Lloyd Lofthouse, a frequent contributor to the blog, offers advice about how to teach reading:
“By the time I was eight years old, I was an avid reader. The grade school I was attending didn’t have a library but the county had a library bus visit the school every week, and I’d check out the maximum number of books.
“Eventually, I was old enough to ride my bike the few miles to the town’s library and check out books. I haunted that library.
“The high school I attended had a well stocked library where I worked as a student assistant for four years with that one hour a day counted for credit toward HS graduation. The librarian even graded her student library assistants. It was the only HS class where I earned my only A’s in HS.
“In my academic classes, I sat in the back and spent more time reading the books I was checking out of the HS library than I was doing the school work or paying attention to most of my teachers.
“By the time I barely graduated from high school with a 0.95 GPA, I must have read a few thousand books. I was a horrible test taker and usually failed the tests. School work had never been important to me because I didn’t plan to go to college. That would change when I was fighting in Vietnam and a sniper came within a fraction of an inch of blowing off the left side of my head. I felt the bullet caress my ear. I thought if I’d gone to college as my mother had wanted, I wouldn’t have been there. There were several other very close calls from other snipers, rockets, mortars and grenades.
“I was 23 when I was honorably discharged from the Marines and applied to go to college on the GI Bill. The community college gave me a literary test to see what English class to put me in. They had several levels of what’s known as Bone Head English for readers who were not reading at the literacy level necessary for doing college work.
“I passed that literacy test at the highest literacy level and never took a Bone Head English class in College even with my lousy 0.95 GPA out of HS. Imagine what that GPA would have been without those A’s from the librarian.
“If we want children to read at a high literacy level, those same children should be reading every day from books they enjoy—not some crap from a David Coleman or Pearson list.
“For instance, when I was teaching 7th grade in the early 1980s, one mother came to me concerned for her daughter who was a student in the English class I taught. The mother told me that her daughter was reading five levels below grade level. She wanted to know what could be done so her daughter would catch up.
“I said, “Turn off the TV at home, and have your daughter read for at least one hour or more every night at home seven days week, 365 days a year. The more she reads books that she enjoys, the faster her literacy level will grow.” I told her to use the local county library because it was free.
“That mother was skeptical. She even said as much but she promised to do what I suggested—and she did.
“A year later, after the next standardized test to determine reading levels, the mother wrote a letter to the district commending me for my advice because her daughter had jumped five years catching up to her grade level in literacy. That letter went into my file that the district kept of me as a teacher.
“I taught about 6,000 children over 30 years and suggested this to other parents, but this one mother was the only mother who did what I suggested about turning off the TV and replacing that time with reading books.”
Thank you for sharing this.
GREAT piece, Lloyd!
Wow, thanks so much, Lloyd, wonderful piece, makes great sense.
Saying that I love this in so many ways, doesn’t quite say enough! It should never have become about the “level,” but it is.
How do you encourage your child to read more?
It is neither one simple thing, nor is it a mystery. It is a mindset, a values system, a lifestyle. My wife and I have probably spent a good deal of cumulative time trying to make sure we are punctual with pickup and return of borrowed books from the various local libraries in our area. Our three girls love books and we as a family own more than we know what to do with. In fact are looking to organize book giveaways to help reduce our stock somewhat (which is likely to get replenished-truth be told)-I have forever struggled with parting ways with my books. I would rather build extra shelves.
It truly beats arcades, shopping malls, closed door bedrooms or living room couches with endless hours of video games. And it has brought me to a day where I am blessed with a bright, articulate, critical-thinking and deeply thoughtful family of three young girls and a beautiful wife. I guess you could presume that valuing literacy and literature weren’t the critical components-but if I think of other people and other families who demonstrate living by example (vs dictating a method from afar)…reading and the value of reading; encouraging that value in their own children and in students-if they are teachers…this is a consistent characteristic.
So, as a good place to start from: how do you encourage your child to read?
Read in front of them. Read to them. Watch them read. Ask them about what they have read or are reading. Don’t pester them, you need to value their understanding and their take on it-not hold them accountable to your own. What do they get from it and what impressions did they get? What connections do they make or can you help them make? Conversations that show you care about what they unpacked from the book is more important than showing that your mission is more important. That would be valuing yourself.
Listen to them read to you. Read together. Practice reading together passing the book back and forth and taking turns. When they are a little older, do “book talks” and shared readings.
When they are tiny, read with them on your lap, reclined in a chair and with your child in the spot between your arm and your side, with your child’s head just under your shoulder and the book where you can both see.
When they are toddlers, point to the words that sound really familiar-the ones used frequently when you speak. Point to the parts of the illustration that go with those words. Point to and name familiar and interesting things in the illustrations and ask them “Where is the …. “ to have them point it out. Incorporate silly voices for the characters, sound effects, a little “theater”…
Have bookshelves full of books- various books. Magazines too-have a magazine subscription or two if you can afford to (Highlights, National Geographic for kids, etc) and if you can’t afford subscriptions-get issues second-hand to keep around… Limit t.v. time and video game time.
Listen to a wide variety of music. Tell stories, sing songs, and expect “lights out” by 8:30…but stretch it ‘til 9 if they are sneaking in some extra reading quietly.
Buy books as gifts. Sometimes, even a nice one. Maybe brand new, maybe a little old and musty, but with a great artsy hard cover. Frequent book barns and garage sales and look for hidden treasures.
And write. The power to see that you too can put great things down to be read is even more inspiration to read yourself, then to read more, then write….
I agree with and like everything you’ve said with the exception of the word “unpacked”….that “reformy” speak makes me wince. Why can’t we just ask kids what they connected with in the text, what sticks with them etc. Why the useless jargon???
yeah, sorry. I wince a little too but sometimes get typing more and thinking less. Might go back to edit out out of respect to good old fashioned teaching.
I hadn’t realized that educational deformers now officially own the word “unpack” or its various forms. Nor do they own, on my view, the concept or practice of close reading/textual analysis or other related notions.
None of these words or concepts was invented by David Coleman and his minions. None of them should be dismissed out of hand just because he or they appropriated them for various purposes. People need to stop letting perfectly good notions become polluted because people like the Deformers decide to try to assimilate and coopt these concepts and practices.
As recently as 10 years ago, educational reformers (at least in mathematics education) were the good guys in my book, and I was one of them. When Common Core’s unholy marriage to BIg Publishing, Big Testing, and Wall Street seemed to spell the end of “reform” as a good word in education, I simply started saying “progressive mathematics education reform” or “progressive reform” for the good guys and “deform” to refer to the scum.
