Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts—Falling In Love with Close Reading

[00:01] Justin Baeder:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Baeder. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] Justin Baeder:

I'm your host, Justin Baeder, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by co-authors Chris Lehman and Kate Roberts. The book is Falling in Love with Close Reading, Lessons for Analyzing Text and Life.

[00:29] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:31] Justin Baeder:

Chris and Kate, thank you so much for joining us. I wonder if we could start by having you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what brought you to writing this book.

[00:40] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

I'm Chris Lehman. My background is I'm an educator, former classroom teacher, then I was a staff developer with the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University, and now I speak and consult privately with schools around the world. And Kate and I met each other and became very good friends at the Reading and Writing Project, and that's where we together launched this book endeavor.

[01:05] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Yes, thank you, Justin. It's great to be here. I also was a middle school teacher for years before joining the Reading and Writing Project, where I still work. also consulting with schools around the country on literacy. And I think the first place where the book project came from, like Chris mentioned, is our friendship. But also I think from a growing sense as Chris and I talked about close reading and how the term was being used and what we were seeing out there, a growing concern that as the discussion was being moved forward that There was something kind of missing, which Chris and I named coincidentally in the title as a love, a love of reading, a love of kids and a love of teachers.

[01:50] Justin Baeder:

And when you say close reading, I can't help but just kind of naturally think of hard work and of getting some kind of dusty historical document placed in front of me to read very closely or else I'm just not going to get it because it's so dense. And your perspective is that close reading is something that we can fall in love with.

[02:08] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of our central arguments in the book is that close reading is something that is a really natural act, especially for things that you love deeply, that you care about. Your favorite book, you know lines from it. And even beyond books, thinking about life or media, You know the details of your favorite sweater or you know the facial expressions of your children just before they're about to lose it. You have fond memories of vacation places as a child. Or if you love going to museums, you might have a favorite artist and you kind of know his or her particular brush strokes or the way that they use color and shapes.

[02:52]

And so we think that the act of studying things closely, especially those things that we love, is so natural and normal that trying to extend that towards a way of looking at text really doesn't have to be all that complicated. It actually can be something that with a little bit of work, with some careful work around structures for kids, with some routines that we can teach them, we can extend that natural desire to look carefully at things and understand them better into the text that we read.

[03:22] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

To add on, I also, as we started doing this work on close reading, I think there was a point where Chris and I realized, okay, so you can't avoid the hard work of close reading or reading in general. But I do think it's somewhat of a misconception that hard work has to be unengaging or without love by definition. And really, by doing the hard work of close reading, we found that with kids, there's a ton of joy to be had in doing that hard work, in rolling up our sleeves and diving in for a closer look.

[03:55] Justin Baeder:

It sounds a lot like parenthood when you describe close reading as hard work that you really fall in love with and that is well worth it. Was that a part of the metaphor that you had in mind? Or take us into the argument that you're making in the book about how teachers can frame close reading for students.

[04:14] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

I mean, one thing that matters a lot to us, and Katie mentioned this earlier, is that when we looked at how close reading was being introduced, especially around the Common Core standards, it felt like a lot of examples were very teacher-driven, that you could not do this without a much more knowledgeable adult in the room who would kind of pepper you with text-dependent questions and point out exactly which lines were worth studying, and that you really needed an adult there. But what we know from our work in schools is that really kids with, you know, if you form good habits for them, our main goal as educators is to support them in being independent. And so one of the things that we do in our book and in the work that we do around close reading is to introduce kids to a routine or a structure. In our particular book, there's three steps to it. But we also argue in your classroom, in your school, there could be two steps or there could be five.

[05:08]

Like... the steps don't matter as much as it's a routine that you're teaching kids to do. And a part of that came from when we think about our lives, the things that we're good at, the stuff that we enjoy doing, there really are a few steps around it. Like learning to cook, there's just a couple of things you have to know to do, and then you can use those things over and over again.

[05:27] Justin Baeder:

So, Kate and Chris, it does seem like close reading is one of those topics that all of us are aware of. We know it's in Common Core, but maybe... Personally, we have not had much experience as learners being taught well how to do close reading. How do you raise that topic in the book?

[05:46]

Or how do you deal with that in the book?

