It works for this teacher

Vicki Rodriguez, 34, a native of Washington Heights, who is now in her fourth year as an English teacher at Fredrick Douglass Academy, asked her class to rewrite “Othello” with a twist: write it in slang and set it in Harlem.

“There were people calling out the windows, there were people outside on fire escapes but when you validate them,” Rodriguez said, the students connect with the reading in a powerful way.

Rodriguez came to the Harlem school—and the teaching profession—through New York City’s Teaching Fellows Program. She doesn’t believe it’s fair to characterize the debate around differing approaches to student reading as some sort of standoff between enforcing the classics and encouraging a love for reading.
“Why can’t we do both?” Rodriguez asked, sitting her classroom desk. Rodriguez said she believed, that the centerpiece to teaching her students about literature is first accepting their interests and capabilities and then, encouraging them to improve.

A recent front-page story in The New York Times described the growing debate between educators and school administrators about giving students more choice in their reading assignments in school. Several students at Frederick Douglass Academy (FDA)—one of the best schools in Harlem—were open to the idea of having more flexible reading choices but expressed a few reservations.

“It’s not a point of not liking [the assigned books], it’s a point of learning,” said Sean Becton, 16, a former FDA student. Becton now attends James Baldwin High School on 19th Street, but was hanging out with four friends in Fredrick Johnson Park, adjacent to FDA at Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 150th Street.

“It’s about what’s relevant to school,” added Analiz Lirano, 15, a junior at FDA, which serves young people from kindergarten through high school. The dress code requires a standard uniform: white shirt and black skirt for girls, black pants and a tie for boys. When asked what books for school, if any, that they’ve liked, this small group of teenagers just start yelling out titles: “Manchild in the Promised Land,” “Forged by Fire,” “The Narratives of Frederick Douglass.” From behind Sean, a small voice belonging to Maribel Rodriguez, 16, added, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The students said they like to read, in school and on their own, and to a certain extent their reading comprehension is reflected in early test scores.

In assessing each public school, the Board of Education produces an annual progress report, which mostly quantifies the test results from exams mandated under the No Child Left Behind Act between the third and eighth grades, and issues a letter grade. For the most recent data (2008-09), junior high school students at Frederick Douglass scored above the 90th percentile in English Language Arts, relative to schools citywide. The next time students take another English test is not until the end of 11th grade and by then, their style of reading will have changed.

Vicki Rodriguez is not always pleased with what her students were reading. The “Twilight” series—a bestselling chain of vampire love stories written for teenagers—was extremely popular, as were novels written by Sister Souljah, a bestselling author of urban fiction. But Rodriguez said, “Don’t we all read smut every once in a while? It’s part of the literary tradition.”

“I like the books that we’re assigned, usually they are interesting, and they help our vocabulary,” said Shameeka McInnis, 15, an FDA junior. Abayomi Are, 16, interjected, “But they’re not interesting, they’re boring books.” A short debate ensued in which Shameeka rattled off book titles: “’Manchild in the Promised Land,’ ‘The Jungle,’ ‘Julius Cesar,’ ‘Playing in the Dark,’ none of those were boring books!” But Abayomi wasn’t dissuaded, “For teens right now, they wanna read something that’s gonna catch them. You guys know that book by Sister Souljah, ‘No Disrespect’ [Souljah’s memoir]? See, a book like that, it can relate to us.” Much easier to relate to for a black teenager than perhaps, Nick Carraway, the narrator of “The Great Gatsby.” Abayomi continued, “If we picked like six books and the school [reviewed] them, and see if it could be beneficial to us and the school as well, then I think that’s the best thing to do. Our decision [should] always count too.” Getting too many students to read books they really don’t want to will “make the school look bad when we don’t do our homework, and then the graduation rate goes down.”

About two blocks north of Frederick Douglass, between 152nd and 153rd Streets, lies another reading resource for young people. Leslie Brown, site manager for the Macomb’s Bridge Branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), has been trying to set up programs to provide resources to assist students with reading, especially over the summer. On its website, along with a list of operating hours and events, a “Branch Highlight” is the statement: “We house a small African American experience collection.” Actually, everything about the Macomb’s Branch is small. It’s the smallest branch of the vast library network: literally a single room. However, size couldn’t deter from the popular books of the summer: Japanese comic books, called manga, “urban” books and, of course, the “Twilight” series.

Regardless of how much choice students may have in what they read for school, the opinions of nearly a dozen students emphasized how vital class discussion was for understanding the more challenging books. Abayomi and one of her companions, Fatouma Bemhbou, 16, said that “Hamlet” was good but Abayomi said, “because we went into ‘Hamlet’ like ‘deep deep’ but if a student just picks up a ‘Hamlet’ book and just reads it they’re just gonna put it down. We need guidance.”