
{"id":4864,"date":"2009-02-12T10:14:32","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T18:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=4864"},"modified":"2009-02-12T10:14:32","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T18:14:32","slug":"education-matters-with-literacy-and-justice-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/02\/12\/education-matters-with-literacy-and-justice-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Matters: With literacy and justice for all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Steve Peha<\/p>\n<p>Recently, I visited a number of schools: high schools, middle schools and elementary schools; public, private and religious schools. Each acknowledged the same problem with literacy: Too many kids were so far behind in reading that they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t function in their classes. But when I made suggestions about how to improve things, and modeled these suggestions in teachers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 classrooms, I got distinctly negative reactions to new ideas.<\/p>\n<p>The concept that set teachers off the most was the notion of teaching kids how to choose books they liked and could read. That way, instead of most kids struggling to read texts way above their heads (novels chosen by the teacher or selections from a publisher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anthology or test-prep packet), each student could read a book that was just right. This would make reading more meaningful for kids and allow teachers to teach important skills through brief one-on-one conferences in a context where kids could immediately apply them. It would also improve student motivation and help them feel more successful.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>True enough, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to teach better. But isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it worth it, especially when it comes to literacy? Why are we so resistant? Why do we seem so unmoved by the connection between failure in literacy and failure in school? Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we acknowledge the connection between high school dropouts and low levels of literacy? Why, in something as important as reading, do we justify using approaches (like whole-class novels and anthology selections) that we know don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work for the kids we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to teach?<\/p>\n<p>When we teach reading, we hold kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lives in our hands. And every time we hit them with texts they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read (and tell them their grades depend on their understanding), we chip away at those lives until reading becomes odious and punitive. The consequences for kids who fall behind in elementary school can be devastating. By the time they reach middle school, their reading includes larger volumes of social studies, science and math texts written at grade levels for which they are not prepared. And their secondary teachers, almost never trained in reading, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help them.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time our nation began to feel an urgency around reading that compelled us to do the right things: Teach kids how to choose their own \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just right\u00e2\u20ac\u009d texts; teach reading skills and monitor kids\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 progress in the context of authentic individual reading; create successful interventions and intervene early at all levels, K-12; make sure all certified teachers have a meaningful and practical background in reading instruction; put the needs of students above those of covering curriculum or preparing for tests.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to ed reform these days, we all seem to be nurturing dreams of kids becoming college graduates and going on to be the scientists and mathematicians who create our future. But here in the present, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re kidding ourselves if we think we can get away with anything less than 100 percent literacy. Of course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our least advantaged children who are hurt the most by the old let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-all-read-the-same-novel-or-selection-from-the-literature-book approach. And yet this approach persists in the majority of our classrooms.<\/p>\n<p>Now, you may be thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was taught the old-fashioned way and it worked for me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My children read just fine and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re taught that way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the point. A significant percentage of kids learn to read outside of school and others can learn just about anything on their own no matter how poorly they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re taught. But what about the 10 to 20 million kids in our country that our testing data tells us don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read as well as they should and who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t getting better as they get further along in school?<\/p>\n<p>It makes sense to tackle this problem at the beginning. Most schools have an informal goal that all kids will be fluent readers by third grade. But what happens if some kids don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make it? Send them to fourth grade and hope. And then on to fifth and middle and high school thereafter, all the while postponing our obligation.<\/p>\n<p>Reading delayed is reading denied. Kids who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t learn to read well in elementary school rarely, if ever, catch up. And just about everyone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever worked in a school, or been a parent of a struggling reader, knows this. If education is truly the new civil right, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time we got serious about creating a nation with literacy and justice for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Steve Peha Recently, I visited a number of schools: high schools, middle schools and elementary schools; public, private and religious schools. Each acknowledged the same problem with literacy: Too many kids were so far behind in reading that they couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t function in their classes. But when I made suggestions about how to improve things,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4865,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4864\/revisions\/4865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}