Think You Can Dance?” on the overhead projector. One boy wants to know why she paid $52 to see the show, while another asks what kind of dancing the performance featured. “I’m going to use these questions in writing in my journal about the event,” she tells the students, who have been practicing asking each other questions about their own journal entries.
“This isn’t for sissies,” Wolfley dryly observes after the end-of-school bell rings. Reaching these kids—both as a classroom teacher and as a coach of other faculty—not only takes mining strategies from multiple sources like Wilhelm, Duane Baker, and Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue (of Understanding by Design fame). It also requires administrators who are thoroughly versed in effective literacy practice and the coach’s role in fostering it. “The more they understand it, the more they support it,” she believes. “Otherwise, it just becomes the latest thing to come across their desk.”
Sherri Clark, a friend and codirector of the district’s Summer Literacy Academy, echoes Wolfley’s sentiments. “There has to be leadership and recognition of what it [coaching] looks like,” she says. “Principals must really understand what that position is and how to support it.” She suggests that support should include incentives like release time for teachers to debrief after coaching sessions.
Like Wolfley, Clark works in a high-poverty high school where close to half the population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. She’s found Wilhelm’s drama techniques helpful, but cautions that the teacher first needs to build trust among students and between herself and the class.
Clark observed Wilhelm doing a dramatization in a standard sophomore English class, examining which characters in Lord of the Flies were good, evil, or both. “I would say it was quite successful. It really pushed [kids] to think deeply about the characters. Jeff started with the kids’ own experiences but took them way beyond their own lives into the life of the novel,” she recalls. Another demonstration, with a group of sophomores who read at the fourth- to seventh-grade level, was not as successful. “The kids were much less comfortable with what they were asked to do,” she says.
Venturing into another’s classroom and demonstrating lessons can have its pitfalls, but it’s one of the most powerful ways to help change practice. That way, says Wilhelm, resistant teachers can’t claim “well, it won’t work with my kids.” Wilhelm points out, “We go in and show them it can.”
What else is needed for a district to keep focused on literacy? “Vancouver has done a great job with this,” Wilhelm asserts. “First of all, they actively say ‘we want every teacher to be a teacher of literacy.’ Second, they provide assistance through literacy coaches and me modeling it in the classroom. There’s administrative buy-in, an articulated vision, and multiple levels of assistance: All the pieces are in place.”
The payoff comes with the arrival of the latest WASL results: 10th-grade reading scores climbed to almost 80 percent proficiency—up a dozen points from last year— and writing improved by eight points to 78 percent. Four years ago, when the literacy push started, only half of the district’s 10th-graders were proficient readers.
“I feel good about the trajectory,” says Curriculum Director Curtis. “Four years’ worth of work is manifest in those data, and I expect to sustain and increase the gain.”
With expert coaching, the district is well on its way. 
Original URL: http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/12-01/acting/
This online version is based upon the print version of the magazine. The information contained in it was current at the time of printing/posting.
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Copyright © 2006, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
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