Film Background

Reading Between the Lives: an original work by Sean McFarland, Cristina Watson, Jamie Chandler, Monique Williams and Esther Patterson, with production assistance from Megan Justus.

The crew shot, edited, and produced an original seventy minute documentary on the reading experience of Chabot College students. Here is a brief outline of the process:  

• The crew read 125 student intake essays--75 Basic Skills and 50 Transfer students--written on the second day of class on the prompt, “Describe your experience and history as a reader.”
• The crew started to spot themes or trends in the essays, which helped them begin to ask questions about Chabot students as readers.
• The crew had discussions with reading and education theorists.
• The crew read research and theory on reading; for example from the text, Rethinking Literacy Education, Quigley.
• The crew shot over 50 hours of interviews with students; students were selected in three ways: randomly,  they were in a class of a SPECC participant, the research assistants knew them. Over 100 students were interviewed.
• The crew followed up the really unexpected or ambiguous input they got from students.
• The crew identified themes/concepts that came out frequently in the footage and started to design the film around those concepts. Meanwhile the crew tagged every discreet segment of the footage by theme, so it could be called up and used. Over 1200 separate clips were logged. Over 400 clips are included in the movie.
• The crew culled from the footage a documentary organized around themes.
• The crew added B roll—images and music to support the themes and most importantly text so the watching of the video would be akin to a reading experience.
• The crew wrapped and made a packaged DVD with a CD transcript for the users of the film.
• The following themes emerged in the film and it is organized around menus on the DVD from which the user can select: Prologue, When Reading is Assigned, Why Not Ask, Textbooks, Reading Tips for Students, Personal Background as a Reader, Self Esteem, Student Responsibilities, Teacher Responsibilities, The Bond, Tips for Teachers, Epilogue.

A few more notes about the making of the film: the crew assumed at the beginning of the project that the film would be personality driven, that perhaps 6-8 students would be featured and their stories would be told; but instead it became concept/theme driven. The filmmakers had no preset agenda (it’s true, Monique does not like textbooks). A guiding principle when editing was, when critical comments were made about teachers they were not included in the film unless they had been echoed by many other students. When positive comments were made they were included with no concern for corroboration. The crew started with students in Basic Skills classes, only to find out that transfer students told a very similar story. The line between transfer and basic skills, particularly with adult learners, isn’t that informative or real for that matter. The film includes many statements that create contradiction and complexity around very difficult areas like: accountability, identity, classroom practice, effective teaching, reading as the main medium for educating, self esteem and student success, student-teacher relationships and their impact on student success or teacher success.

The film’s genesis grew out of wanting to hear directly from students about reading, so they would be our teachers, the primary voices we had to reckon with as we discussed effective practices and debated pedagogy. We found immediately that the students’ sense of self, sense of future possibility is very tied up with their facility as readers. The role of adult identity in community college teaching is not often analyzed pedagogically, particularly in disciplines where there is a lot of pressure to cover content. The voices in this film are so genuine, so dignified that the individuality of the 30 or so students featured becomes primary; we feel these students and can easily recognize that they are speaking from the heart.  So the critique they have of their teachers or themselves or the textbooks shouts out to be heard as opposed to only reacted to.

The four research assistants give some quick and dirty feedback about what they learned in making the video:

• There is more going on in a student’s head and heart about their reading than they let on, or that they may even know.
• When students don’t do the reading, it is usually not because they “don’t want to” or because they are “lazy.” Other forces are at play.
• Many students are afraid to ask for help. They refrain from asking NOT because they are lazy or uninterested, but because, among other reasons, they don’t want to be singled out as “stupid.”
• For most students their self-esteem is intricately wrapped up in how well they think they can read. Even students who would be considered “good readers” have self-esteem issues.
• Many students do not like or truly “get” textbooks.
• Many students don’t think that their teachers help them very much with their reading.
• Many students think teachers could do a better job, not just with reading but also with teaching.
• Many students think that they themselves as students could do a better job—as readers and as students.
• Many students think that the student/teacher relationship is crucial to their success.
• There is much more that we have learned. For now we can close with this hopeful thought: although the video uncovers a number of seemingly intractable issues, there are some practical--and relatively easy to implement—ideas to address student reading. Some of these tips are included in the video.