Today we hear from author and teacher Marilyn Pryle about the crucial role of English teachers in today's world. She shares her journey of uncovering the subconscious process behind critical reading and discusses the five essential questions from her new book that can help students engage deeply with any text. Tune in to learn how to make these critical reading skills second nature in your classroom, and empower your students to become thoughtful analytical readers.
Transcript
Marilyn Pryle:
So today the role of an English teacher is more important than ever, and the humanities of course, have always been important, but post pandemic in our ultra divided world, the role of teaching English is vital because it's about communication. It's about looking at a text. And when I say text, it can be anything, something that you read, something that you watch, something that you listen to. And being able to formulate your own thoughts about that and then being able to bring those thoughts to another person or people and discuss them, this is what English class is about. These skills are more important now than ever. So the role of the English teacher, even though I know it's that traditional class, and now the humanities are kind of getting marginalized more than in the past, and I think as English teachers, we have to step up to that calling to really embrace our craft in a way that perhaps we haven't had to in the past.
Edie:
I feel like it's so important to have such a broad definition of a text at this point in time. How do you define a text in your classroom?
Marilyn:
Well, obviously we read lots of everything, right? A text obviously are things that you read, but I tell the students a text can be anything. It could be anything that you watch after school on TV or on your phone, could be anything you listen to, like a podcast. Right. Really any piece of information that you are consuming is a text.
Edie:
As you're thinking about the role you have now and really developing what I heard you describe as critical thinking skills, what do you think are some of the really big challenges that English teachers are facing right now?
Marilyn:
I think that a big thing that I realized, and this led me to this train of thought that eventually became the five questions, what I started to notice in my class, and I've been a teacher for over 20 years, so I got to the point where I knew that what I was doing, I knew I was being effective. I knew the students were learning the quote-unquote English skills that I wanted them to learn, but I started to notice a disconnect, meaning the students who were doing really well in my class, and I would put all of them in there, again, they were learning, they were growing. They could identify things, especially in written texts. They were doing well on papers, they were doing well on quizzes and things like that, but then they weren't necessarily transferring those skills to texts outside the classroom.
And I started to just pick this up in little things that they would say, and I realized the things that they're learning in English class, they're not transferring them into the thinking that they might use when they're scrolling through Instagram or watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast. And I started to wonder, how can we take those very important skills and make them more transferable, or even just make the connection for the students, that you should be using these outside of class. This is not just for you to pass a test in class or in the state or whatever test you might be taking. That's not what this is for. This is for your real life.
So I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges we have as English teachers. English is viewed as this by students anyway, as this silo of you come into the room, you practice these skills, and then you take the test and then you might have to take other tests, and then that's the end of that. No. What we're teaching are skills that they need to see that, okay, I can use this when I'm viewing any bit of information outside school. So that's one big challenge. Other challenges are around coming out of the pandemic, I've noticed they're not as comfortable speaking up in front of a whole group, and they're not even as comfortable as they used to be in smaller groups, right, interacting with each other.
Edie:
Oh, really?
Marilyn:
Yeah. They're afraid of being wrong even more than they were pre-pandemic, which that was definitely there. So that only means that we have to create a space to help them reacquaint them with these skills and to feel comfortable. We need you to have a thought about a text and to be able to communicate that thought. These are skills that they need more practice in now for sure. They can be learned and they can be practiced.
Edie:
As you've been focused on these challenges, and I think really the one you started with, making the connection, these are communication skills for life and critical thinking skills. Let's get into the heart of your book.
Marilyn:
Well, yeah, the 5 Questions for Any Text, right? Critical thinking in the age of disinformation. So when I started to realize that the students were doing well in the class, but not necessarily transferring the skills outside of class, I started to think to myself, what do experienced critical readers do, right? People who feel comfortable kind of looking at texts and taking them apart in their brains. And really that's just, it comes with experience, right, and it comes with the intention to be critical. And a lot of it though, we do just without thinking. Right. So this idea of what do experienced critical readers do? And I thought to myself, okay, what do I do whenever I look at anything or listen to anything or read anything? What am I really thinking? And it's difficult because you don't know because you've done it for so long, and how do you teach that?
Edie:
Right.
