Spoon Feeding

For the past three days, I have attended the State Sponsored training on the Common Core ELA Standards.  Now my brain hurts from all the information I am processing.

One of the presenters kept telling us, "We've got to quit spoon feeding these kids, y'all." (I do live in Tennessee... y'all).

Though my day job is teaching, I moonlight (literally) as a wanna-be crunchy mama of two kids under 3, so I know a little bit about spoonfeeding. With my first child I pureed my own weird fruit and veggie combinations so that I could essentially watch him smear them all over his face. For my littlest one, I've been trying a method deemed "Baby Led Weaning," which basically means letting your infant feed herself.

The parallels between feeding children and teaching reading are a little uncanny.  So I'm going to draw out the metaphor a bit by describing my daughter's meal time.

I start by selecting a fruit or vegetable. I want her food to be nutrient rich, avoiding fillers like salt, sugar, or processed grains. But I also want it to be palatable--peaches are a better option than spinach. I make sure it is adequately soft, steaming it if necessary. I cut it into large chunks--too small and she can't pick it up, too large and she can't hold on to it. And then I simply put it in front of her. She is naturally curious, so she slides her little fingers across the sticky flesh, smacking it a bit to get a better sense of its texture. She sucks on her fingers, testing the waters. Her wobbly hands flutter as she unsteadily grasps the fruit. Once she has a sure hold, she rears back her head, a vampire bearing her gums (for want of fangs), then launches into her victim and gnaws to her heart's desire. At this point my role is to step back and watch her like a hawk, praying that she doesn't choke. Occasionally, I have to help reposition her grasp, or in more scary scenarios fish a wayward chunk out of her mouth. To begin with, she only ingested about 10% of what I put in front of her. The rest of it splattered on the floor, in her seat, in her hair... Now she's worked her way up to more like 50%. Oh, and did I mention, she revels in the visceral experience. Just check out this satisfied monster with strawberry carnage on her face:

Teaching reading under the Common Core is a similar procedure. I begin by selecting a complex text that is in the appropriate grade level band, pursuant to student interests, and content rich. I break it into manageable chunks and "steam" it a bit by reading it aloud as kids follow along. Then I simply put the text in front of students and let them attack. If they get off track, I redirect them with open ended guiding questions. At first they might not get it, but over time their comprehension improves. Oh, and of course, they are actively participating and enjoying the challenge.

Compare this with the way I used to teach reading: beginning with leveled, inauthentic text (your basic processed rice cereal), watering it down further with extended pre-reading activities, shoving it into their brains with direct comprehension questions that essentially tell the students the "right answer," watching them spit it back out at me and essentially scraping it off their faces and putting it back in their mouths if their answer wasn't what I deemed correct. Then I wondered why they were bored and struggled to pay attention. I consoled myself with the fact that they swallowed. They'll be able to regurgitate it on the state standardized test, right?

As with the Common Core, proponents of baby led weaning assert that the method is an improvement over spoon feeding because it prioritizes learning to chew over learning to swallow.

We have got to quit spoon feeding these kids, y'all.