If Not Now: Developmental Readers in the College Classroom

by Jeanne Henry

There is little evidence that skills instruction actually improves students' reading. In fact, it may be what's putting students off in the first place. So what are you to teach? Is your job to help students become readers or to prepare them for the next set of academic expectations? In If Not Now Jeanne Henry helps you find some answers. Henry believes that willing practice is the only effective practice to help students become fluent and flexible readers. In If Not Now she describes her rejection of skills instruction, the journey that led her to Nancie Atwell's In the Middle , with its emphasis on the reading workshop, and her experiences adapting the reading workshop to her own college classroom. The focus of her book is on the literary letters she and her students exchanged. Their words have much to her students worked too many hours, had little preparation for college, and had made life choices that made an education that much more difficult to pursue. They even discuss their reactions to how reading is taught. Their academic inexperience is sobering, but their transformation into avid readers is compelling. Henry makes fond and liberal use of these letters-all the while maintaining lively commentary about the theoretical implications. If Not Now is not a how-to manual. It is a manifesto for any instructor who wants to improve students' reading. Henry turns a critical eye toward her own teaching and urges other teachers to do the same.

Genres: Education

156 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 1995

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Reading means more than success in school. It is also a bridge between people, a point of contact, or simply having something to say."

"...my students see me as collaborator, witness, and consultant."

So, in 1995 Henry was using readers workshop in her developmental reading classes at the college level. That's about the time I was trying to get my class approved as an elective. We both read Atwell, and where I thought her plan could only work in private schools, Henry was working it. The prose here is clunky, which must be one of the faxtors that made this such a slow book to read. She comes to her class from Rosenblatt as I did, but I'd never heard of Edelsky's work before.

I find our two paths very interesting...she quotes Goodman and discusses the great phonics-whole language debate through Edelsky's contention that there's reading (what we do when we read for our own purposes) and "reading" which is school reading, fill-in-the-blanks, underline the main idea reading. My training was very similar, coming from IU in the early 70's.

Reading Workshops work...they work in private schools like Atwell's; they work in high schools like mine. They work in colleges...Henry and my friend Lauren have proven that. I didn't learn anything terribly new here, but the validation feels wonderful. I'm interested in her minilessons -- I do some similar, but I'm intrigued.

I absolutely agree: "...getting students to read their heads off is the only way they can become fluent in both reading and 'reading.'"