Vincent Mick & Tanijah Moore 1

Introduction

Parkdale High School is a racially diverse high school in an economically challenged

district within Prince George’s County, MD. 58% of Parkdale’s students identify as

Hispanic/Latino; 33% identify as African-American; 3% identify as Asian; 3% identify as

Caucasian; and 70% qualify for FARMS (Maryland State Department of Education, 2020). In

terms of enrollment status, over the last four years 32.4% of Parkdale’s students have been

chronically absent and 18.6% have dropped out (Maryland State Department of Education,

2020). In 2019 only 40% of Parkdale’s students scored proficient in English Language Arts

(Maryland State Department of Education, 2020).

When implementing an English curriculum for students at the intersection of racial

diversity, socioeconomic disadvantage, academic disengagement, and low academic

achievement, there are better texts to include in a lesson than Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The

Minister’s Black Veil.” And there are better ways to ask these students to demonstrate analytical

skills than a uniform “read this and write an essay about it” approach. The class’s recent poor

performance on an essay about Poe’s “The Black Cat” should have signaled to Ms. Olfky that

writing about traditionally canonical Caucasian authors from the nineteenth century might not set

this particular class up for success. And yet here we are: following Poe with Hawthorne. Here we

are: teaching consecutive stories in which blackness features only symbolically to a class of

learners for whom color is not simply a literary device. It is no wonder the class’s predominant

facial expression was a thousand-yard stare. When they looked to the curriculum, they could not

see themselves looking back. A lesson’s ability to address student diversity directly impacts its

ability to address literacy and multiliteracy.

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Student Demonstration of Multiliteracy

In the lesson, students are asked to summarize, make an inference, and find textual

evidence regarding symbolism in “The Minister’s Black Veil.” The classroom objectives, which

are written on the board, are distinct indicators that this lesson will attempt to implement literacy

strategies. Ms. Olfky provides multiple strategies for demonstrating textual literacy. She attempts

to move students beyond simply reading the text.

Although Ms. Olfky intends otherwise, we do not see evidence of her students

demonstrating multiliteracy. The lesson’s content simply does not give students the chance. Even

if a teacher had no choice but to teach Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” there are ways

to teach the story that invite students to draw on their own developing cultural, historical, and

religious literacies. No such invite is forthcoming from Ms. Olfky. When she briefly refers to

religious differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, she immediately moves

on and consequently forecloses any opportunity to activate students’ personal knowledge or

creative thinking.

One of the guiding pedagogical principles of multiliteracy is “critical framing”--a

practice through which “learners can gain necessary personal and theoretical distance from what

they have learned, constructively critique it, account for its cultural location, [and] creatively

extend and apply it” (New London Group, 1996, p. 87). This framing is completely absent in Ms.

Olfky’s approach to “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Without this framing, students lack the

opportunity to demonstrate whatever (multi)literacy Ms. Olfky hopes to produce.

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Teacher Implementation of Literacy Strategies

Summarizing

Ms. Olfky activates students’ background knowledge by referring them to the plot charts

they created on the “The Minister’s Black Veil.” She then asks them to pair up and write a 3-4

sentence summary of the story. After she formatively assesses their group work, she intervenes

to provide the class with clarification about the difference between summary and plot.

Summarizing is an important skill that Ms. Olfky addresses; she is clearly making an attempt to

communicate information about a literacy strategy..

Making Inferences with Textual Evidence

The next strategy that Ms. Olfky attempts to address is making inferences. Ms. Olfky

reads students a selected passage from the short story. Based on what she reads, she asks students

to infer why the minister wears his veil and to ground their reasoning in textual evidence found

directly from the paragraph. Making inferences with textual evidence is a key strategy for textual

literacy. Ms. Olfky attempts to model this strategy through emphasis on a key passage. Modeling

and cueing students in this way is an important instructional move.

Our Assessment

Ms. Olfky’s lesson reveals that simply combining topics (e.g. summarizing) with the

building blocks of instructional design (e.g. modeling, flexible grouping) is not in itself a

sufficient condition of successful teaching. Ms. Olfky’s lesson has bones but no soul. Attempting

to implement a literacy strategy will not be successful unless a teacher understands whether

students understand. When Ms. Olfky checks for understanding, her checking feels perfunctory

and rhetorical. The nail in the lesson’s formative assessment coffin is its exit ticket, which Ms.
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Olfky describes as “None” with a smiley face. An exit ticket is an opportunity for Ms. Olfky to

assess students’ understanding while simultaneously holding them to high expectations. She does

not do this.

Teacher Implementation of Other Instructional Strategies

The lesson was primarily direct/overt instruction. The New London Group (1996)

describes “overt instruction” as “active interventions on the part of the teacher...that allow the

learner to gain explicit information at times when it can most usefully organize and guide

practice” (p. 86). Ms. Olfky’s clarification of the difference between plot and summary is an

example of such overt instruction. However, the goal of overt instruction is for students to

acquire “conscious awareness and control over what is being learned” (p. 86). Formative

assessment is therefore crucial to tracking the impact of overt instruction. Ms. Olfky’s attempts

to check for understanding were merely rhetorical--and merely rhetorical with staggering

consistency. 57 times Ms. Olfky asked questions like “Ok?” or “Does that make sense?” And 57

of those 57 times she did not wait for any response. Ironically, Ms. Olfky publicly teases one of

her students for excessively using the word “like” in his response (she estimates he uses the word

“27,000 times”). Perhaps after viewing herself on film Ms. Olfky may identify her own

conversational tic of asking empty questions.

