Newkirk Reading List

Finished/Read

"A Mania for Rubrics." Educational Leadership 20.2 (9/13/2000).

“Five Pressures on the Writer," The Leaflet, 89:1 (Winter, 1980): 3-8.

"Archimedes' Dream," Language Arts 61:3 (April, 1984): 141-150. (For summary of main points, here.)

"The Hedgehog or the Fox: The Dilemma of Writing Development," Language Arts, 62:6 (October, 1985): 593-603.

"The First Five Minutes: Setting Agendas in the Writing Conference," in Chris Anson, The Discourse of Commentary, Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English: 317-331.

“Lunch at the Night Hawk: or Kinneavy Moves His Office.” Composition’s Roots in English Education, Patti Stock Editor.

“The Case for Slow Reading.” Educational Leadership 67:6 ( March 2010): 6-11.

“How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction.” Educational Leadership, 69:6 (March 2012): 29-32.

“Reading as Wedding Crashing” Educational Leadership December 2013/January 2014 71.4 (44-48)

"Looking for Trouble: A Way to Unmask Our Readings," College English, 46:8 (December, 1984): 756-766.

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Read For Next Time (3.25)

Speaking up and Talking Back

Teachers: Know When To Stop Talking

Literacy and Loneliness

A Mania For Rubrics

School Writing Manifesto

"Finding a Language for Difficulty" (Holding Onto Good Ideas)

Selfhood and the Personal Essay 

The middle class and the problem of pleasure... (title)--???

Silences in our Teaching Stories--need from Tom

Stress, Control, and the Deprofessionalizing of Teaching (Ed Week)

The Last Lesson (Globe Magazine)---need from Tom

Free Reading (English Journal, 2007)--about his dad

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Titles of articles which could serve as useful metaphors:

“Speaking Up and Talking Back”

“Speaking Back to the Common Core”

So, one way of thinking about this is Newkirk as "pushing back" or "looking for trouble" but I see another strand is literacy practices, i.e.

• The first five minutes (conferences)
• Direction and Misdirection in Peer Response (peer review)
• Barriers to Revision (revision)
• Wedding Crashers, The Case for Slow Reading, How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction, Comprehension: The Art and Science of Forgetting (reading)
• A Mania for Rubrics (evaluating student writing)
• Teachers: Know When to Stop Talking (leading class discussion)
• “Literacy and Loneliness” (reading)

THEME: Speaking Out, Speaking Up (to educational reform)

Half: Reading/Writing

Things that Newkirk is making us all feel better about...

Being a Slow Reader:

As a confessed slow reader, I would like to make a case for slowness. (The Case for Slow Reading)

Not Retaining What We Read:

Take for example my reading of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, a prize-winning account of the evolution of cancer treatment and research. My wife and I both read it at a time when she was being treated for endometrial cancer, and I found it a powerful and important book.

But what information do I recall three years later? I imagine a basic quiz that someone might give me—nothing tricky, just some foundational facts. So here were the questions on my 60 point pop quiz:

1. Name five major researchers who made advances in the understanding and treatment of cancer? (20 points)
2. Why was childhood leukemia a good choice for early research in cancer treatment? (10 points)
3. A major breakthrough in cancer research came when cancer could be studied on the cellular level. Describe on technique used to conduct this type of study? (10 points)
4. Define “angiogenesis?” (10 points)

My score—19. And that includes giving myself full credit for putting down Dana Farber instead of Sidney Farber—the only name I recall from the entire book. ("Comprehension: The Art and Science of Forgetting")

Liking Stories (i.e. it's okay to like and even need stories to understand something):

But when I read the best analytic writing—the work of Michael Pollan, Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Jay Gould, Jonah Lehrer, Elizabeth Kolbert, my favorite columnists, even Plato for that matter—it often feels like a story to me. The writing unfolds. I enjoy the playing out of ideas and positions, the ways they conflict, the ways questions are raised and explored—the way they are narrated. ("How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction")

If we are struggling with reading...

1. If we find ourselves losing focus when we read, if we are "defeated by the text," the fault might not be ours:

We never really read for raw information. We can't. So-called "informational texts" work only when the writer has been able to establish a set of expectations to drive the reading. Otherwise, there is no motor, no dynamic forward movement. This frame stabilizes the reading, gives it purpose, provides a pattern to place the "information" in. If readers fail to detect this pattern (or writers fail to construct it), they simply drift on, defeated by the specifics of the text. I am talking about more than a thesis. I mean a human problem or situation that needs examination, something that matters, that calls for writing. ("How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction")

2. If we find ourselves struggling to read, it may be because the distance between the reader's assumed knowledge (by the writer) and his or her actual prior knowledge is too great (Wedding Crashers, p. 45)