What is ELA, Really?

ELA.  English-Language Arts.  Ages ago when I was a middle school student, ELA meant that I was assigned a book, I took quizzes on its content, and then moved on to the next text.  I took quizzes and tests in grammar and spelling in the same way.  "Reading" meant memorizing the plot of a story and listening to my teacher tell me its deeper meaning.  "Writing" meant having correct spelling and grammar as well as 5 paragraphs in my so-called essay (about what I was assigned to read).  Somehow it got me through; I found my way to being an English teacher despite my dull experience.

It's taken me a long time to figure out why it's so difficult to teach English-Language Arts.  It's because it's such a gray content area.  Math clearly defines the exact skills students are to learn each year.  Clear-cut.  No frills.  Either a student gets it, or he doesn't.  Science and Social Studies are the similar:  teach this topic and this topic and this topic.  Yeah, yeah, yeah -- these content areas are supposed to teach reading and writing too, but we all know that the brunt of that goes to ELA:  that big GRAY elephant in the room.

An example from the Common Core Standards:

Did the student cite textual evidence?  Yes.  Does that evidence strongly support and analysis of what the text says explicitly?  Uhhhh . . . maybe?  Kind of?  That's a pretty relative statement!  It takes a lot of thinking to push through what ELA is really  meant to teach students.  ELA has moved from the content of texts to the literacy skills it takes to read them.  Consider this from EngageNY:

Whoa.  That's a far cry from the education I experienced!

As I move through this school year, I hope to continually revisit the gray areas of my content area and make them a bit more concrete.  I hope to notice and name the skills in literacy that push students to "readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature."  Most of all, I want my students to be able to say "I get it."