Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series on the Santa Maria-Bonita School District’s decision to not allow teachers to teach full novels in their classes.
Eighth grade English teacher Kevin Foote can recall numerous moments in his 10 years teaching at Tommie Kunst Junior High when books left an inimitable impression on his students. Reading Enrique’s Journey, a story of a Honduran boy’s quest to reunite with his mother, had a particular type of impact.
“I had students whose parents were arguing with them at the dinner table, because it’s about immigration and undocumented status,” Foote said. “I’ve had students where moms have cried and opened up: ‘You’re 14, I’m going to tell you how grandma got here.’ You can’t put a number on that.”
But now, Foote said, “those books are just sitting on my shelf.”
Some Santa Maria-Bonita School District (SMBSD) junior high and elementary school teachers, like Foote, are frustrated by district curriculum and pacing guides that no longer allow them to teach full novels during class. District officials say that reading full novels in class creates gaps, does not meet standards, and that teachers can still assign long-form reading outside of class.
Nearly 50 district teachers signed a letter, which was read at a March 24 school board meeting, opposing the curricular requirement.
The letter states that at the beginning of this school year, “teachers were told to stick to pacing guides and only use district-adopted programs and a few specific, supplemental materials.”
Then later in the year, according to the letter, the district instructed teachers not to read full novels in class.
“The rationale for this questionable mandate is that district-adopted ELA [English Language Arts] programs include unengaging and disconnected excerpts from novels; however, students become frustrated because excerpts come to an abrupt end or are not given adequate context to be fully understood,” the letter said. “Students no longer experience the satisfaction of completing a book in its entirety, understanding the full plot, character development, motifs, and symbolism.”
Santa Maria-Bonita uses StudySync, an integrated digital and print curriculum, for its junior high school ELA programs. This is the fifth year the district used StudySync as its state board of education-approved curriculum, the district’s ELA teacher on special assignment, Leya O’Neal said.
While each StudySync unit has an anchor text that students can read an excerpt from in class, the full-length text will no longer be taught in class, O’Neal explained.
“The verbiage that they use is that novel studies are concurrent programs, meaning it’s not meant to be done in isolation, it’s meant to be done with the core program. Doing it in isolation would create some huge gaps,” she said. “StudySync never intended it to be a novel study where you’re only studying just that novel.”
Foote said over the years since StudySync was adopted, he’s had a lot of independence in how he applied and supplemented the curriculum. So hearing that he could no longer teach full novels in class was a “head-scratching moment.”
“It’s not that I think without novels one cannot be a good teacher, or one cannot effectively learn as a student. Absolutely not,” he said. “But I’ve seen the data, I’ve seen the work, I’ve seen the palpable moments over 10 years at Tommie Kunst where books have opened up classroom management, curricular depth, social-emotional learning. I’ve seen my students and faculty grow through novels.”
District Director of Teaching and Learning Jennifer Loftus said that this has been the intention of the district’s curriculum since it was adopted, but the district’s introduction of pacing guides at the beginning of this school year brought the absence of full novels to the surface.
“Lesson by lesson, unit by unit, [we] teased out each priority standard, where it lived, and then mapped out the year,” Loftus said of creating the pacing guides.
When teachers saw whole-class novel study was absent from those pacing guides, it “became really apparent that some teachers were very frustrated,” Loftus continued. “So we’ve had to have a lot of really hard conversations around that.”
Arellanes Junior High School seventh grade English Honors teacher Lisa Lira said she first heard she would no longer be allowed to teach full novels in class about a month ago. She was informed by her English department chair, who heard at a district meeting.
“It’s not a two-way conversation,” Lira said. “They listen to what we’re saying, and then just continue to give us that same line.”
Foote said he was especially baffled by the change after he said the district purchased dozens of full-length novels for his and other English teachers’ classrooms at the beginning of the school year. Loftus said the district’s intent was to encourage reading during distance learning.
“We knew that our students could not come to school and check out books in the library,” she said. “So what we did is we identified some of the best novels that are out there … and we purchased these for students to keep, to build their home libraries. … They were never intended to be used in lieu of our core adopted instructional program.”
But now during classroom time, Foote said books like The Diary of Anne Frank, which he has taught for years, will be one excerpt in StudySync.
“One diary entry, and then it disappears from the curriculum,” he said. “Why can’t I have the right, as someone who really spent time with students on that one diary, who dug deep into the California standards? … Now I’m not allowed to follow a classic, honored book in eighth grade curriculum?”
It’s not just middle school teachers who are frustrated and affected by the changes. Third grade Oakley Elementary School teacher Patricia Mitchell, who has taught for 32 years, feels the same way about the classics she historically always read to her students.
“We totally understand districts wanting to adhere to curriculum that they’ve approved. We abide by that, that’s what we do,” Mitchell said. “The fact that they’re limiting us to not be able to read a novel to our children is very difficult for us to understand.”
From the district’s perspective, they are not barring students from reading novels: Loftus said they can still be assigned for homework outside of the classroom.
“We do want kids reading novels,” she said. “We’re really just asking to look at using them in a different way. And with that, finding additional opportunities for students that we can create together with them, in order to continue some of the practices they’ve really cherished—be that a literature circle, or a book club, or something along those lines.”
But in Mitchell’s opinion, it’s not enough to inspire a love of reading in children.
“A perfect example is Charlotte’s Web: core curriculum across the United States of America, third grade,” she said. “I have people who are 62, like myself, who remember the day that their teacher read [it to] them. That’s how powerful reading is to children.”
Reach Staff Writer Malea Martin at mmartin@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 13-20, 2021.