As for what comprises “jargon,” it’s unavoidable that words become cliched and jargony over time. That’s why language has to be periodically refreshed in various ways. And it does, without our having to fret too much about it. I try to remind myself of that when a particular word or phrase begins to drive me crazy. Two current phrases I yearn to see disappear from common use are “At the end of the day” (bugs me more than “the bottom line” for reasons I’ve yet to fathom) and “It is what it is,” which communicates precisely nothing (to me at least).
Michael Paul Goldenberg,
How about: “Deal with it.”
“Building a plane in mid-air while we fly”
My pet peeve, calling 5-year-olds “scholars”
I actually like ‘Building a plane in mid-air while we fly”
Wasn’t that actually precisely how NY State Department of Education originally characterized what is now their teacher evaluation system?
Given that the wings and tail have fallen off and the the plane is now in a death spiral and about to crash and burn (though the pilot — Mary Ellen Elia — is still denying any problem), I’d say the expression was quite accurate.
‘My pet peeve, calling 5-year-olds “scholars” ‘
A new BOE member in my town used that one a few years ago. Fortunately, she learned pretty quickly that no one else did.
“Unpack” gets to me as well. I don’t know where it came from, but I don’t remember hearing it until a few years ago probably because I associate it with the reformster invasion. I’m not sure what I am suppose to do with my luggage anymore. Am I still allowed to unpack it?
Same advice works for teaching spelling, the mechanics of writing, and the creative side of writing: no amount of any kind of direct instruction is as effective as lots of reading to bring up those skills. As Stephen Krashen has been pointing out at least since the early 1990’s, more time reading based on interest is well-established in controlled, peer-reviewed studies as the most effective intervention for any literacy-related skill.
Lloyd, I taught many students just like you.
I knew that most of them would have more options once they graduated and found their way. Life has many more options and opportunities than the narrow tunnel offered in our traditional K-12, ESPECIALLY NOW!
Arne would have looked in your eyes in second grade and thrown you away for eternity. Yeah for a loving and supportive librarian who KNEW your potential before you knew your potential.
Your experiences added to the knowledge and passion you passed on to your students – how lucky they were.
The choakhold by Gates & Co. has taken away the last joy by blocking our children from checking out books they love from our school libraries (if they exist). Mandated directives: children must read at or above their reading level at all time. Sick!
To save our children, we should send all our kids to Finland, allow them to blossom, and welcome them back once they are bulletproof from American Deformsters. Our own Kindertransport to save their lives. Silly me!
fmindflin
yes yes yes yes yes
I think of how many young children I have taught who did not like to read. Our overemphasis on skills (“rigor”) in the primary grades is turning kids off from reading. I remember how excited my own children were when we read to them. My daughter taught herself to read out of necessity. With three small children, I was usually exhausted by the end of the day and would fall asleep reading to her. She would then nudge me and point to where I had left off. These were chapter books and she was 5. One son liked the book I was reading so much he would read it on his own. That book was The Lord of the Rings and he was in second grade. They had many teachers over the years who fostered their love of reading. My daughter is now a writer and both my sons are in graduate school; the Tolkien fan is working toward an MLS.
That’s EXACTLY what has happened to my younger son. My husband, older son, and I read all the time, and my husband and I read to him and his brother until they were 10 years old or so, and our house looks like a library exploded, there is so much reading material around. He used to like to read when he was in first and second grade, but he doesn’t like it now. He can read and reads well, but won’t read. I blame DIEBELS, or however you spell it. The insistence, especially in third and fourth grade, that he read so fast he sounded like an auctioneer ruined reading for him. He would often complain that he couldn’t make the levels that were set for him, which were over 300 words a minute. It killed his love of reading, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get it back. He’s 15 now.
Didn’t they used to call that “Evelyn Wood speed reading”?
Or maybe that was something different?
I could never do it because you had to use your index finger and mine gets tired easily.
I think you have to do finger exercises with fingertip pullups of finger curls with weights or something too.
Evelyn must have had a really buff index finger.
Whoever was using Dibels didn’t know what they were doing, but it only goes to show what the insistence on judging performance by an arbitrary measure can be counterproductive and is certainly contrary to the call for differentiation. I hope you still have available lots of reading material in which he might be interested. It’s never too late although high school can be a rough time to encourage recreational reading.
The older a child gets, the less time they seem to have for reading. By high school, with assigned texts, free reading (except for the most avid readers) goes out the window. College is even worse since spare time is usually spent on social activities.
Common Core has complemented matters even more.
That’s why the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Divergent crazes were so great – they got people of all ages reading again – and some maintained the habit.
So true, our daughter read a lot more before she reached high school and when she was at Stanford, her reading for fun all but vanished.
But when she was a child, she grabbed the latest Harry Potter book the same day I bought it at COSTCO, and I had to wait until she finished before I could read it. She was supposed to be asleep by 9:30 p.m. but years later told me she would read under the covers with help from a flashlight so she wouldn’t be caught. She loved “The Lord of the Rings” so much, she read the book several times and broke the back on my collector’s edition of the combined book.
I read all the Harry Potter novels, the Hunger Games trilogy, and the Divergent trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed them. I just couldn’t get myself to read the Twilight books, but I picked up several at rummage sales and the local discount bookstore for the kids at school. Kids who turned their noses up at most reading of more than a few pages would attempt Twilight. My heaven will have a massive library.
The great thing about being a librarian was you could order the books you’d like to read (especially in the high school libraries).
Now I’m retired, I sometimes lament the lack of access to the books I had purchased which I didn’t have time to finish – just sitting on the shelves waiting for me. I can visualize the location and color.
Luckily I live down the street from the local public library which is open even on Sundays during the school year (it pays to live in an affluent neighborhood).
This is a first class account Lloyd, written with love, brought back the idea that John Taylor Gatto mentions, how our soldiers during WWl had the highest literacy levels and that these numbers began to drop steadily into the Vietnam era. Like you say, mass media and television is the culprit. After losing my house in Sandy, I was determined not to bring television into my house, talking heads yelling at each other for brainwashing, and my reading list has exploded, biographies, history, philosophy, etc.
There is another world out there. I just finished my cousin Jim Brady’s book as a marine platoon leader in Korea, “The Coldest War”, he too was due to be honored, He is a great writer that you might enjoy. Cheers,
Lloyd Lofthouse is an extraordinarily talented novelist, someone who has learned a lot in and out of books, mostly outside school, so when he speaks of these matters, he speaks arrow-true.
Thanks, Lloyd, for your post and for your work.
Thank you for acknowledging libraries and librarians! I did not realize what a novelty reading has become until a stranger approached my husband on the beach and asked how we got all of our adult children to become readers. We glanced around the beach and we were the only family reading.
