Professional Development: Creating Communities of Master Readers

In order to make the Reading Apprenticeship program successful according to Schoenbach (1999), "Teachers must become explicitly aware of how they tackle challenging text in general and text within their own disciplines in particular" (p. 151).  The average content area teacher does not think of herself or himself as a reading teacher however if the content area teacher starts to tune into her or his own reading habits, will change their thoughts on this.  Professional development should be inquiry based because learning how versus being told how makes a huge difference in the learning process and being able to teach what you have learned. 

Colleagues should explore the reading process together.  According to Schoenbach (1999), "Developing an explicit awareness of one's own reading process is more challenging and complex than one might expect.  Making one's own reading explicit involves focusing on complex mental processes that most teachers use unconsciously; it is sort of like trying to understand how one walks" (p. 153).  It is best to work with colleagues to become more aware of our own reading process.

There are four activities that this book recommends teachers do in order to analyze the reading process.  The first activity is called Capturing Reading Process.  In this activity use a short text no longer than 2 pages.  The teacher should read then share any problems they encounter and as they do this sort the problems into four categories.  Those categories are: fluency, motivation, cognition, and knowledge.  Another activity is called Think-Aloud Practice.  In this activity the teachers are working to comprehend.  They should work in pairs, and take turns thinking aloud about the text.  The next activity is called Close Reading.  In this activity teachers should journal as they think about their text and focus on how they know what they know about content.  The last activity is called Uncovering Disciplinary Ways of Reading.  In this activity teachers should tackle a difficult piece of reading and ask specific questions before, during, and after they read the text.  The before questions include: What expectations do you have about it?, What predictions do you have about what you will be reading?, What parts of this section of the text did you pay particular attention to? Why do you think you focused your attention on these parts?, and many more (Schoenbach, 1999, pp. 154-165).

Inquiry based professional development has a huge impact on the way we see and hear students, our own job, and reading as a whole.  "In our view, one of the most far-reaching results of reading apprenticeship is its power to change teacher-student relationships.  Appreciating the complexity of the reading process often changes teachers' perspectives about their students.  A deeper understanding of reading's inherent challenges, especially in discipline-specific texts, dispels the common assumption that students could be more successful readers 'if only they tried harder.'  Teachers who in the past may have identified certain students as lazy or unmotivated come to recognize that these students may simply need more explicit help in mastering the complex set of mental activities required to comprehend academic and other difficult text (Schoenbach, 1999, p. 166).