In my 50s and 60s pieces I wrote about my struggles as a student and so I won’t repeat it all again. Let it suffice to say I struggled as an elementary student and certainly wasn’t a stellar high school student either. It wasn’t until my junior year in college that things began to fit together.
Many experts believe that the biggest influence on the way teachers teach is how they were taught as students. I would tend to agree with that. If they felt they were really successful in school, teachers tend to teach like their teachers did. On the other hand, if they struggled they might choose methods they think might be more effective. I would be in the latter group.
I was fortunate to student teach with a teacher who was open minded and encouraged innovation. She modeled effective instruction for me everyday and was a big influence on me. I adapted many of her ideas and techniques for my own classroom.
Marsha Cammack also heavily influenced me. Marsha taught special education in the room right next to mine. She was an incredibly positive person and had a big impact on me as well as her students. Marsha and I were doing mainstreaming (now called inclusion) of her students in my regular education classroom in 1971. We were pioneers for what is now commonplace. One unintended side effect of the success we were having with special needs kids was that for the rest of my teaching career I was the person that got the special needs kids and the discipline problems when they got to my grade level.
John Becker, the person who hired me and was the principal of the building, also influenced me. John was a progressive educator who was open to new ideas. He had a reputation as an outstanding teacher, himself, and that added credibility. He encouraged me and had confidence in my skills as a teacher.
I would have to say that my own daughters had a big impression on me, too, as I formulated my ideas about learning. They had some of the same struggles I had at their age and I could see what worked for them and what didn’t. I even experimented on them sometimes, probably more with Heather because my thoughts were not as formulated when Angie was younger. I tried different things to immerse them in language as they grew up. I watched as they had different kinds of teachers and could easily see where they prospered.
In the spring of 1972 I took Supervision of Primary Grade Reading at the urging of some colleagues in the building. I really had no business doing it in my first year but I did. It was a University of Iowa extension course offered in Mt. Pleasant. Although I only got a “C” in the course I did get a lot out of it and it bolstered my emerging beliefs about learning. The teacher wrote me a note at the end of the course saying she couldn’t recommend me for graduate school. I hadn’t asked her to? Her comment haunted me for years.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Becoming a Teacher III
Not having a viable alternative I followed along with other teachers and used the basal reading program and the language arts book. I hated it but I did it for a while at least. Then things begin to happen. Things I loved and the kids loved began to creep in to the day. I started reading aloud to the kids more, using poetry more, and letting the kids do their self-selection of literature from the library. We started writing a lot more, too. Still commercially produced materials dominated my classroom.
But the tide began to shift. I saw the rumbling of discontent in the professional journals. I knew I had to be a better teacher. I knew I couldn’t continue to do something I didn’t believe in…something I was convinced was actually doing harm to the kids.
Other teachers wanted to do more but were afraid. Teachers generally are a very cautious group. Contrary to popular belief they don’t take on every new thing that comes down the pike. Generally teachers teach they way they were taught and only do things differently if there is powerful research and support for it.
Parents demand their children be taught just the same way they were taught. Parents have stopped more than one significant educational innovation simply because it was new and different. When I hear politicians tell us education has got to change I always think they are talking to the wrong people. They need to talk to the parents.
Publishers and parents got the pieces but not the picture and, unfortunately many others were in the same boat. The goal of reading and writing instruction should be to produce readers and writers.
The model of public education we use today came from another time and was tailored to produce good citizens and level the playing field by offering the education to everyone. In Europe only the very wealthy could afford to be educated and the thinking in the new world was that it should be for everyone. It was only later that things like producing good workers for the business world became important. The one size fits all model we were using in Mt. Pleasant and most other schools wasn’t working because large numbers of kids were failing to become readers and writers.
So I was faced with the dilemma. Follow the rules and just go along with the others, or ask a lot of questions and try to find a better way. There had to be a better way! But, would the school district let me find it and use it if I did? What about my colleagues? What would they say? What about parents? I was sure they expected a traditional education much the same as they one they had. And last, but most important, would the kids prosper and grow up to be readers and writers?
Up to that time I had been influenced by a lot of different people and things. Out of my experience I began to form my beliefs about education and learning. (Continued)
But the tide began to shift. I saw the rumbling of discontent in the professional journals. I knew I had to be a better teacher. I knew I couldn’t continue to do something I didn’t believe in…something I was convinced was actually doing harm to the kids.
Other teachers wanted to do more but were afraid. Teachers generally are a very cautious group. Contrary to popular belief they don’t take on every new thing that comes down the pike. Generally teachers teach they way they were taught and only do things differently if there is powerful research and support for it.
Parents demand their children be taught just the same way they were taught. Parents have stopped more than one significant educational innovation simply because it was new and different. When I hear politicians tell us education has got to change I always think they are talking to the wrong people. They need to talk to the parents.