In my town (Bloomington, Indiana), there was an Andrew Carnegie Library–one of the thousands of such libraries that Carnegie funded across the country. I spent much of my boyhood there. In addition, there was the breathtakingly well-stocked Indiana University Library, which at the time was open to any citizen of the state. I used to wander the stacks like a mushroom hunter in an Old Growth forest, pulling from the shelves rare wonders and curiosities–grammars of Old Icelandic, great monographs on sand fleas, medieval manuals on adultery (Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love) and potions and fabulous beasts (The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus), facsimiles of journals kept by the teenaged Dylan Thomas. . . . These libraries were my Internet in those days before the Internet. School seemed awfully lame and tame in comparison.
I have often wondered why, like Carnegie, Bill Gates did not spend his money on a truly worthwhile cause like funding libraries (either public or school)
I know Gates probably does not want to do something which has already been done, but he simply could not go wrong by funding libraries, which certainly can not be said for his “reform” initiative, which will either be remembered as incredibly naive and stupid or incredibly evil.
“Legacies”
The legacy of Carnegie
is libraries inspiring
While legacy of Gates, we see
Is testing, VAMs and firing
I appreciate all your comments supporting libraries and librarians. Studies show that a full-time school librarian makes a critical difference in boosting student achievement. http://www.slj.com/2013/03/research/librarian-required-a-new-study-shows-that-a-full-time-school-librarian-makes-a-critical-difference-in-boosting-student-achievement/#_
Unfortunately, school library programs and school library positions are usually the first ones on the chopping block when budgets are cut.
Yes, Gates money could have been well spent supporting school libraries and school librarians.
One year there was an incredible reading teacher who worked with me to motivate the elementary students to read. Every morning I was at this school (many librarians in the Buffalo Public Schools have programs in two schools) I was inundated by kids wanting to exchange books. When this high poverty school showed an amazing increase in test scores (pre common core), I knew it was legit.
While I provided encouragement and access to appropriate literature, it was this incredible reading teacher who deserves the credit. (Overheard one day: My friend goes to North Park and their library has two full shelves of Junie B Jones).
Collaboration is the key component to a successful school climate. When faculties work together, all students benefit.
Lloyd, I downloading one of your books from Amazon. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s fun owning a book where I personally “know the author”.
Thank you. I hope the book fits your reading tastes.
Exactly.
It’s so simple. ALL skills can only be acquired by our brain by PRACTICE.
ONE CAN READ about playing the piano (or any instrument) forever, but will never be able to play one well, without practice.
A child who wants to improve pitching or batting skills, as my grandkids discovered, MUST get out there and practice! Someone to help with using the arms correctly is a big help, just as a teacher can aid a child in grasping phonemes or syntax, but the skill itself is LEARNED only by practice,
The problem is that the media and the charlatans that write the curricula and SKILLS books, have subverted the national conversation so that the media talks about TEACHING not LEARNING.
Long before the current morass, I took a position at a Bronx school, where my students had been ‘held over,’ and could not read at 8 years of age.
They gave me some ‘readers and some SKILLS books, but when they HAD hired me, they asked about ‘whole language’ — and did I have experience ‘doing it?
‘ I said, I used the ‘PHILOSOPHY’ because it is the only way emergent minds learn to read and write, by listening and speaking first, and THEN BY READING…. WHICH leads to writing.
I never used the skills books, which really pissed my young AP. The ‘literacy’ teacher who came into my room, used them. I remember one lesson where she read ‘with’ (TO) them from one page, and then , asked them to find the correct sentence: “the smoke fill the sky.”
I stopped working at my desk, and asked her to find the sentence “the smoke fill the sky.”
She pointed to choice B, “the smoke fillS the sky.”
I asked her if she could read that sentence to me, as it was written.
She did, and apologized.
I pointed out that the reason that she had to walk around the room and point to choice B, was simply because NO CHILD COULD READ ANYTHING ON THAT PAGE.
I told her, that if she wished to do anything in MY classroom, from now own, she would have to use MYlessons AND MATERIALS…she agreed.
I filled the room with fun reading materials and books, and we learned together, writing and reading constantly, ( from the charts we created to tell our own stories, and the recipes we wrote together when we made bread, and…well we practiced a lot.
Every child was reading in June, many on grade level, but the principal had been told of my ‘insubordination’ and gave me trouble… so I moved to East Side Middle School, where my students (the entire 7th grade) had the highest scores on citywide tests, and my success ensured that I became the NYS Educator of Excellence, and the cohort for the REAL National Standards research.
But as the year 2000 approached, and Pearson, Walton, Gates and clones made plans to push a NEW ‘curricula’ onto our schools to ‘teach’ reading their way, , so schools would all fail and be replaced by charters, I was charged with incompetence…the same year of the NYSEC award.
THAT is the tale!
Thanks Lloyd! As an older teacher and nearly non reader until I was 15 I give parents the same advice. You get better at reading by reading….anything and everything. My kids did not have computers at home and we had no t.v. We read and played board games together. The bottom line is find an interest and read about it, the prescription for each child is different material to read.
Thanks Lloyd and Bob Shephard, and all who write and work in and on behalf of community and school libraries. I read early because we had no TV until I was in high school. I also had an aunt who made sure that her neices and nephew received copies of award-winning books for young readers, including every Caldecott winner.
At a superintendent’s conference day some years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Frank McCourt, author of “Angela’s Ashes,” and retired NYC teacher. He described coming to America with nothing and taking advantage of access to the public library and the then tuition free CCNY that allowed him to climb out of poverty and into a meaningful career, teaching. His statement, “Public education and public libraries are the two most democratizing forces in America,” guided my teaching career in which I worked with poor ELLs. This phrase still rings true today, though it is even harder for the poor. The message of his words have stayed with me and inspired me more than any canned soulless corporate mush could possibly have. We must continue to support public education as it is a vehicle through which people can achieve opportunity and become responsible citizens. Lloyd found this out as did the young homeless woman that got into Harvard by spending all her free time at the public library.
I learned to read that way, and I think many do.
But I don’t know if everyone does, even given the opportunity and encouragement.
One problem I see is that those who “just read” are treated as if they must be taught to read, often turning them off.
Yes, Lloyd!
Families need to turn off the cell phones, the laptops, the DVD player, the portable video games, the iPads, cable and satellite TV, and the big fat monster large screen TVs from Best Buy and Costco.
Turn off the Kardashians and Caitlyn. Turn off Jimmy Fallon and Fox News.
Turn off reality shows.
Turn it all off and boycott the crap out of it. Starve Kim and Kenye and Snooky and mindless busty housewives who have nothing to complain about but whose lives are always miserable.
Turn off reruns of Seinfeld and Raymond and MTV. Turn of fiction action hero movies that have as much violence as Iraq and Congo.
