Chapter 9, "To Feel, to Remember, to Understand"

In this final chapter of Keene's book, she confesses that when she reads a good book, she is not sure if the emotions are the characters' or her own. Well put. This is what we strive to accomplish for our young readers--get them to feel what they read. I immediately connected with her statement. Many times I have come away from a good book feeling like I had experienced the journey of the characters. Keene just drills into her reader the necessity for encouraging our students to make personal connections with their text. This is exactly what I see Jenna's group encountering in Miller's book. The many authors' research have proven connection to be an integral component to remembering. Keene uses Bruce, a teacher she knows, as an example. Bruce has the ability to articulate how emotions affect what he understands, the way he studies the world, and the ways in which he writes. Emotions that make others cringe or retreat into a cozy state of denial are fodder for daily discussion in his classroom. How exciting! When Bruce makes a mistake in an approach to a lesson, he admits it and challenges his children to do the same. He questions an author's use of wording aloud as he reads with his students. He questions their motivation and honesty. He asks his students if they noticed the beautiful sunrise, and if they did, they write about it. Keene calls Bruce a Renaissance man because his curiosity carries over to all aspects of life. Keene believes students are lucky to encounter a teacher like Bruce because the result of his teaching can be measured in the confidence of kids who didn't believe in themselves and the willingness to feel among kids who used to hide from emotion--and the outcomes are academic as well. Keene worries that many of those children may never know another Mr. Morgan (Bruce) in their lives. She worries that we have sterilized our teaching approaches and removed much of the emotional component that anchors the concepts we teach. She outlines the cognitive strategies we have all come to realize as the cornerstone of improved reading and comprehension: monitoring, questioning, determining importance, synthesizing, using prior knowledge, inferring, and creating sensory and emotional images. She asks that we promise to not only ask, but listen. She states the capacity for our students' thinking is nearly limitless if create the learning conditions to support it, provide the language to define and describe thinking, and if we simply ask "What else?" I think we all agree with her, but I am always left wondering how to apply these strategies and principles to the instruction of expository texts. Can anyone share their success--or struggle--with bringing this same enthusiasm to the dry, fact-filled text books that our students struggle with each day?