Publishers and parents got the pieces but not the picture and, unfortunately many others were in the same boat. The goal of reading and writing instruction should be to produce readers and writers.
The model of public education we use today came from another time and was tailored to produce good citizens and level the playing field by offering the education to everyone. In Europe only the very wealthy could afford to be educated and the thinking in the new world was that it should be for everyone. It was only later that things like producing good workers for the business world became important. The one size fits all model we were using in Mt. Pleasant and most other schools wasn’t working because large numbers of kids were failing to become readers and writers.
So I was faced with the dilemma. Follow the rules and just go along with the others, or ask a lot of questions and try to find a better way. There had to be a better way! But, would the school district let me find it and use it if I did? What about my colleagues? What would they say? What about parents? I was sure they expected a traditional education much the same as they one they had. And last, but most important, would the kids prosper and grow up to be readers and writers?
Up to that time I had been influenced by a lot of different people and things. Out of my experience I began to form my beliefs about education and learning. (Continued)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Becoming a Teacher II
Rudolf Flesch was strongly opposed to a technique that was in use in some places in the early 1950s called the “look and say” method in which students learned to recognize whole words. He felt that students were not being taught to link letters with sounds and turn the sounds into words. He felt that looking at the context in which the word was used in was counter productive.
What was called phonics became the method of preference in most schools for the next 30 years or so even though research and professional opinion didn’t support it as the only method to use it became just that! I was beaten by the phonics stick myself and now facing the prospect of doing what I hated so much to my own students.
The trouble was that learners associated reading with boring and pointless drill and practice and writing with grammar drills and red marks on their papers. There was no reading and writing but rather the so-called preparation to be readers and writers. Contrary to Flesch’s contention, Johnny could read but he chose not to. Much the same problem that we have with most adults today and the same is true for writing.
Are the generations of kids hammered with Flesch’s phonics better readers today? Nope! Publishers loved the programmed instruction and made a fortune peddling their reading series. Textbook authors and quasi researchers published volumes to support what they were doing…lining the pockets of the publisher. The popular press was full of stories espousing their beliefs. True researchers who had no vested interest in selling books continue to advocate for an alternative but their voices we drowned out by the deep pockets of the book selling industry.
Those who advocated for more novels and books (literature based) in the hands of children didn’t have a chance either. The publishers wanted to sell their volumes of scripted lessons that only included brief reading passages that the kids seldom got to even read.
A movement called whole language was quietly gaining strength in the background. It advocated for much more reading and writing and the teaching of skills in the context of the student learning and not in isolation as advocated by the phonics approach. I was drawn to it because it made sense to me. Who could learn to golf or play tennis or ride a bike if they never got to actually do it because they were always practicing the sub skills? Thus, came the name, whole language, and teaching from the whole to the part. That is pretty much how we learn everything else. Oh, there is some instruction that usually goes on before hand but the real learning doesn’t really happen until the learner tries the activity.
Teachers didn’t have to think. They dutifully read the script in the teachers’ manual to their three reading groups and didn’t question the fact that it didn’t take any training to do that. When it is tightly controlled like that there is no decision making on the part of the teacher. Today we know that good teachers make instruction decisions that impact student learning all the time. We now train teachers to do just that. (To be continued)
What was called phonics became the method of preference in most schools for the next 30 years or so even though research and professional opinion didn’t support it as the only method to use it became just that! I was beaten by the phonics stick myself and now facing the prospect of doing what I hated so much to my own students.
The trouble was that learners associated reading with boring and pointless drill and practice and writing with grammar drills and red marks on their papers. There was no reading and writing but rather the so-called preparation to be readers and writers. Contrary to Flesch’s contention, Johnny could read but he chose not to. Much the same problem that we have with most adults today and the same is true for writing.
Are the generations of kids hammered with Flesch’s phonics better readers today? Nope! Publishers loved the programmed instruction and made a fortune peddling their reading series. Textbook authors and quasi researchers published volumes to support what they were doing…lining the pockets of the publisher. The popular press was full of stories espousing their beliefs. True researchers who had no vested interest in selling books continue to advocate for an alternative but their voices we drowned out by the deep pockets of the book selling industry.
Those who advocated for more novels and books (literature based) in the hands of children didn’t have a chance either. The publishers wanted to sell their volumes of scripted lessons that only included brief reading passages that the kids seldom got to even read.
A movement called whole language was quietly gaining strength in the background. It advocated for much more reading and writing and the teaching of skills in the context of the student learning and not in isolation as advocated by the phonics approach. I was drawn to it because it made sense to me. Who could learn to golf or play tennis or ride a bike if they never got to actually do it because they were always practicing the sub skills? Thus, came the name, whole language, and teaching from the whole to the part. That is pretty much how we learn everything else. Oh, there is some instruction that usually goes on before hand but the real learning doesn’t really happen until the learner tries the activity.
