Benefits of literacy, US and Canada

CYP Now has teamed up with the Churchill Fellowship to publish a series of articles summarising key findings from studies undertaken worldwide by Churchill Fellows (see below). This is an abridged version of The Story Project: Using Reading and Writing to Support Young People’s Mental Health and Academic Attainment in Literacy. The report details the travels and findings of Olivia Richards, an English teacher and founder of a literacy and wellbeing social enterprise called The Story Project. In 2016, Richards undertook a study trip to the US and Canada visiting 12 different programmes and experts working in the field from New York on the east coast to Seattle on the west coast. The research involved observations and interviews at each location. Here, she highlights findings across key research themes.

UK CONTEXT

At the time of my fellowship there was a growing body of research suggesting that an increasing number of children were not reading for pleasure. As an English teacher this concerned me because reading for pleasure and progress in English is closely linked. Writing for pleasure was also decreasing. The National Literacy Trust found that fewer children and young people enjoyed writing in 2015 compared with the previous year, with enjoyment levels dropping from 49.3 per cent in 2014 to 44.8 per cent in 2015.

This reduction in reading and writing for pleasure also meant that young people were missing out on opportunities to reap the emotional benefits from reading and writing. This was concerning in a time when around one in 10 young people in the UK were experiencing a mental health problem and a further 15 per cent were at risk of a mental health problem.

To tackle this decrease in wellbeing, many schools were starting to develop whole-school approaches to promoting resilience and improving emotional wellbeing. Evidence shows that interventions that take a whole-school approach to wellbeing have a positive impact in relation to both physical health and mental wellbeing outcomes for individual students.

As an English teacher I had to teach academic skills in English lessons, but I also knew that there was more I could be doing to support my pupils emotional health through my subject. Reading and writing were the activities that I always turned to when I needed to support my own mental health, so I wanted to learn more about how I could integrate the mental health benefits of reading and writing into my subject.

How were programmes in the US and Canada integrating social and emotional learning (SEL) into the classroom through reading and writing?

I visited Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, which has developed the Ruler programme, which provides training and resources to support SEL in schools. Ruler is an acronym that stands for Recognising, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing and Regulating emotions. The center has identified these key steps as being important to developing emotional skills and provides training for teachers to support their students in going through these key steps.

I observed the Ruler programme in practice at The Friends Center Pre-School, one of Ruler’s flagship schools. During the lesson I observed the teacher read a book about Mrs McNosh and the Great Big Squash, by Sarah Weeks. The teacher asked relevant questions as they read: “How do you think the cat felt, when he was squashed by that giant squash?”

When the children weren’t sure, they were encouraged to look at the cat’s facial expression and think how they would feel. I saw this process being applied to a real life situation when one of the children tipped a basket of plastic fruit on the floor. Another child became very distressed by this and started crying inconsolably. When the teacher came over to rectify the situation, she asked the child who had tipped out the fruit to look at the face of the child who was crying and to tell her how she thought her friend was feeling. The child was able to see that she had upset her friend and decided that she should pick up the fruit.

Through observing Ruler in practice, I could see that through a structured approach to questioning and the use of appropriate training, stories are being used effectively to develop emotional skills, without taking away from the students’ academic time. Evaluations show classrooms in Ruler schools were rated as having higher degrees of warmth and connectedness between teachers and students, more autonomy and leadership among students, and teachers who focused more on students’ interests and motivations.

How did programmes choose appropriate reading material?

If reading is going to be used to support young people’s wellbeing, then the literature chosen needs to be considered carefully. Each programme I visited had a unique and helpful insight into how to choose the right material.

The 4R’s programme, developed by the Morningside Center for Social Responsibility in New York, provides curriculums and training for teachers to use literature to provide SEL. To make life easier for the schools and teachers it works with, the Morningside Center provides the texts for teachers and the teaching guides.

The Ruler programme recognises that some teachers may still want to choose texts themselves, so have created some guidelines to ensure teachers know what to look for when they are choosing books that will help develop their students’ SEL.

The Center for Collaborative Classroom (CCC) in Alameda provides a number of programmes that provide English instruction with SEL integrated. CCC explains that if teachers are selecting their own books, they need to ensure that books are diverse and reflect the students they are teaching. It is very easy for a teacher to subconsciously choose books that reflect themselves and sometimes books with more diverse characters/storylines can be harder to source.

