Book’s Blog 3

Introduction

The Freemans introduce a powerful poem written by a very experienced intermediate school teacher, Rusty DeRuiter, who had just begun teaching developmental reading to struggling high school students at the time of writing this poem. He wrote this poem late one night as he tried to understand both his students and his own frustration with teaching them. Rusty was asked to teach these students because of his success with intermediate school students in his rural, agricultural district and because district officials did not know what to do with the growing numbers of students who were dropping out of school. Most of Rusty’s students were of Mexican descent.

The Poem

I Don’t Know What to Do

Rusty DeRuiter

I don’t know what to do.

So many angry faces

Who have heard all the teacher

Promises before.

For too many years

They have been put down.

Too many teachers

Who have given up.

Who have not understood.

And now it is big time.

High School.

Time to show and shine,

To be cool with compañeros,

To be tough.

It’s tough to start school,

Especially when you are

Angry with life.

Having to ask for money

From parents who don’t have it,

Wanting the right shoes,

And shirts and pants.

Needing to make your mark early.

I will complete this poem later, in comment, to show that he understood his students’ need for being able to understand, read, and write the academic language of school. It is interesting and illustrates that teachers, across the country, are faced with classrooms filled with large numbers of students who struggle with the academic demands of school. Like Rusty, other teachers want to know how to help these students. With the current nationwide emphasis on standardized tests, exit exams, and other high-stakes assessments, attention has been given to students who lack the language of school. Many of these students are English language learners (ELLs) and struggling readers. Reports from educational agencies and literacy educators have begun to focus on the need for helping these students develop academic language, and academic language has become a kind of buzzword at conferences and in-service presentations.

The Freemans offer teachers an effective framework based on research to teach both language and content. They provide a resource to improve reading and writing skills while supplying the academic vocabulary necessary in the content area. They explain that the focus of the book is to take the reader into the world of the classroom using the information “from researchers, teacher educators, linguists, and practitioners in order to clarify some of the confusions about academic language and provide suggestions for how to help ELLs and struggling readers succeed in school.” (p. xvi). The seven chapters in the book deliver critical components for teaching academic language, the nuts and bolts about who needs it, “what it is, when and where it is used, the problems that textbooks cause, different aspects of academic language, how to write objectives to teach academic language, and how to engage students in effective instruction to build academic language proficiency” (p. xvi).