Other instructional strategies include stating lesson objectives (we observe that the

objectives are poorly written in terms of legibility and measurability), stating group norms, using

flexible grouping, scaffolding (though it is unclear how the circle she draws on the
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board relates to summary), and arranging the physical space of the classroom (the slant of the

desks provides some degree of face-to-face interaction). Ms. Olfky provides instances for

group/partner work, which gestures toward a classroom climate of collaboration.

​Recommended Strategies for Demonstrating (Multi)literacy

1. Revise the lesson to help students work toward a high-quality performance task that is

relevant to their lives. According to their performance on the Poe essay, a Hawthorne

essay is not likely to qualify as such a task. A high quality, relevant performance task can

activate students’ personal knowledge bases.

2. Introduce intertextuality into the classroom (New London Group, 1996). How does “The

Minister’s Black Veil” speak to other texts within its own time and across time?

Intertextuality allows students to develop skill in understanding how meaning changes

across contexts.

3. With only two visible computers in the classroom, it seems as though Parkdale’s

technology resources are limited. However, if school or students’ personal resources

allow, incorporate digital technology into the lesson. It is possible that the incorporation

of technology could enhance student engagement by offering different angles of approach

to this story.

4. Center the reader not the text. Where is student voice in this lesson? Where is student

choice in this lesson? It is possible that Ms. Olfky’s students are more accustomed to

digital reading practices in which the reader rather than the text determines meaning (Leu

et al., 2015). Even if technology in the classroom is limited by budgetary constraints (we

observe only two visible computers), Ms. Olfky could harness the power of digital
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reading by engaging “The Minister’s Black Veil” through instructional activities that

center student voice and choice. That is, even if Ms. Olfky could not literally incorporate

digital technologies, she could transfer the skills of digital reading to the context of print

literacy. One way to accomplish this transfer would be to incorporate an activity that asks

students to mimic digital reading’s recursive practice of engaging and evaluating (Turner

et al., 2020). However, Ms. Olfky provides few opportunities for students to assess each

other’s ideas. One could argue that such opportunities are available through peer

feedback in small groups. Yet, elsewhere Ms. Olfky adheres strictly to a pattern of

discourse in which she is the sole assessor of student responses.

5. Incorporate multimodality. Howell (2018) argues that multimodality can “provide a

scaffold for students to learn argument” and “may improve student engagement with

argument” (pp. 537-538). Students need not master argument before progressing to

multimodal argument; rather, multimodal argument can serve as an entry point for

students. Given the poor performance of Ms. Olfky’s students on their Poe essay, a

multimodal approach to Hawthorne may improve their ability to demonstrate mastery of

learning objectives.

Recommended Engagement Strategies

1. First and foremost: ensure the curriculum reflects the lifeworlds of your students.

2. Implement authentic performance tasks.

3. Ask authentic questions; check for understanding in an authentic way.

4. Call on students methodically, if necessary, to spur engagement.

5. However, also use wait time!

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6. Avoid a discourse pattern in which the teacher is the sole assessor of student responses.

7. Smile! Ms. Olfky’s face was mostly dead-eyed; perhaps the thousand-yard stare of her

students was simply their mirror neurons kicking in.

8. Praise meaningfully. Ms. Olfky often claims victories for the class that do not seem to

exist in reality (e.g. claiming the class accomplishes something with virtually no help

from her; claiming the class has read the story multiple times--which is a version of

assuming knowledge). Or Ms. Olfky’s praise would seem cursory and automatic.

Recommended Differentiation Strategies

1. Again, first and foremost: ensure the curriculum reflects the lifeworlds of your students.

2. Formatively assess consistently and authentically. For example, do not cancel an exit

ticket if you do not substantially assess during a lesson.

3. Incorporate choice and adjustable levels of challenge into authentic performance tasks

(The IRIS Center, 2010).

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References

Howell, E. (2018). Expanding argument instruction: Incorporating multimodality and digital

tools.​ Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61​(5), 533–542.

https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.716

Leu, D. J., Forzani, E., Rhoads, C., Maykel, C., Kennedy, C., & Timbrell, N. (2015). The

literacies of online research and comprehension: Rethinking the reading achievement

gap. ​Reading Research Quarterly, 50(​ 1), 37–59. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.85

Maryland State Department of Education. (2020). ​Parkdale High School ​[Data file].

https://reportcard.msde.maryland.gov/Graphs/#/Demographics/Enrollment/

3/17/6/16/1909Â

New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. ​Harvard

Educational Review, 66(​ 1), 60-92.

The IRIS Center. (2010). ​Differentiated instruction: Maximizing the learning of all students.​

https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/di/

Turner, K. H., Hicks, T., & Zucker, L. (2020). Connected reading: A framework for

understanding how adolescents encounter, evaluate, and engage with texts in the digital

age. ​Reading Research Quarterly, 55(​ 2), 291–309. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/rrq.271