[05:48] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Well, I think that one way we address the, I mean, one of the things I hear underneath what you're saying is the sort of intimidation we feel around close reading. I think that the image that comes up, like you brought up, Justin, is sort of like monks in a cave with religious texts, right? Pouring over the words, trying to discern the word of the divine. And that can really put people off if that's what we think of as close reading. So one of the ways that we speak against that idea or try to massage that idea a little bit is, you know, one, like Chris said, by naming a routine that we can repeat. And really anything that's very hard in our lives, if someone gives us a few steps to repeat over and over in order to try to get better or at least more independent in that thing, you know, we're going to get better at it over time.

[06:40]

That's one aspect. I think the other aspect is unpacking that idea that Just because something is academic or just because something is difficult, that therefore it needs to be remote or unengaging or intimidating to us and One of the things that we argue is that, for sure, we want to start with kids just as I would want to start learning something maybe intimidating like close reading. I want to start on something that I already am looking at closely. So, for example, we might begin teaching students to close read a text by using a popular song. You know, we start there not because we want to somehow get away from the written word or get away from tough texts or any of that, but that we want to capitalize on what kids already know how to do, what they're already listening to and reading over and over and over again.

[07:34]

So just because something's academic doesn't mean that we can't start on a text that is just inherently engaging to kids and that has a lot of relevance in their life. That being said, we want the work to be rigorous. You know, I don't think that just to engage kids we need to only have one direction in our classrooms, although it would be a fun classroom. So we feel that there's a relationship in close reading between starting a routine on a text that kids already are looking at closely and then moving that work, that independent work, into text that may feel a little more difficult.

[08:10] Justin Baeder:

Well, I love that idea of routines and kind of structures or habits that can be taught to students to help them engage in close reading independently. And I appreciate your point earlier about how we've seen close reading typically as something that puts a lot of responsibility on the teacher to provide background information And Chris, as you said, to point out which lines in the text are worth paying attention to. But you're teaching a more general process that can be applied to any text or really anything in life.

[08:41] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Yeah, that's correct. And so in the way that we're approaching it, we have kind of three big steps. So the first one is you're choosing how you're going to read the text. And a lot of our teaching and a lot of the teaching of teachers that have been using our book or working with us have done is it's not that we're telling kids what to look at. Instead, we're teaching them ways of looking. So in that first step when you're deciding how you're going to read, you could teach kids that one thing that's worth gathering in a text is word choice.

[09:11]

You ask yourself, what words seem to be really put here for a purpose, for a reason? And you read just gathering those up. Or maybe you're going to read paying attention mainly to dialogue. Or maybe you're going to read trying to look for structure. So you first start deciding what to look for. That already is giving kids ownership over how they'll read the text that they read And honestly, some choice around the text that they can apply this work to as well.

[09:37]

It's not just the one text that I'm demonstrating with. It could be anything. Then our second step is once you've gathered a bunch of that work, you then look for patterns. So you've gathered a bunch of words from a text, like one text we've been using recently is about black holes. And so you're gathering a bunch of words about black holes, and what you start to see is patterns arise. So like in that particular text, there's all of these words about strong and far away and kind of forces that are involved.

[10:05]

And so some of the ideas that were inside of the words in the text, you start to find patterns in those. And then our final step is that you create a new idea or you have a clearer understanding. It's kind of the purpose of all of this. And with that, you could have just a comprehension, just a clearer way of understanding what's going on, or you could analyze it. You could go back and look at that list of words, for example, that you collected and say, well, what tone am I noticing this author is using, and why do I think it's there? And so by doing that, we're still there.

[10:36]

We're teachers because we love reading and we love kids, but we're showing them how a process works so that they can then apply it and do the harder, more intellectual work of following those steps on almost any text.

[10:50] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

The image I have when I think about the teacher at the center of close reading is my own schooling in, say, college, when my professor would ask a question like, you know, what is the meaning behind the green light at the end of the doc? And then he would wait for students to raise their hand and offer an answer. And would kind of pick apart those answers, right? And that worked for a lot of people. Honestly, it worked for me because I already liked reading. I liked being a student and I was engaged.

