Research for Teachers

When I first moved from teaching mostly Grade 11 and 12 classes to teaching Grade 7, I made a mistake that I still think about years later.

I chose Isabel Allende’s short story “And of Clay Are We Created,” based on the real-life tragedy of Omayra Sánchez, the young Colombian girl trapped in mud and debris after a volcanic eruption in 1985. The story is emotionally devastating, politically layered, and stylistically sophisticated. It explores trauma, helplessness, media spectacle, memory, and human suffering through rich symbolism and nonlinear reflection.

I loved the story.

My students did not.

Or perhaps more accurately: they could not yet access it.

The reading experience became frustrating for many of them. The vocabulary load was heavy. The historical and political context was unfamiliar. The emotional complexity was intense. Discussions stalled because students were spending so much cognitive energy simply trying to understand what was happening. Eventually, I pivoted to another short story that was more immediately accessible.

At the time, I viewed this as a straightforward teaching decision: the text was too difficult for Grade 7.

Now, years later, I am less certain.

I still think changing texts may have been the right call for that specific group of students. But I also wonder whether I framed the problem too narrowly. Was the text truly inaccessible? Or was my scaffolding too thin?

That question has stayed with me because, as teachers, we constantly walk a difficult line between challenge and frustration. If we oversimplify texts, students lose opportunities to develop stamina, interpretive thinking, and academic confidence. But if we throw students into difficult texts without enough support, confusion can quickly become disengagement.

The problem is that “difficulty” is not one single thing.

A text may be difficult because of vocabulary. Or background knowledge. Or sentence complexity. Or emotional maturity. Or unfamiliar text structure. Students may not struggle with the entire text equally; they may encounter specific moments where comprehension breaks down.

This idea appears in Reynolds and Fisher’s (2022) research on adolescents reading complex texts. They argue that difficulty often emerges in “moments” rather than across an entire text. Instead of automatically replacing difficult texts with easier ones, teachers can identify where students struggle and scaffold those moments strategically.

Looking back, I can now identify several barriers my students likely encountered simultaneously.

First, there was the issue of background knowledge. Students knew almost nothing about the real disaster involving Omayra Sánchez. Without context, the emotional weight of the story became abstract rather than meaningful. Today, I would likely begin with carefully selected photographs, short news clips, or a brief overview of the historical event before reading the story itself.

Second, there was emotional readiness. Middle school students are capable of discussing difficult themes, but they often need structured support to process emotionally intense material. At the time, I underestimated how emotionally overwhelming the story could feel when paired with linguistic difficulty.

Third, there was vocabulary and syntax. Allende’s prose is beautiful, but beauty often comes with density. I now think I would have benefitted from narrowing the reading experience rather than assigning the full story immediately.

This is where one strategy from a recent Edutopia article by Sara Yergler resonates strongly with me. Yergler suggests beginning with small excerpts or “snippets” of difficult texts rather than asking students to tackle everything at once. Students can annotate, discuss, and reread smaller sections before gradually expanding outward. That approach feels particularly important for literary texts where emotional and symbolic density matters more than plot coverage alone.

If I taught the story again, I do not think I would start with the full text.

I would probably begin with one carefully chosen passage. We might annotate together. We might identify confusing moments aloud. We might discuss imagery before discussing theme. Students might work in small groups to paraphrase sections in simpler language before returning to Allende’s original wording.

Most importantly, I think I would spend more time teaching students how to enter a difficult text.

Because that is something I did not fully understand early in my career: experienced readers do not comprehend difficult texts effortlessly. They slow down. They reread. They annotate. They infer missing context. They tolerate ambiguity. They ask questions while reading.

Struggling readers often assume confusion means failure. Strong readers understand confusion is part of the process.

Research on scaffolded reading instruction supports this idea. In a study examining adolescents reading complex expository texts, ter Beek et al. (2019) found that structured scaffolds improved comprehension, self-regulation, and student motivation. In other words, support does not lower rigor. Effective support often makes rigor possible.

That distinction matters.

Too often, conversations about “meeting students where they are” accidentally become conversations about reducing complexity altogether. But there is a difference between making a text easier and making a difficult text accessible.

One lowers the intellectual demand.

The other helps students rise to meet it.

I still do not know whether “And of Clay Are We Created” was ultimately the right choice for Grade 7. Perhaps it was not. Good teaching also involves recognizing when a text genuinely exceeds students’ developmental readiness.

But I no longer think the only options were “teach it” or “replace it.”

There may have been a third option: teach students how to approach complexity itself.

And that, increasingly, feels like one of the most important parts of literacy instruction.

References

Reynolds, D., & Fisher, W. (2022). What happens when adolescents meet complex texts? Describing moments of scaffolding textual encounters. Literacy, 56(4), 277–287. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12258

ter Beek, M., Opdenakker, M.-C., Spijkerboer, A. W., Brummer, L., Ozinga, H. W., & Strijbos, J.-W. (2019). Scaffolding expository history text reading: Effects on adolescents’ comprehension, self-regulation, and motivation. Learning and Individual Differences, 74, Article 101749. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.06.003

Yergler, S. (2026, May 5). How to help middle school students navigate challenging texts. Edutopia.