Turn it all off.
And fill your living room with floor to ceiling bookcases and read alone, read as a family, and just read, read, read. Read for pleasure, for research, and just to improve and build your brain and critical thinking. Read to improve your second and third language acumen. Read to build your vocabulary. Read to improve your writing skills. Read to build content. Read to learn how to cook well and grow edibles in your garden. Read how to treat disease with alternatives. Read to find out who voted how in the Senate and Congress.
Just read.
And that is what we did with our daughter. We never bought her a video game, she had no internet link in her bedroom, the only TV in the house when she was a child was turned off six days a week and only on for about two hours on the one day when we watched something educational as a family. She didn’t get her first mobile phone until she was in 9th grade and then only to call us when she was ready to be picked up from school. She was so busy, she’d leave for school before 7 AM and still be there practicing with the pole vault team at 8 PM. Between her last class and the start of practice she’d be in the library doing her homework or reading a book or tutoring another student in math or writing.
She’s 24 now and doesn’t have a TV in the apartment she shares with her fiance—the marriage is set before the end of the year.
They met at Stanford where she graduated in June of 2014 with a bachelors and he just graduated with a PhD in aeronautical engineering with an emphasis on drone technology. Instead of a TV in every room or video games, they have bookshelves with real books on them that they both read.
Halfway through university living in the dorms, she bought her own mobile phone and she does use it to text her friends and take photographs.
My wife has been without a television for more than 30 years; since I have been with her, I have been without one for 19. There is nothing to miss; one can cherry pick on the net.
Kudos to you and your family!
Congratulations to you, wife, daughter, and fiance on all levels.
Great post, thanks to Lloyd. It’s disheartening to say but I always have several parents that balk when I tell them their kids should read at least 20 minutes per day. I hear all kinds of ridiculus excuses. Sad.
Now my district has us creating reading groups, leveled groups, reading notebooks, etc. Taking away class time from Social Studies and Science. We have become the parents in many cases.
I thoroughly agree on that strategy. We had a summer reading program at our local library where you read a certain number of books during the summer to get a reward ribbon or something like that. To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember the reward, I was so into completing the reading list. Another thing that really turned me on to reading was a nun who taught English in elementary. She was so excited about books and presented the reading with such enthusiasm it was hard to not want to read. Today there are so many distractions from just sitting down and reading but it’s probably, as you say, the best thing you could do with your time.
Our local library sponsored a read down your fines program for the kids. That way they could read back their privilege to sign out books.
So much about Lloyd’s story is familiar to me as a teacher, parent and sibling. I have a brother who, in the late 60’s – mid-70’s, struggled in school. He got poor grades, scored low on all sorts of tests, and was put into the lowest tracked classes. Meanwhile, at home he read Newsweek and spoke knowledgeably from his reading about the many evils of Richard Nixon. He was in 2nd grade at the time.
We miss so much about children’s inner lives and capacities when we think we know them through their grades and scores.
When I was working toward my BA in journalism we were told that newspapers aimed their content for a 5th grade reading level to reach more people. The reporters had to write well below their literacy level for the widest audience the newspapers could reach.
And they wonder why the print media struggles to stay in existence. With that attitude/modus operandi it’s amazing that they sell anything.
I think it would be an interesting discussion whether digital content can (not does) be the equal of print. Because of some vision loss, it’s easier for me to consume content on my iPad. I read extensively. I don’t see a loss, and don’t think I would go back.
But I was a reader before. So I wonder about those children who would start digitally.
Peter,
Have you read this? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ If so your thoughts, please!
There were some good observations and research. One thing researchers haven’t seem to have done is separate touch screen devices from traditional computers. It’s a different experience.
All that aside, I’ve got the perspective of one who came to e-reading sort of involuntarily. So, as our brains seem to do, it has become natural. So a problem with the research is that the subjects still had print as a viable option.
I do know that the design of digital content is huge; the worst newspapers are one that try to copy the print format. It’s also an issue when a website gets redesigned, even if for the better. Print rarely does that.
I think the bottom line is how we get meaning, especially from text. And text augmented with photos and video and links to other content. I don’t think we’ve gotten close to the potential of digital content. Especially in textbooks – most seem crappy.
My granddaughter, now 8 started using an iPad at 3. Yet now she is an avid reader of print books. She also has gotten through most of my collection (print) of Calvin and Hobbes. Go figure. Her mom always read to her, but she is one of those who just started reading.
“We miss so much about children’s inner lives and capacities when we think we know them through their grades and scores.”
And that is quite correct, sallyo57! Grades and scores tell us nothing and to believe/accept such those grades and scores do is beyond my comprehension.
Yes, READ lots and lots. It’s so simple. But doesn’t make $$$$$ for the DEFORMERS. The DEFORMERS seem to hate libraries.
Thanks, Lloyd. GREAT piece! 🙂
You hit the bull’s eye. There is no profit for Pearson or Microsoft or any other profit monger who is a RheeFormer if kids are reading books for entertainment that they checked out of a library. The RheeForm movement was designed to leads to a profit opportunity for the private sector and nothing else. The destruction of the public schools and the teachers’ unions is only for wealth acquisition for a few.
Libraries – the great equalizer!
Can’t have that!
And thanks to Amazon and the other online bookstores, we’re losing brick and mortar bookstores.
I wonder how many towns don’t have bookstores and are closing down or limiting the hours of their local libraries. I can’t say that about the town where we live—yet—that spent almost $50 million in recent years to replace the old library with a new, up-to-date modern one that is maybe three to five times the size of the old one that was a one story shoe box. The new one is two story, all glass and art, and it has an impressive specially designed area for children on the ground floor.
But we are losing our last major bookstore January 2016.
BECPL ( Buffalo and Erie County Public Library) had an exemplary library system which they decimated about ten years ago during a budget crisis by closing branches and reducing hours. In the town of Amherst, all four libraries remained open, while Tonawanda lost two of their four libraries. (Upscale vs working class)
I thought this action was short sighted if not criminal.
However, Lloyd, every time I enter a public library it is packed with people.
At least in Erie County, libraries are an important component of the residents’ lives.
You are right, libraries are popular with people. For instance, about once a month on a Sunday, I travel about 20 miles to attend a meeting of one of the branches of the California Writers Club (CWC) in Oakland, California at its main branch, and I arrive early before the doors open at 1 p.m. There’s always a crowd waiting outside and most of them are not there for the meeting I was there for.
Libraries are probably more important to people who live in poverty because it might be the only way they have access to books—as much as I enjoy bookstores, books are expensive and if you are working poverty wage jobs struggling to feed and house your family, that library is an economic necessity.
