"We're all about marking up text" a principal at an elementary school in Florida explained to me. "This is our main focus this year," she emphasized.
I'm not sure when, as a student, I first began marking up text. Probably in college since we were explicitly told we weren't allowed to make any marks at all in our public high school books that were on loan. Somewhere along the line I learned to underline the parts of the book that are important, to circle and look up words I didn't know, and to write comments in the margins. One of my teaching colleagues John Hanlon was a master book-marker-upper. He always used a fine black pen. His underlines were neat and clear. His writing in the margin, crisp and legible. After working with John I always strove to mark up books as well as he did.
It seems these days in schools many teachers are teaching their students to mark up texts, usually following a complicated set of instructions. For instance one reading program encourages us to:
Invite students to “mark up the text” as they read a selection by circling unfamiliar words, highlighting/underlining key ideas, and writing notes and questions. Margin notes made by readers include: questions, predictions, connections, key ideas, and discoveries. Encourage students to create their own Comprehension Codes for types of responses, such as “PCs” for personal connections or “D” for discoveries.
A grandson of a colleague of mine came home with his book full of post it notes and said to her, "Grandma, why don't they just let us read the books!"
Now I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with marking up text. I actually think it is a critical skill for students to have to succeed academically. My wife when she was getting a PhD had a handful of highlighters she used to indicate different ideas of the text. Looking at her books it's difficult to find words that aren't highlighted. However, I do believe that, like many reading strategies, we often have a "one-size-fits-all" approach and we require all of our students to mark up the text in the exact same way.
This week I was in Boston offering an ArtsLiteracy workshop for Boston Public School teachers. I'd heard about a literacy and arts project led by artist Tim Rollins. In the 80s in the South Bronx he taught a course in a public school that incorporated art making with reading. He, or one of his students, would read books out loud while the rest of the class created works of art in response to the literature. The students named themselves K.O.S. (the Kids of Survival) and eventually they founded an after-school program and became internationally known for their work.
Tim Rollins and the K.O.S.
I came across some of the ways in which they turned pages into works of art.
Black Beauty The Liberty, Tim Rollins and K.O.S, 1990-1
Origin of the Species (after Darwin), Tim Rollins and K.O.S, 1990-1
The word "comprehension" is derived from the Latin word comprehendere which means to "seize" or "grasp." Comprehension should then be an almost physical act of "grasping" the meaning.
In Boston we were reading the opening lines of Homer's The Odyssey. Instead of first having a formal discussion about the text, I wanted teachers to experience "grasping" the text. Each teacher had the first few line of The Odyssey on a piece of paper. I shared with them Tim Rollins and K.O.S.'s work and then gave the simple instruction:
Mark up the text, using any tools you have, in a way that is visually and intellectually pleasing to you.
Here are some examples of their work.
After the teachers created their images, we grouped in trios and each person spoke for one minute about how they marked up the text. We then had a general conversation about their ideas about their interpretations of the text. I never offered my own ideas about The Odyssey. Canonized texts in our world today can be problematic from gender or cultural perspectives, particularly The Odyssey. Marking up the text in this way allowed the participants to argue, criticize, celebrate, analyze in ways that were important to them. They took the text and clearly made it their own.
Update
I returned to the Boston Public Schools to offer another workshop. Myran Parker-Brass, the Executive Director for the Arts for BPS, asked me to lead the "Marking Up Text" experience for a new group of teachers. This time we used key scenes from Homer's Odyssey. Based on how the first group did some cutting-up of the text, I changed the directions a bit adding what is in parentheses below:
Mark up (or cut up, or bend, or fold) the text, using any tools you have, in a way that is visually and intellectually pleasing to you.
Here are some of the results.
Land of the Lotus Eaters, Example One
Land of the Lotus Eaters, Example Two