Seventh Graders

I have had the opportunity to work with two students, Alex and Sam, from Tyler’s seventh and eighth grade combined Language Arts class. Their names have been changed. Alex is a 12, almost 13-year-old seventh grade girl, and likes to talk with me about almost anything. She is a typical preteen girl that likes boys, hanging out with her friends, and of course, talking on the phone. Sam is a 12-year-old boy that likes black and white drawing and storyboarding, and playing video games. Most times he is completely uninterested in talking to me unless I really probe him-zone in on what he is interested in, and pull him in a little.

Alex’s best school subject is Language Arts, and sees herself as a pretty good reader. However, she also thinks that if she were to spend more time reading, she might become an even better reader. At times, she claims to have a hard time understanding what she is reading. Alex says she mostly reads when she is bored or when she has to for school. When Alex gets to choose what she reads she looks for adventure stories, biographies, history books, romance novels, teen issues travel books, detective stories, mysteries, humorous stories, occasional westerns, but most specifically, realistic stories. She likes to learn about things that are real. As a preteen girl, she is also guilty of reading celebrity magazines, like J-14 and People. Her family subscribes to them, and she likes them quite a bit. Currently, she is really interested in the A Child Called It series, which she checked out from the school library.

Sam’s best subject in school is art and he sees himself as just an okay reader although he says he loves to read. Sam reads for fun and likes to read, I often see him with at least two different reading materials in class. He mostly has some sort of fantasy reading with him; he says it helps with imagination and helps his mind wander. Currently, Sam is really into the Magic series of books. He also plays the card game that goes along with it with his friends. He told me he became interested in this series after finding one of the books in Tyler’s library. He often looks for books in his classroom and likes books on history, a little bit of travel, detective stories, some poetry and astrology, mystery, art, humor, folktales, but mostly he loves science fiction, adventure, and supernatural stories.

According to Sam, he reads to “get into a book.” He often likes to “zone out” and reading helps him accomplish this. He also likes to put himself into the story he is reading, especially if it is fantasy or science fiction related. Alex likes to put herself in the story she is reading too. She really likes to read realistic stories, mostly about children or teens, usually surround some sort of problem. Alex also likes to try and be apart of the story-like she is there watching it unfold and happen.

I think it is truly important to have a knowledge base of what your students are reading, and what they are or might be interested in reading so you as the teacher can help make such material more available to them. Both Sam and Alex claimed they went looking through their teacher’s classroom library for books the most often. They might not be reading at all if they had not found something of interest in their classroom library. Also, from working with Alex and Sam, I’ve learned that despite their gender differences, they actually like to read rather similar things, read for very similar reasons, and do very similar things while reading. While gender may play a role in group discussions of texts, there really aren’t books for girls, and books for boys. Certain books, styles, genres, etc. may be geared towards a specific gender, but assuming such books are only going to be read by the gender they are geared towards is totally false.

At first I was put off by Sam because did not want anything to do with me, but I figured out how to meet him half way. I’m embarrassed that I thought that way to begin with, but I was clearly thinking about myself and not about him. I feel like I’ve learned a bit how to relate to him, there’s always a way, it just takes time and patience. I learned that what works with one kid may not, probably won’t, work with another student. I need to be able to see this and differentiate what I’m doing so that it works a bit better for more than one student. It’s not about me, it’s about them.