The two local Barnes and Noble are also busy places.
That’s probably why elementary school
Librarians are the first jobs that are cut when a school district Has financial difficulties.
Thanks, Lloyd.
Didn’t you share a while back about how you hid the library books within the class textbooks? You were really on a separate educational track.
Yes, I used the larger textbooks to hide my Science Fiction, Fantasy or historical fiction novels. And unlike TV shows that paint teachers in a negative way, no teacher ever stopped me or embarrassed me to do the work. I don’t remember even one teacher who was a bully, but there were plenty of kids who were verbal and sometimes physical bullies.
And that triggered a memory of one ninth grade boy who came to me after class one day and asked if there was any alternative assignments he could do at home. He had ADHD and was easily distracted—it was a rowdy class. It took me only seconds to offer an alternative. Read a book a week and turn in a detailed report and review of it every Monday. That way he could work at home in the tranquility and silence of his room.
He agreed. A few weeks later his parents came to see me because they were concerned I was giving him too much work. They said, he’d arrive home and go to his room closing the door and would only come out to eat. He voluntarily stopped joining his family to watch TV but didn’t bother to explain why.
After I explained the deal we made, they understood and left him alone. He read a lot of books that year and earned an A in my class. When he was a senior, he sent me an invitation to the ceremony where he became and Eagle Scout. He asked me not to mention it to anyone else at school because the world might get out and then other kids would give him a hard time for being an Eagle Scout.
There is an obvious counter culture in this country that has no respect for scholarship, literacy and learning and when these kids take high stakes tests, teachers are getting punished for something they have little or no control over.
“There is an obvious counter culture in this country that has no respect for scholarship, literacy and learning.”
No doubt about that, Lloyd!
Dozens walked in my classroom daily when I was teaching. They arrived without paper, pens, pencils or books. Many of them had no intention to work, to learn. They just wanted the mandatory day to end so they could be back on the streets until 2 or 3 a.m. again.
I do not condone violence of any kind, and I am no fan of guns. But I have some advice: Shoot your television. It’s cathartic.
Umm. Properly recycle. It’s a pain, but it’s the planet . . .
You don’t have to locate the bullet.
Of course, I didn’t mean this seriously.
I sounded serious?
Sorry, Akademos. Of course your didn’t. Love your moniker, btw.
Actually, I think it might be fun to take a few old TV’s or computer monitors to the closest shooting range and then use them for target practice. We could even paste mug shots on the screens of, for instance, Arne, Cuomo, Rahm, Walker and all the key oligarchs (Have they passed a law against that yet?)
The bull’s eye could be placed between their eyes. This would be great motivation to improve target practice skills.
When done, it will be easier to clean up and recycle the debris.
Nope. It wouldn’t.
It wouldn’t be fun for Thom, but it would be fun for me. We are all individuals, after all. But I don’t plan on doing it even it I think it would be fun.
Practiced a little target shooting yesterday but not at a tv. A paper plate nailed to a dead tree. Couldn’t hardly hit the plate at 30 ft but was able to at 21 feet once I got the feel of the gun (a .22 revolver). Nice to live somewhere where it is safe to shoot when I want to shoot! Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to find ammunition due to so many nimrods buying up all the rounds before anyone else can get some.
Guns are fun!
But then so are bow and arrows, darts, and any other projectile sports.
Reminds me of when I tried to get my village to expand our Library.. they chose to improve the pool instead…
Palm to head
DS, wondered what you’d been doing post- retirement. What else are you planning?
Thanks, for asking booklady! Reading as much as I can which is what I’ve been doing. I am working with the Opt Out movement. And I am trying to be more of a “background”, explain the falsehoods, of so much that is going on in education these days. I truly believe in “fidelity to truth” whereby the truth will eventually win out in the end. Unfortunately too many will be sacrificed to falsehoods before that happens.
Duane,
I am not use that truthfulness will ever find its way back. Truth telling and honesty were once values held sacred by our society when it was part of the fabric of our cultures. When neighborhoods and religion disappeared, and then families were gone, in the absence of the sacred values, came TELEVISION.
TV sold the ‘value’ that anything goes,” forget collateral damage” as long as the outcome is one you want. TV news replace print journalism, and ‘spinning’ the truth became the way it is. Balancing the news, so that every cockamamie ides was featured alongside the truth allowed gun advocates to ‘sell’ their version of our Constitutional right to bear arms.
I am reading “Gray Mountain, at the moment, and Grisham lays out the incredible lies of the coal industry as they destroyed every living thing in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and buried the streams and the towns in floods of ash and detritus…lying all their way through bankruptcy court.
As I write this, “American Greed,’ is on the tv, and another story of liars who see nothing stopping them.
But of all the mendacity that I personally have encountered, none holds a candle to that of the principals and superintendents of district 2 in NYC of the nineties, unless it is the way the union rep at my school spun the truth.. this creature profited if I was fired; she would become the full-time art teacher if I was GONE, as I taught art to the entire seventh grade within my Communication Arts curriculum, and she was in a vulnerable part-time position.
The charlatans that run and ruin education are part of an entrenched culture of liars, who run under the radar as media sells the lies of the billionaire moguls who profit from the education industry. It is, however, the zillionaire oligarchs who need truth to disappear, as it will IF the next generation of Americans, emerging from our schools, are the most ignorant in our modern history.
My husband and I attended that joke of justice, called a hearing, where a wonderful teacher was pounded into the ground by lies from her principal,as the union NEVER allowed her to present evidence to the contrary, or allowed her to even speak in her own behalf.
And, for years I have been following the chronicles of mendacity of LAUSD, which appears at Perdaily.com. Go and read the posts and advice on how to avoid the Fabricated charges that routinely took out thousands of teachers…all charged with this or that, and ALL fired.
For a decade Lenny Isenberg railed to me, about how teachers run and do not stand and fight…which they cannot afford to do in courts, where attorneys delay and lie. It is UTLA which colluded with the corrupt critters who run LAUSD, and he offers a reallook at this collusion in many of his essays.What does he have to lose…they alreay took him form his classroom in HANDCUFFS.
Lenny Isenberg is a hero, and is suing,, as is the wonderful teacher Esquith, whose story appears here…but it is ONLY one of TENS OF thousands which are never heard. The teachers of this nation have been utterly destroyed by the total lack o accountability, and absence of scrutiny…BY THE ABSENCE OF TRUTH!
OUR COUNTRY is run by liars. Our military is run by liars.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14663
I am writing a piece, called Charletans, for Oped News.
What a dreadful suggestion.
I for one will only shoot a television if there is a closeup of a Fox News reporter spread out all over the screen . . . . .
Why else waste a good bullet and cartridge?
You have no respect for guns, Bob . . . .
