Through inspiring examples from her classroom, Dr Atherton highlighted the importance of valuing students’ unique voices and experiences to foster genuine engagement with literature
Carol Atherton began her Harold Rosen Lecture with an acceptance of the fact that subject English is embattled: that ‘real damage’ had been inflicted on the teaching and learning of English in recent years. Despite the current pessimism that surrounds our subject, Atherton’s lecture did not dwell on the damage, but sought to remind us of the sense of purpose and achievement that await the teacher and learner in the English classroom.
What quickly became evident was the delight Atherton experienced in her students’ engagement, insight and understanding. The lecture focused on examples of the ways in which students bring so much in terms of their own language and life experience to the classroom and how vital it is for the English teacher to appreciate, value and extend these.
Atherton chose to focus on insights gained by her Year 7 and Year 8 students in recent reading lessons. The strength of her young readers’ engagements with the relevant yet ‘unsettling’ texts they shared was a powerful reminder that Key Stage 3 could and should be so much more than a practice pitch for GCSE examination content and assessment.
Young people bring so much to their learning in English that we do them a huge disservice in adopting a ‘transmissive’ rather than a dialogic model of teaching and learning in our day-to-day practice. We need to exploit approaches, Atherton argued, that encourage and support ‘authentic’ and independent reading and response in lessons. Atherton recalled how a student of Polish heritage found confidence through the classroom exploration of Once by Morris Gleitzman. The student, who had previously been reluctant to offer ideas and comments in class, found so much of relevance and interest in the text that his hand would regularly rise and he would begin:
‘Doctor Atherton, I have a theory…’
His enthusiasm and his emotional and cognitive responses to the text were delightfully contagious.
The assessment of our students’ learning should be, as my friend and mentor Simon Clements would say, about ‘exploring’ rather than ‘scoring’ their thinking and progress. With a brief return to the concern with which she began her lecture, Atherton warned that the proposed compulsory reading test for Year 8 students must not be allowed to prompt another period of test preparation and practice tyranny in the students’ first months of secondary schooling.
Atherton’s lecture went directly to heart of the relationship and the interaction between teacher and student in the English classroom, as well as the relationship between our students and the opportunities we offer them to engage with — and respond seriously and independently to — a wide and relevant range of language and literature. It also went to the heart of subject English and to the learning that awaits us all — teachers as well as students — at its heart.