COMMENTARY 614 Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 57(8) May 2014 doi:10.1002/jaal.301 © 2014 International Reading Association (pp. 614–623) Disciplinary Literacy ADAPT NOT ADOPT Victoria Gillis This article argues that all teachers are NOT reading teachers, nor should they be. Adapt rather than adopt is the approach suggested, with examples of adaptations provided. R ecently, I was reading online and came across an item titled “All teachers are liter- acy teachers under common core” (ASCD, April 17, 2013). My first thought was, “Oh, no – not again. We can’t go back there!” The “back there” to which I refer is the quicksand of “every teacher a teacher of reading.” This notion, dating from the early part of the previous century, has hobbled our efforts to improve adolescent literacy for more than 75 years. Every teacher is not a teacher of reading. This may seem like anathema to readers of JAAL, but if we are to make a difference in adolescent literacy, we have to approach the problem in a different way (Moje, 2008). Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is do- ing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” which, it seems to me, is what we’ve been doing in adolescent literacy for far too long. Secondary teachers are experts in specific disciplines, and as such have no desire, let alone sufficient knowledge, to teach literacy (Moje, 2008; Ridgeway, 2004). Although literacy pro- fessionals may not mean to turn science or history or mathematics teachers into reading teachers, this is what secondary teachers hear when we say, “every teacher a teacher of reading.” This sort of pronouncement just turns secondary teachers against ideas that, when implemented, can improve student learning and their literacy simultaneously. I know whereof I speak because 40 years ago, I was one of those content area teachers forced against my will to attend a “reading meeting.” I wrote about this in a First Person piece several years ago (Ridgeway, 2004); suffice it to say, I was opposed to being told by a reading person how to teach science. It was in my attempt to show the read- ing supervisor that she could not tell me how to teach science that I discovered the power in appropriate disciplinary literacy practices in science, such as ex- plicitly linking data (evidence) to inferences and con- clusions, focusing on multimodal reading, and attending to vocabulary. These practices turned my unmotivated junior high students into engaged learn- ers and solved classroom management problems at the same time. The key, as in many parts of life, was in how I envisioned literacy instruction in my classroom. Initially, literacy never crossed my mind; instead, I was trying ideas that might improve stu- dents’ learning in science. I did “think alouds” as I read diagrams and text before they were assigned; I did not assign every page because some passages were so poorly written that I directed my students to skip them and read the diagrams instead; I assigned Victoria Gillis is a Professor and Wyoming Excellence in Education Literacy Chair at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA; e-mail victoria.gillis@gmail.com.