🙂
Very funny, Robert! I hope you are well, my friend.
And you are right that I have no respect for guns. LOL.
From my experience in a literacy studies doctoral program, and as teacher, I also found that the writing process can be effective for those who just won’t, can’t, read. Working with language at this level consistently, can be as beneficial. Literacy is a social activity.
Joseph,
Yes, writing is also a powerful tool to boost literacy, and that’s why my students wrote more essays then probably most teachers assign. For instance, after ever chapter in a book we were reading as a class there was an essay and after every act in a Shakespeare play and after every short story. I never kept track but the students who wrote them probably wrote more than two dozen by the end of the year if not more.
And they went through the writing process: rough draft, small peer critique groups with rubrics designed for students to use in addition being taught what constructive criticism was instead of destructive criticism simliar to what I read in the New York Times too much, and then the final draft that was turned in for me to read. After I passed the final drafts back with my comments on them, students were allowed to do them over one more time to earn more points and raise their grade for that essay if the grade wasn’t what they wanted. In other words, another revised final draft.
In addition, ever book, play or short story my students read came with an audio tape so students heard the story read orally dramatically as they read. After we finished, there would also be the film.
The English classes I taught were labeled college prep, but the students literacy skills ranged from 2nd grade to college level all in the same class. Administration forced us to use grade level material and texts because of another magic bullet theory that this would cause low readers to catch up. Imagine one teacher in a classroom with 34+ students for less than an hour before the next class and half or more of those kids read far below grade level.
When I say I have no respect for the corporate reformers, their foolish supporters and the oligarchs funding them, that is an understatement.
thanks Lloyd,
We used to write scripts for puppet shows based on the curriculum. Struggling student were teamed up with high performers, those struggling were transformed and their reading scores rose, lots of fun. Students always had to write “process notes” for homework about what they did in class. Some presented to the class orally about stories that they wrote using “spelling words”. This was their spelling “tests”. It was real, not words that they may never use.
I did the same thing with a list of new words. I had my students write sentences and/or essays using those words in them and they had to use them in proper context to earn all the points the assignment was worth. The day that assignment was due, I had several students volunteer for extra credit to write one of their sentences on the board, and then anyone in the class could challenge a sentence if they thought the new vocab word was used out of context. If that challenger was right that the other student used the word correctly in a sentence, then the extra credit went to the challenger.
It worked because other students saw that it was possible to be wrong and it was okay. Also students who were confused had a chance to finish the assignment during the challenge work on the board.
Reading, writing, speaking, listening…the heart of all “literacy” learning.
Great advice.
I read books to my first graders that I know my students will enjoy, but are just a little above their reading abilities. My favorite is the Frog and Toad stories. Most first graders can read these to themselves by the end of first grade. I read them to the students in September. In January, I set copies of them in the student section of my classroom library. I have had to replace them several times because they are well loved. My school librarian bought several copies for the library because my students wanted them. Next I tried Junie B. Jones. I had wondered if choral reading helped students at all. Boy was I surprised when the children checked out every copy of the book I was currently reading from the school library. They brought them out when I was reading and voluntarily followed along. Some students were frustrated that they did not have a copy. Students voluntarily shared copies. Junie B. Is not one of my favorites and I am looking for other stories that fit this criteria. But this does bring along even the reluctant readers.
I teach in a title one school. Two years ago I placed books that I felt the students could read independently in my students desks. They were mostly level A books. Our anthology included books between level d and j. These were on the frustration level,for over three quarters of my students. I will never forget the moment when one of my male students hugged his book and exclaimed this is so cute. I asked him if he could read it. With tears in his eyes, yes, I can finally read! Reading level is important for beginning readers. When they spend all of their reading time on books that are on instructional level or frustration level they begin to believe that they are incapable of reading.
I had Junie B. Jones in my high school reading class (special ed)! The girls who really had limited skills loved Junie B. because she was such a pistol. Humor was always a big hit. I used to scour the local second hand bookstore and still have not been able to give up the extensive library I built up. I just couldn’t leave them at the school when I left. I knew there was a good chance that most of them would end up in the garbage. I didn’t know any other teachers that had their own student library partly because many of them did not have dedicated classrooms. Even my advisory students and their friends, who came from the gen ed classes would borrow books from me. I had a wonderful friend who worked in a bookstore who helped me build the higher end book offerings with their promotions. I still hope that some day I will have an opportunity to share them again.
That is great! More children should do this but you already know that. My 7 year old could read difficult books at 3. Her parents read to her every night. I am a retired teacher. Many children nowadays are addicted to their electronics.
The power of a librarian.
I agree with everyone, but I suggest that the discussion is about learning to read BETTER and learning lots of information, etc., instead of learning TO read.
As a teacher of reading, I must take my non-reading K and 1st grade students from not knowing how to read to knowing how and loving it.
You can’t just put young children who have not learned to read yet in a library and expect them to read. They need to be taught the code and the method. All of which I believe can be done in a fun and interesting way, creating lovers of reading. Heaven forbid not the Reading First torture method.
People who teach middle school on up many times seem to forget there is a beginning to learning to read (and do math, etc) and it takes a skilled, experienced teacher to teach children to read. It does not come by osmosis.
Only then can they practice the skill!
Haven’t you had kids who have already been introduced to the library by their parents/guardians and they love it?
Lloyd,
I did have triplets who came to K reading chapter books. That was rare over the course of many years of teaching reading at K and 1st grade level.
Triplets, wow. They must have had some avid reading sensible parents.
The library is just a holding center for books, it’s the librarian who makes them come alive through story time and book talks.
I had a similar experience, but I didn’t even read in high school. I joined the Marines out of high school, and to my surprise there were MANY hours of boredom, so I started reading. I started with science fiction/adventure novels, moved on to Westerns (Louis L’Amour), and then some non-fiction. Then I met a guy who was selling Britannica stuff, and I bought the Great Books of the Western World. Once I made it through Plato, I was hooked on learning. I took a similar placement test for community college, and I scored high enough, despite my horrible Math score, to be in their honor’s program. I’ve been teaching Latin for a couple of decades.
That’s where I also went right out of high school, the Marines, and before the end of boot camp we all knew where we were going. When I was in Vietnam, my mother mailed me new books written by my favorite authors. I was trained to be a field radio operator but we were not in the field 24/7. There were many hours spent in the battalion’s underground radio bunker and those paperbacks came in handy during the long nights on watch in front of the table the two-way radio was on. That underground bunker—I mean really deep—that we dug and built was the only place where we could keep on the bright lights all night and not worry about attracting snipers, mortar rounds or rockets that arrived as regular as today’s scheduled and scripted fake reality TV shows. But what we faced over there was not scripted or fake.