[11:20]

But it didn't work as much for the students next to me who hadn't read, who weren't engaged with reading, who weren't confident about their abilities. So what Chris and I are seeking to do is to find a method of teaching close reading that everyone can be a part of, regardless of what the quote unquote right answer might be, which... we don't truly believe in.

[11:42] Justin Baeder:

So Kate and Chris, what can school leaders do to help their staff and their students get a better handle on close reading and make that a more essential part of the instruction that we provide for students to help them meet those new standards, whether they are working towards common core standards or not? What can school leaders do?

[12:02] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

I love this question, because I think, and I'm sure Kate, you would agree, that we work in many schools, and the schools that grow the most, regardless of their background, are ones where the school leaders are learning and growing along with the teachers. And so I'd say that's paramount to anything else, that you as leaders are involved with PD opportunities that your teachers are involved in. You're even in classrooms trying things out as well. Because we also quite often and unfortunately see the reverse. Like there's many a time where we're at a speaking engagement, let's say, and we almost always will have teachers that come up to us after and say, you know, I love all of this, it's really helpful, but the people that really need to hear this aren't here. Because my school leader tells me I have to do something else.

[12:49]

We have to follow a program or we have to do some particular thing that supposedly is standards aligned. But I, as the teacher know, doesn't really align to best practice. So I'd say that, that you treat close reading or almost like anything as a learning opportunity. And more than anything else, that means that you're with your staff. when they're learning and you're a learner along with them. I'd say the reverse of that is probably one of the worst decisions you could make is buying a program or a module from somewhere that says Common Core across the top and then just hoping that it runs on autopilot because it won't.

[13:25]

Learning schools are schools that learn.

[13:28] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Yeah. And to add to that, I think the idea of making choices where we are opening the conversation and opening the response and flexibility of the educators in our building to allow for innovation is really important. I think one way that we can close a conversation is to hand an educator a set of lessons, whether it's a box set or even a book someone writes, like like Chris and I's book and say, this is the way you have to do it. That stops an educator's ability to be innovative, to make decisions. Just like a teacher who says that I know the one interpretation of this text and I need my kids to know this one right answer, that's going to close conversation in our classrooms.

[14:12] Justin Baeder:

Well, and I think that's a great way to frame our purpose in teaching close reading, or really in teaching any skill, that it's not about getting students to understand that one particular text. It's about giving them transferable skills that they can take with them throughout life.

[14:27] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

Absolutely.

[14:28] Justin Baeder:

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Kate and Chris. Where can people find out more about what you do online?

[14:35] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

The homepage for the book is on Heinemann's website. And there we have a study guide that Kate and I wrote. And we often do webinars like we have some coming up this next year. And then my blog is my name, ChristopherLayman.com. Or I'm on Twitter at I, Chris Layman, like iPad at I, Chris Layman.

[14:54] Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts:

And I also have a blog at kateandmaggie.com. The blog's title is Indent. And I also am on Twitter at teachkate.

[15:04] Justin Baeder:

All right. Well, thank you again so much for joining us. And now, Justin Baeder on high-performance instructional leadership. So high-performance instructional leaders, what can we do to promote the kinds of instruction that empower students to do the rigorous work that they're asked to do by today's standards? How can we help students get the skills they need to do close reading effectively? with the level of rigor that Chris and Kate talk about in their book.

[15:31]

I think as leaders, when we're working with adults in our schools, we can take the same approach that Chris and Kate brilliantly take in their book, and that is to provide people with a process, provide a series of steps that people can follow. Now, that doesn't mean that when we're doing professional development, we just get into the nuts and bolts and the technique, and we don't help people develop a deep understanding of the pedagogy and what needs to happen behind the scenes. But it does mean that we give people a very specific set of steps, a process to follow so that they can get started. Now that process and those steps don't need to be a ceiling on their practice. They're just a starting point. And once the comfort level is there, once the proficiency has really developed, we can step away from those starting points.

[16:17]

So think about something that you've asked your staff to start doing and think about the source of the steps that people are following. Are they kind of coming up with it on their own? Did you give people a specific plan, a specific strategy to follow, or are they kind of on their own? And as you plan your next professional development initiative, think about how you can make the first steps clearer to everyone involved. When you do that, people will get started much more quickly with much more confidence and they'll be much more successful.

[16:51] Announcer:

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