The subject of diversity in books came up at each organisation I visited on my trip. It was considered crucial that students see themselves, their peers and a wide range of communities in books. Jackie Jacobs at CCC explained that children need books that are “mirrors and windows”; books that give students an insight into their own lives, but also a window into other lives, so they have a better understanding of the world.

To evaluate diversity CCC has helped to develop a tool that aims to assist teachers in measuring the diversity of their curriculum. The tool contains a number of carefully considered questions that need to be asked about each book, evaluating their settings, characters and plots. The tool is thorough and time consuming, but easy to use. By creating a quantifiable way of evaluating diversity, it means that every school can evaluate their book choices and teachers will be less likely to fall victim to their blindspots.

What types of writing activities were used by the programmes?

I visited Youth Communication in New York, which provides powerful, teen-written stories and professional development to help educators and youth workers engage struggling young people. It has two projects that young people can write for: “Represent” and “YC Teen”. Both publish a magazine and some of the best stories from the magazines are used in the anthologies that go to schools.

As soon as the budding authors arrive at the Youth Communication office, they are treated with professionalism. The office is a genuine publishing suite and they are given deadlines and high expectations. The young authors then start a process of writing that involves multiple editing opportunities. Every time they submit a draft of their story, their editor will return it with a mixture of positive and improvement comments. The high expectations and professional environment mean that the young people are being challenged academically, but the supportive and personal comments also mean the young people are being supported emotionally.

What Youth Communication is doing is not miles away from what a teacher does through marking and providing feedback on students’ work, but that simple shift in perception – from having an editor look at your work rather than a teacher – has a transformative effect. The young people are also engaged because the writing is personal to them and they have chosen to write about it.

CONCLUSION

I started this research journey with a question: can reading and writing be used to support both the wellbeing of young people and their academic development? I believe that the projects I visited and have written about prove that the answer to that question is yes. Each project has achieved this in its own way, and not all projects have set out to deliberately support young people emotionally and academically, but collectively the research has shown that through specific curriculums, carefully chosen literature and innovative writing activities, it is possible to achieve both of these aims concurrently. They have also taught me that it is possible to do this in a way that is ethical, scalable and will be able to have an impact on the people who need it the most.

• Read the full paper on The Story Project
  
  

CREATING THE STORY PROJECT

After my fellowship, I began working as the wellbeing lead at St Paul’s School, I started to develop ways to integrate the teaching of wellbeing with the teaching of literacy. Putting what I had seen on my fellowship into a format that would work in the UK context. I successfully applied for grants from The Shine Trust and the School for Social Entrepreneurs, which enabled me to develop The Story Project.

The Story Project matches the wellbeing skills children need to develop with age-appropriate, diverse and engaging fictional stories. On our website teachers and parents can access training and lesson plans that accompany these stories. These plans follow a unique structure using the acronym “Story”, which stands for: Settle, Training, Objective, Read, You.

The Story Project is now being used in schools across the UK as part of their PSHE education and literacy development. Unfortunately, since my research the amount of children struggling with a probable mental health problem has risen to approximately one in six and we still don’t know the full consequences that the pandemic has had on children’s overall wellbeing. Therefore, I am more determined than ever to ensure children have access to the stories and the accompanying activities provided by The Story Project. I am really pleased that The Story Project has recently received further funding from the Churchill Fellowship Activate Grant to help me further scale the project to more schools and to support the wellbeing and literacy of more children across the UK. I also continue to research this subject extensively and look forward to starting a PHD on the impact of The Story Project this year.

• More from www.story-project.co.uk or email olivia@story-project.co.uk
  
  

ABOUT THE CHURCHILL FELLOWSHIP

The Churchill Fellowship is a national network of 3,800 inspiring individuals whose mission is to find the world’s best solutions for the UK’s current challenges.

Up to 150 Churchill Fellows are funded each year to visit the world’s leading practitioners and projects on a topic of their choice – from social policy to healthcare to education and more – and bring back new ideas for their communities and sectors across the UK.

Any UK adult citizen can apply, regardless of qualifications, background or age. Fellows are chosen for their potential as change-makers, not their past track record or status.

• Find out about fellows and their ideas at www.churchillfellowship.org