I am torn on how I feel about this post and went back and forth about sharing…I realize that some of what I say will probably be disagreed with, but here goes..
First, I appreciate your story Lloyd. Thank you for sharing it. It is clear that a love of books helped lead you to your profession as a journalist and eventually as an educator. And I do agree with those that have posted that we need to have kids on less screen time and more reading. My own 1st grade daughters have limited screen time (that includes things like a Nook, IPad, etc)…
That being said, I feel that there are few things in the post that are assumed which may or may not be true:
1. The assumptions made by Lloyd and others that the solution is just to get kids to read more. Other posters here have commented that parents need to read to their kids, turn off the TV, etc. My kids’ elementary school is 63 Free and Reduced Meals, Many parents have multiple jobs, including taxi drivers, janitors, etc. My point here is that in some cases probably more than others, a parent may not be there to read to the kids. And yes, it’s easy from the outside to criticize parents who have their kids watch TV, etc. let’s put ourselves in their shoes before saying things. As one part of a pair of working parents (ones that are middle class at least) there are certainly times when I just want to say (or have said), “go watch TV” to give me a break. As many here now, parenting is not easy. Parenting having two or three jobs just to get food on the table is that much harder.
2. There as lot of assumptions here that Common Core, testing, etc. is the antithesis of reading…yes. one could say, “more reading, less test preparation” which I would agree with. And yes, I do agree that there are too many tests. But just yesterday at the National Book Fair, I heard a DC Public School teacher ask for a set of stickers that say “I love to read”…she mentioned her school has a “Drop everything and read” part of the day, etc. So, yes, reading is still alive and active.
I don’t think that the Common Core would be “anti-reading”…
3. While reading is very important and one way that kids can learn, there are so many other ways that kids learn – touching, listening, etc (Gardner)…Shouldn’t we consider all of the different ways that students can learn?
I think that the sentiment of this post is a touching first person account…but I also feel that it simplifies the solution to a vast problem.
I’m glad you mentioned the well known fact that parents are not always there to help their children develop better reading and learning habits—especially for parents working more than one job at poverty wages struggling to make enough to keep a roof over their heads and food to eat. A challenge that is even more difficult for single parent homes.
That is why I support a national early childhood education program starting as young as age two that is designed to foster a love of reading in those younger children who are not exposed to books and other reading material at home.
BUT, this program must be kept in the totally transparent, non-profit, democratic public schools with highly trained teachers at the helm—teachers who spend at least a year in a program similar to an urban residency teacher training program but with a focus on early childhood education and those younger children, a program simliar to what has been used in France for more than thirty years.
However, far to often what works best doesn’t lead to profits for corporations like Pearson, Apple or Microsoft, and they send out their army of lobbyists to kill those programs before they are born.
Lloyd…so how do you have such a plan to national scale without funding??
The funding isn’t there now, but it could and should be. In fact, it probably will be soon.
Start by taking away loopholes for corporation, millionaires and billionaires. Force them to pay their share at the same tax rate everyone pays but without the loopholes that were designed to help the wealthy hide their money.
Get rid of Citizens United and restrict how much a candidate or anyone else can donate and spend on every political campaign putting every candidate on a level playing field.
By the way, do you know that President Obama plans to submit a proposal to Congress this year to fund a 10 year early national childhood education program to the tune of $75 billion.
I think it is strange that RTTT and the Common Core Crap with the rank and fire high stakes testing came first and then during his last year in office he plans to propose this program to Congress. It should have been the other way around.
I mean, if you really want kids to improve their learning and literacy skills, you start at the bottom with the basics first and not some crap that every child has to be college and carter ready—a goal that has never been achieved in any country on earth in history—without supporting programs that lead to that goal. If you want a child to be ready to learn when they start Kindergarten you start with an early childhood education program—-not high stakes tests designed to fail children, rank and fire teachers and close the public schools!
“Equity of opportunity also means ensuring all children have rich early learning experiences so they are better prepared to thrive in school. We know from decades of research that high-quality early learning can significantly improve long-term educational and life outcomes, especially for children from low-income families. Yet fewer than a third of the nation’s 4-year-olds are enrolled in high-quality preschool. In one of the boldest efforts to expand educational opportunity in the last 50 years, President Obama has committed to a historic new investment in preschool education that supports universal access to high-quality preschool for all 4-year olds from low- and moderate-income families and creates an incentive for states to serve additional middle-class children. The President’s budget request includes $1.3 billion in 2015 and $75 billion over 10 years in mandatory funding, along with $500 million for competitively awarded Preschool Development Grants and other funds. Learn more about Preschool for All.”
http://www.ed.gov/budget15
By the way, if you find a typo in my previous comment, too bad. I don’t have the time or money to edit everything like it was going to be sold on Amazon. I refuse to say I’m sorry for typos in a comment. Read contextually and correct my typos accordingly. If I sound angry, I am!
I never wanted to read except that I read all of the Hardy Boys before JFK was killed. I hated reading and writing in HS and College, until I began analyzing memos at my job with Merrill Lynch. Literacy has to have a social and real component in the real world. Paolo Friere (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) in Brazil knew this and built literacy around the reality of peoples lives.
“Literacy has to have a social and real component in the real world.”
This is easy to do with almost any literature. Good literature, poetry, etc all have universal themes that apply to the world our children live in. It doesn’t matter if it was written by Shakespeare centuries ago, the people back then had many of the same conflicts and challenges in life people have today. Poverty is poverty, Hunger is hunger. Lust is lust, dealing with powerful authoritarian idiots like the Koch brothers and the Walton family had their counterparts thousands of years ago in almost every country and culture.
The technology might change, but people don’t change.
And this explains why work from the greatest writers has survived through the ages.
For instance, when children live in a barrio or ghetto with dangerous adolescent street gangs that are at war with each other, Romeo and Juliet comes alive and that is but one universal theme in that play.
When students write essays about these stories and can link them to their world, the literature comes alive. They learn that no man or woman is an island.
What about kids who can’t crack the code?
What code?
decoding word: sound/symbol relationship; the basic pre -reading skills. i guess that was a term of art that i should not have used. i think you know what i mean.
I suspected that’s what you were talking about, but that comes automatically when children start reading books that are slightly above their reading level. Have you ever heard of the five finger rule?
I used that rule to teach my students how to select a book to read. I told them to read two or three pages at random and if there were more than five words on a page they didn’t know, don’t read that book. Then find another book that they were interested in until they found one with only five or less words on a page they didn’t know. If there were no new words in a book, then that was too easy. I told them there had to be words that they didn’t know.
