Complex Texts and How to Navigate Them

Chapter 6 of Buehl begins by discussing a myriad of complex subjects: Renaissance music, neuroscience and a challenging read from Dostoyevsky. All of this revolves around the essential question posed at the beginning of the chapter: How can instruction scaffold the reading of complex disclipinary texts? Areas such as science and math are not quite my forte but I have applied these skills to literature and history countless times throughout my education and as a teacher in some small ways.

When we examine historical texts, many students are discouraged by the sheer volume of necessary prior knowledge in some cases. To understand a new concept or figure, we must trace back the thought/figure through a variety of different sources. For example, if I were to lecture and say "The success of oil baron John D. Rockefeller during the Gilded Age was in spite of, or perhaps because of, his rivalry with the steel king Andrew Carnegie", there is much to be teased out and explained to a student with no prior knowledge. Such as "What is an oil baron? When was the Gilded Age? If Rockefeller was in the oil business and Carnegie was in steel, why were they rivals?". It is a disservice to students to teach without leaving the floor wide open for questions and inquiry to build their knowledge so that sentences such as the one above fly straight as an arrow and not sail over the head.

One particular example of this that stuck out in my mind was when I was a counselor for a middle schooler's summer camp a few months back and I had this kid named Amar'e. Amar'e loved music, he used to dance and rap all the time. I would give him shit for playing Chief Keef and Drake, and he would throw it back at me for saying everything I listened to was weird and no one liked it. So, one day he was listening to Drake and he said "Man, I don't know why people think Kendrick Lamar is better than Drake, that's bullshit." And I asked "Why do you think that?" and he said "Kendrick is always talking about things I don't know, he doesn't make sense most of the time."

Understanding that he was a 14 year old boy, I said "Ok, play me a song by Drake and tell me what you like about it as the song plays. The lyrics, the beat, whatever". He played me his current favorite, "Too Good" and told me about his girlfriend that he really cared about, and how they have problems and he has anger issues. The song is, in my opinion, a bit simple but that's the beauty of music, a song that doesn't mean much to me means the world to Amar'e.

So then, I reintroduced Amar'e to "Wesley's Theory", and taught him ideas such as that the titular Wesley is a reference to Wesley Snipes, who was jailed for tax evasion, and how the song was about a character who sold out for money because Uncle Sam made him do that, the insanity of America made him do that. Amar'e listened intently, and he was a little overwhelmed but he seemed determined to understand. When we take dense, complex works and give students the spaces and tools to learn and to understand, their creativity blossoms.