"It Tastes Like More": Notes on Teaching Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum in a Bilingual Classroom

I came to Literacy con Cariño a skeptic, weary of the constant procession of nostrums for healing education's ills. With all the criticism we read of so many things being wrong with the schools, and with so many often contradictory or pie-in-the-sky solutions offered, both educators and those not members of the teaching establishment rightly wonder, "What is the first thing we should do to improve the schools?" And then comes the follow-up question, whether as cop-out or challenge, "What can one person do?"

Literacy con Cariño surprised me. Because recent articles have focused on systemwide remedies for what many describe as a crisis in the U.S. public schools, I expected the book to take a similar tack. What a refreshing contrast! I was relieved to discover that Literacy con Cariño does not find it necessary to issue a call for action nor does it try to cover every imaginable topic. The book uses the powerful weapon of truth in a gentle way. It speaks of just one classroom, and in a low key.

My skepticism about this book's contribution to the dialogue began to fade with the introductory chapter. Robert Baruth, beginning his second year of teaching a bilingual class of fifth graders in a small farming community in South Texas in August 1983, was convinced that his students "could learn more, progress faster, and be led to believe in themselves . . ." (7). During that fall, when he began university-level studies for a certificate required to teach limited-English-proficient (LEP) children, he approached two of his professors, Curtis Hayes and Carolyn Kessler, for ways to help his current students succeed. Hayes and Kessler helped Baruth organize his classroom and visited periodically. Literacy con Cariño documents the results of their collaboration. As he introduces new ways to help his students learn, while honoring their Hispanic heritage, the inspiring story of Baruth's classroom practices may well remind many readers of other teachers—past and present—whose ability and charisma are gifts we cherish.

The approach seems simple. The revolution in Robert Baruth's fifth-grade classroom began with the sharing of stories. Stories read aloud by the teacher and used in combination with innovative teaching methods—including the use of the dialogue journal—pierced cultural barriers and opened up Baruth's students to the joys of reading and writing. During the first and last periods of the school day the teacher read to the class; during the second period the students were asked to write in their journals. (The favorite story among those read aloud to the class was "The Onion"—a tale found in Dostoyevski's novel, The Brothers Karamazov—the students wanted to hear it over and over again.) Their journal entries reflected their interests and ranged from reactions to the stories read in class to stories of their own, to commentaries on their life experiences.

Chapter 3 of Literacy con Cariño includes a full-page enthusiastic report on "The Miracle of the Moving Snowman" (from the basal reader) by ten-year-old Larry. Earlier in the year Larry had informed his teacher he was unable to write anything at all. Larry's development as a writer demonstrates the authors' strategy of "trial and success"—to use Ralph Wickiser's terminology—which enabled the children to succeed academically.

The school district's bilingual education program in which Baruth taught was "for children experiencing difficulties in mainstream, English-only classes" (18). As fifth graders, his students would be having their last bilingual classroom experience. Thirteen of the twenty-two students were ten years old. The others ranged in age from eleven to sixteen. At the end of the previous year, every child in the group had tested below grade-level in reading proficiency. Specifically, the class average was grade-level one. The results of Baruth's introduction of new...