The “disciplinary literacy” approach creates authentic learning experiences in the core curriculum as students read and analyze primary source documents.


W 8 Leadership


hen you walk into Jon Perry’s high school history classroom, it is clear from the mo- ment you cross the threshold that it is not a traditional learning environment. Co-


constructed charts full of students’ thinking adorn the walls, as do charts that set an expectation for a true learning com- munity.


Students are not sitting compliantly in desks as they watch


Perry lecture from a PowerPoint. Instead, they are reading and annotating primary source documents, making meaning about these documents with each other, and learning along- side their teacher, who is skillfully coaching them not to sim- ply learn history, but to actually become apprentice historians through a “disciplinary literacy” approach to instruction.


While this may sound like an educational fantasy – the


stuff dreams are made of – the transformation in Perry’s prac- tice hasn’t happened spontaneously or magically. Instead, it has developed through intentional moves by Perry, as well as through the powerful support he is receiving from leaders at both the site and district level. When we think about what makes learning relevant to


students, often we narrow our thinking to electives or career technical education. While these do provide powerful op- portunities for students to make relevant connections to their learning, we can also create authentic experiences in the core curriculum.


Learning for a new era In the San Juan Unified School District, we are choosing to


do this through an introduction to disciplinary literacy in sec- ondary English/language arts and social science. Disciplinary literacy, an approach that asks students to read, write, think and speak as a member of a discipline (McConachie, Petrosky and Resnick, 2009), engages students as historians, scientists, mathematicians, readers and writers. Through their work in the classroom, students see them-


selves as doing work the way that a member of a discipline would work in his or her field. This allows them to understand how the subjects in the core curriculum connect to life outside of school.


By Nicole Kukral and Stacy Spector


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