Musings on Explicit Instruction

What a tricky topic! It's defined in many ways by many different sources. Here's a quick random sampling of those definitions:

Explicit instruction is a systematic instructional approach that includes set of delivery and design procedures derived from effective schools research merged with behavior analysis.There are two essential components to well designed explicit instruction: (a) visible deliveryfeatures are group instruction with a high level of teacher and student interactions, and (b) the less observable, instructional design principles and assumptions that make up the content and strategies to be taught.
(http://aim.cast.org/learn/historyarchive/backgroundpapers/explicit_instruction#.UvKHgaUw0y4)

Explicit instruction means that we show learners how we think when we read…
(Harvey and Goudvis' Strategies that Work)

Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented--and has been shown to promote achievement for all students.
(http://explicitinstruction.org)

At the heart of each of these definitions is one very common idea: systematically teaching students how to read and think. A key factor of explicit instruction is bringing light to those implicit actions that good readers do. A teacher must strategically construct lessons to direct students to full comprehension of a text. Different texts will require different strategies. A novel might call for a read aloud, while a non-fiction text might necessitate a think aloud.

On the surface, explicit instruction seems quite straight forward and manageable to infuse into teaching. Upon further inspection, it's clear that there's a fine line between guiding students and telling students. This is the delineation that many teachers teeter upon, and I know that I did.

Let me contextualize my background, so as a reader you understand this delineation and my previous confusion with explicit instruction. I have an undergraduate degree in English, which encompassed writing and literature classes. Now that same program is split into the two categories. I completely denied my eventual entrance into teaching and didn't take a single undergraduate education class. Now, years later, I see how I robbed myself of a valuable experience. A couple of years after college I started teaching via the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program, which provided me the formal backing for an emergency certification. As I was managing a classroom, I attended grad classes. And while this isn't a knock on my graduate education, as a secondary teacher, I don't think I was prepared to actually teach the student population I was in front of every day.

Terms like "explicit instruction"and "think alouds" were mentioned a few years into my teaching at the secondary level. Imagine my confusion when I was told to use these in my classroom. I didn't have the slightest idea of where to start to be successful! I remember thinking, "How is this different from 'direct instruction'?" All of the literature we were given focused on using explicit instruction at the elementary level, and even now as I skim through books and websites that's where the focus lies. But I digress…

Explicit instruction must be useful in the classroom as it is essentially a version of loose handholding, but in the best way possible. I can relate it to teaching a child to read. If the parent sets up many opportunities for their child to read and be successful eventually that child will be just that. A teacher has the same responsibility, even into the secondary years. Here's where it gets tricky. When does the teacher release the grip? How does explicit instruction continue into the secondary years, without having the students feel childish? How does the teacher infuse explicit instruction into a secondary classroom with grade level texts and below grade level readers (and stay on a timeline, etc. and stick to all of the outside pressures)?