Teachers didn’t have to think. They dutifully read the script in the teachers’ manual to their three reading groups and didn’t question the fact that it didn’t take any training to do that. When it is tightly controlled like that there is no decision making on the part of the teacher. Today we know that good teachers make instruction decisions that impact student learning all the time. We now train teachers to do just that. (To be continued)
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Becoming a Teacher
Some say that good teachers are born while others say they have to be trained. I think it is both. Some people are more natural at it than others but they can benefit from some training, too. At least, I did!
I felt pretty confident, coming out of college, that I could do the job. I knew quite a bit about science and had the equivalent of a minor in that area. I was comfortable with math at the elementary school level and didn’t see social studies as a challenge. I wasn’t so sure about how to teach skill-oriented reading or even where to start for that matter. I hadn’t been a good reading student myself so that didn’t help. I loved language but didn’t do well with the traditional language arts classes that were heavy on drill and practice.
Educators tend to break things that need to be taught into parts, teach the part, and then have the student put it all together. The problem was that we got so busy teaching the part that the student never got around to putting it together. The putting together is where the fun and reward of learning is. Needless to say many didn’t find reading and language arts fun and rewarding. Kids rarely read anything more than a very short passage. Research in those days said elementary students spent less than two minutes a day reading. They almost never got to write a story and when they did it was taken apart piece by piece with a red pen.
I sought advice from my colleagues in the building about how best to go about teaching reading and language arts (English). Most just said they went by the teacher’s manual. It was scripted instruction and had exactly what the teacher should say and what the student response would probably be. No creativity there! It seemed sterile and boring. I honestly believe the other teachers were terribly bored with it and, as a result, the students were, too. Oh, a small percentage of kids “got it” and made sense of the drudgery but the majority just dutifully plugged along.
It just seemed to me that it didn’t have to be that way. School didn’t have to be boring and tedious. Kids needed to know that somehow it would all fit together for them. From that came a career long battle of swimming upstream against prevailing practice in the classroom. The surprising thing was that even then, and long before then, research and professional opinion was on my side. As far back as the late 1890s professionals had warned of the pitfalls of the drill and grill instruction that became common practice after Rudolf Flesch’s book Why Johnny Can’t Read became so popular in the 1950s. As I recall he had little background in education but had tutored his child or grandchild using the skill and drill technique and the child could now read. It wasn’t research and it might just have been the extra attention the child got that turned him around. Flesch swore it was the method and if it worked for this kid it would work for all kids.
Publishers grabbed on to the “one size fits all” mentality and produced manuals and workbooks and worksheets by the truck load! Use their materials as they prescribe and your students will prosper. Never mind that they had never met even one of my students.
(Part 1 of many!)
I felt pretty confident, coming out of college, that I could do the job. I knew quite a bit about science and had the equivalent of a minor in that area. I was comfortable with math at the elementary school level and didn’t see social studies as a challenge. I wasn’t so sure about how to teach skill-oriented reading or even where to start for that matter. I hadn’t been a good reading student myself so that didn’t help. I loved language but didn’t do well with the traditional language arts classes that were heavy on drill and practice.
Educators tend to break things that need to be taught into parts, teach the part, and then have the student put it all together. The problem was that we got so busy teaching the part that the student never got around to putting it together. The putting together is where the fun and reward of learning is. Needless to say many didn’t find reading and language arts fun and rewarding. Kids rarely read anything more than a very short passage. Research in those days said elementary students spent less than two minutes a day reading. They almost never got to write a story and when they did it was taken apart piece by piece with a red pen.
I sought advice from my colleagues in the building about how best to go about teaching reading and language arts (English). Most just said they went by the teacher’s manual. It was scripted instruction and had exactly what the teacher should say and what the student response would probably be. No creativity there! It seemed sterile and boring. I honestly believe the other teachers were terribly bored with it and, as a result, the students were, too. Oh, a small percentage of kids “got it” and made sense of the drudgery but the majority just dutifully plugged along.
It just seemed to me that it didn’t have to be that way. School didn’t have to be boring and tedious. Kids needed to know that somehow it would all fit together for them. From that came a career long battle of swimming upstream against prevailing practice in the classroom. The surprising thing was that even then, and long before then, research and professional opinion was on my side. As far back as the late 1890s professionals had warned of the pitfalls of the drill and grill instruction that became common practice after Rudolf Flesch’s book Why Johnny Can’t Read became so popular in the 1950s. As I recall he had little background in education but had tutored his child or grandchild using the skill and drill technique and the child could now read. It wasn’t research and it might just have been the extra attention the child got that turned him around. Flesch swore it was the method and if it worked for this kid it would work for all kids.
Publishers grabbed on to the “one size fits all” mentality and produced manuals and workbooks and worksheets by the truck load! Use their materials as they prescribe and your students will prosper. Never mind that they had never met even one of my students.
(Part 1 of many!)
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