Biblical Text and Common Core

My first full time teaching job turned me onto teaching middle school students.   I was teaching bible in a Jewish day school.  My responsibility was to teach students how to read a passage from text and interpret it in meaningful ways.  My students and I were working as biblical critics.  I loved creating lessons that encouraged critical thinking using text as a foundation.

After teaching for several years, I returned to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to earn a master's degree in Jewish education.  One of my teachers, Carol Ingall, stressed that students should be asked to consider three questions when working with a piece of text.  First, what does the text say?  Second, what does the text mean?  Third, what does it mean to me/you/?     

I'm still coming off of a high from the NCTE conference.  So, I've been thinking about the Common Core.  

The Common Core does not advocate specific texts that students must read.  Instead, it demands that students learn to read text closely.  The purpose of reading text closely is to be able to use it in meaningful ways.  Consider that third question that Dr. Ingall encouraged my cohort to challenge students to consider, "What does the text mean to me?"

A reader cannot simply ask this third question upon first interacting with the text.  The necessary scaffolding is not yet present.  Instead, the reader must first ask Ingall's first two questions.  Then and only then can the reader apply a correct understanding for his/her own purposes.     

Here's the interesting point, from my perspective, the perspective of an educational development company CEO.  Any text can be read closely.  Students can read every well written text for their own purposes after first reading for meaning and simple understanding.  This means that students who do not like reading typical school text can be encouraged to read texts that they will find meaningful.  These texts could include sports or comedy books, comic strips, and game cheat sheets in addition to many others. 

As common core standards take root in schools across America, I would fully expect teachers to look for new and innovative texts on multiple different kinds of topics within which students can become engaged. Obviously, just as I created lessons to help my students engage with biblical text, lessons will have to be created to enable engagement.