Marilyn:
So I actually spent several months kind of monitoring my own thought process and thinking about and making notes about what do experienced critical readers do. And thinking to myself, can this be sort of boiled down into three points or five points or questions, or what's my brain doing? What's running in the background whenever I pick up a text or listen to something or watch something? In the end, I kind of boiled it down to these five questions. And it's not that you're, again, you're not consciously thinking like, oh, let me ask this question. Let me ask that question. It's just that your brain is doing it. But like any skills, when you learn something for the first time, you do have to go step by step. So my question was how can we teach this to students in a way of, here are the things, practice the steps till they become second nature. It takes a lot of practice, right, so.
Edie:
Yeah.
Marilyn:
And it's not a one-off. It has to be a habit. So in the classroom, there has to be this structure where students can habitually sort of engage with these questions.
Edie:
Yeah. And it comes with a volume of interacting with all different types of texts. Yeah. Volume is always a key component, right?
Marilyn:
Yes. Yes.
Edie:
What are the five questions? Let's get into them.
Marilyn:
Exactly. Right. So I realize, and these are in the book, they're numbered one, two, three, four, five. But really your brain is kind of always circling around them. Right. It's not a linear progression. I find myself thinking of something. For example, number one, what am I reading? Right. I do think of that whenever I approach any text. I know I'm turning on something that I know is a podcast. I'm scrolling through Netflix to watch something that I know is a series or whatever. Right. But I do find my brain circling back to that later on. Like, wait, what is this? Because it's so different now than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, certainly 30 or more years ago, where you knew you were either watching television, or turning the dial on a radio, or holding a piece of paper that was your newspaper. The genres were a little more clear cut, and now it's kind of just one big mix.
I think that question has to constantly be asked, and that question might seem obvious on the surface, but it's really not anymore. And even when you're in the middle of reading something, it could pop up again of, wait, what is this? Was this, I thought this was a story, but it's an advertisement. The genres kind of overlap, and people are very clever or adept at sort of mixing genres in certain intentional ways. So I want students to just always be asking, what is this? And then even when they get a little deeper, what is this again? And some of the topics, so in the book, I have these five main questions, and under each one I have smaller, more specific categories that students can think about. So some of those are what's the genre, right, on a very basic level, but who's the audience?
Edie:
So let's take a moment to dive into one of the questions. Let's dive into question two.
Marilyn:
Question two is, what is it showing me? And when I was formulating the five questions, I originally had this framed in my mind of what is it saying? Right. What is the text saying? And that's something that as English teachers, we do this so well. Right. This is our first main question, even from kindergarten, grade one. Here's a text. What is it saying? Right. What's the main idea sort of? But I decided to use the verb showing to kind of expand that a little bit. Because a text says something in the words, yes, but it shows so much more in different ways. And that's what I want the students to think about. Not just surface level words. What is the text saying? What's the main idea? What are the causes and effects? All that is part of it, yes. But also, let's go a little bit deeper to issues, like what is this text revealing about its beliefs in the earth, kind of an eco-critical stance, or about stereotypes, or about gender roles, or about how people with disabilities are portrayed. And there's so much there.
So a text says something, but it also shows so much more about its beliefs, its deepest values around so many other issues. So that's what I want students to kind of look at with that question. One example I can give you is the category investigating abilities. And this category asks students to focus on how are people with any kind of disability portrayed in a text, and what is the impact of that, and what's the larger ripple effect? And one student, for example, wrote about the book Turtles All the Way Down, and she had just read a part where Aza, the main character, has a visit with her therapist.
And the student's response was this conversation with the therapist normalizes the idea of taking care of your mental health and the other work that has to come with medication, and how people who struggle with mental health issues are represented. And she felt it really showed the struggle in a genuine way and how that was a positive thing. So that's what I mean when I say a book says something. So for example, Turtles All the Way Down, there's the plot, there's things that are happening to Aza, but then there's this larger context of what's being communicated, what's being normalized, what's being presented about characters and people.
Edie:
Thanks for tuning in today. To learn more about Marilyn's new book, 5 Questions for Any Text: Critical Reading in the Age of Disinformation and read a full transcript, visit blog.heinemann.com. For a 30% discount on any Heinemann professional book use code PROFBKS30P.
About the Author
Marilyn Pryle (@MPryle) is an English teacher at Abbington Heights High School in Clarks Summit, PA and has taught middle and high school English for over twenty years. She is the author of several books about teaching reading and writing, including 50 Common Core Reading Response Activities and Writing Workshop in Middle School. Learn more about Marilyn at marilynpryle.com.
