Reading in the Secondary School

Recently a teacher at a reading institute asked a member of a panel on teaching reading, 'Just what innovations in teaching reading may we look for in the coming years?"The panel member was hesitant, saying there are individual ideas for improved strategies coming out in published form every season, but that he could not espouse a single method as being superior.The teacher who asked the question was obviously not satisfied, still convinced as she was that some theory or new piece of machinery could be her salvation in the classroom.That the panel member was disappointing in his answer was not of great consequence, but the fact that some groundwork might have been laid for an important branch of reading research is of much more importance.What is missed and badly needed is the kind of research work in each classroom that adds basis to (or refutes) the ideas and theories which are published in papers, texts, and workbooks every week of every school year.We actually are performing a disservice to our students when we listen to or read somebody's ideas on teaching reading, and then go back to our classes and employ the methods as if they were infallible.That is about as useless as refusing to allow anyone's ideas on the subject into one's mind.In both instances, we are remaining blind to the requirements of critical thinking, to the definition of professionalism, and to the need for adapting new ideas to our individual natures.How can we avoid this often voiced criticism, that we high school teachers tend to take one of the two extremes; to reject out-of-hand ideas that have come from theorists, or to take ideas in the teaching of reading as if they were prescriptions and use them without the addition of an iota of imagination?One, we can stop to realize that all important improvements started with ideas, with theories.Second, we can remember that teachers are at least as different as students -that what works in your classroom may not work in mine, because there are so many variables.Thus, to put ideas to use and make a contribution to the total area of teaching reading at the 'iame time, each teacher should think of himself as a researcher in reading.The usual response to a suggestion that the auto mechanics teacher or the English teacher become a researcher is a hoar~ "Wha -? Research?Me?" Along with expletives, one normally hears remarks about not caring for statistics, or that research is dull, dry stuff.