Since the pandemic, history educators from high school to higher education have been sounding the alarm about students’ ability to complete, understand, and discuss assigned readings. This two-hour session is one part academic panel and one part workshop, designed for the high school and college history educator who feels frustrated and challenged by the degree to which student reading struggles are affecting their ability to teach history. This session has several aims. First, we want to acquire a deeper, researched-based understanding of the “reading problem” in the high school and higher education landscapes. Second, we want to offer insights and strategies from veteran teachers who have grappled with literacy and reading challenges in their own classrooms. Finally, we want to offer space for a guided reflection and discussion to inspire educators to think about how they might refine one of their practices to improve students' reading capacity.

Our session will unfold in three parts. First, we will be curious researchers about the complexities of the problem itself. We want to go beyond what we think we know from our own anecdotal experiences. Panelists, including a veteran national education reporter, will share their insights about the causes and current manifestations of students’ reading challenges.

Second, we want to explore how educators are tackling those challenges. Three instructors from high school, community college, and higher education will share how they have understood and tried to address reading issues in their institutions. Indeed, in featuring instructors from these three parts of the educational ecosystem, we are consciously trying to understand student reading as part of a much longer arc of skill acquisition and teacher instructional practice. We want to build a shared conversation about reading across an educational continuum, rather than tackle the challenge from our siloed institutions.

Third, guided by a specialist in the “reading apprenticeship” model, we will offer the chance for participants to reflect on their current practices and learn strategies that can improve their students’ reading capacity and independence. We will focus on approaches that make sense in social studies and history courses. This final part of the session will enable participants to brainstorm with one another about how they might begin to integrate these moves in their own classrooms.

We hope educators leave this session with a broader understanding of the reading problem, with some concrete ideas about what might work in their classrooms, and with the sense that there are people and resources out there for them when they feel alone with the challenge.