While reading, through contextual clues, they learned what those five or less words meant and that helped them decode the word. Once they know the new words, then they’ll learn how to pronounce them when they hear someone else say them and if that pronunciation they hear is wrong eventually they will hear it used correctly.
Avid readers have much larger vocabularies and they don’t get those vocabularies from classroom drills. They learn most of the new works just by reading. It worked for me.
I wish that learning sound symbol relationships always flow from reading books. I am writing about kids who can]t access books until they master pre reading skills. Not infrequently such kids with specific leaning disabilities require a school that can support their needs. For example, in Massachusetts, The Landmark School. These are kids who need direct instruction in building phonic skills.
Once mastered, even partially, kids can and should move on to the most basic picture books that allow them to practice skill and match words to pictures. To clarify, I write about kids with specific leaning disabilities, as well as kids who just require direct phonics instruction and are immune to whole word approach to reading. .No doubt, read, read, read is the most critical activity in building basic to complex language skills- word recognition, comprehension and writing.
I understand. Every child is unique and they all have strengths and weakness that the Common Core Crap, NCLB (use your imagination for the “B” word) and RTTT Turds ignore.
What every child should have is a highly trained and supported teacher—not a TFA puke 5-week wonder—who knows what to look for and what to do to compensate. And teachers should be members of teacher teams—like in Finland—who help each other with solutions to specific challenges with children who are high risk.
Brain storming and problem solving using critical thinking in groups made up of veteran teaches is the best thing a child can have—not endless crap tests that do nothing but shortchange the child and rob that child of an education.
Re Common Core, standardized testing, TFA, VAM and the like, you u can’t say that often enough. From a different, positive, school based and classroom based perspectives, every grade should use individualized teaching and learning. Schools must have trained teachers, real teachers, who have common planning time to build learning teams that continue to develop and hones teaching skills. Oh yes, read, read… 🙂
The code may be beyond some children when literacy has no meaning. In some instances, “programs” have damaged them at the time that they are ready, another problem is nerve damage, which can affect their visual system due to environmental toxins. There are also studies about disruptive emotional factors in the family.
John
As an E S L teacher to middle school students, I encountered a student who could not read–at all. My first clue was his inconsistent spelling of his own name. He had been in the U. S. since grade three.
His classmates took part in an hour long SSR period while I set out to teach him to read. Having limited time to give him the skill needed, I began by doing what my mother had done. I read the first story in Frog and Toad Are Friends to him as he followed along. In very little time, he could read it aloud with me. As a second language learner, there were a few word requiring direct instruction, some supported by the pictures.
Shortly, he had the story memorised. Eventually, he noticed the difference in letter forms. Within six weeks he could read a new story on his own and spell his name.
Then his mother, who did not have the time to come to school to see me, pulled him from school to go to Colorado to see her brother.
When I was involved in a screening for the Language! program for students middle school students, two of my students who were dyslexic passed the screening. They loved to read and did so against all odds as a result. They were de-coders based on their own cognitive systems.
We know very little about how reading works cognitively. We only know what skills students have as a result of learning to decode. We surmise they need phonics. We guess they need alphabet knowledge. It makes common sense they need left to right scanning. But what do we really know for sure?
Thanks.
My post was not intended to apply (generally to ELL students ( Limited English Proficiency), rather to kids with Specific Learning disabilities, often. related to severely compromised Auditory or Visual Processing skills. It is these kids who most benefit from an approach to language and reading leaning directed to those compromises. One approach that has been quite successful is the Wilson approach to direct instruction, which is often used in Massachusetts public schools. Pairing direct instruction with appropriate skill level reading is most appropriate. For kids with the most severe language/reading skill acquisition issues, which limit effective educational progress, the issue of what constitutes FAPE/LRE often becomes the defining issue at IEP Team meetings. Again, ELL kids present a host of different leaning issues that well may overlap into the realm lthe learning disabled. But ELL kids are not kids with special education needs.
As we all well know, there are many roads to Mecca when it comes to teaching reading, or for that matter any skill. Lloyd’s approach is most wonderful, not to mention successful.
Orton Gillingham, Wilson, Earobics are all good tools to help dyslexic students conquer reading. (I participated in a summer training program at the Gow School – a boarding school for dyslexic boys from grades 7-12)
You will encounter LEP students who are also have a language disability. In our current school world that is tantamount to double jeopardy. . AtIn Massachusetts there is no more Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE). For a similar reason rerquired Bilingual Special Education teachers have gone the way of the dinosaur. Yup, O-G, Wilson, etc can be incredible effective teaching strategies, when used appropriately. What is monstrous is to dump LEP kids into Special Education, when they belong in Regular Education with teachers using appropriate teaching methodologies. As for the Common Core and standardized testing: it should die as soon as possible.
Those are the kids who need help through special education with trained teachers. They still need all the things Lloyd talks about plus that direct instruction in “cracking the code.” It is so important that they be allowed to advance in their learning at the same rate as their peers, especially today. We have the assistive technology available to make sure they are not excluded from a rich, broad curriculum in all subjects because of their “disability.”
Well, of course, access to a full rich,developmentally appropriate curriculum is required. There are kids with severe language based disabilities that will not make educational gains at the same rate as their non disabled peers. That is just a simple non pejorative truth. So, access, access, access. Read, read, read. Assistive technology is great, when used appropriate;y by trained teacher. But it is no panacea.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a panacea? Even the jokers trying to standardize education realize there is no one size fits all answer. They are just willing to sacrifice those children who don’t fit their notion of successful students.
Every now and then one has the opportunity to read a post (any post on a blog, newspaper, etc) that hits home. As a third grader I was diagnosed with Dyslexia. Teachers had no clue what to do, so it was business as usual ( this was the early 60s). I received therapy from Scottish Rite which I know made a difference , but not the difference that my mother made when she started putting books in front of me until I found ones that engrossed me in reading. I read just as this teacher described, every chance I got. as a teacher I passed on the same advice to parents. Sadly, most parents probably liked the TVs ability to babysit. If you want your children to be a good reader, have them read a lot. Teachers can handle the details (most of the time) same goes for math :-). Read the book ” Outliers” for the science on why it works.
Wrote before I read all the comments. I understand the poster who cautioned about these posts perhaps being to simplistic for such a complex problem. Don’t’ worry 🙂 these are some of the most thoughtful readers on the internet and just as passionate. I don’t think many of them have any delusions about the complexity of teaching kids to read. I know I don’t, I spent 10 years teaching kids in Elem school to read and another 13 years supervising teachers of reading as a principal. What we never had enough of was time and that is what Mr. Lofthouse is talking about. Practice enhances skill, and there isn’t time in the day for that kind of practice. By the way, great reminder from the poster who reminded us of the inextricable connection of reading and writing.
(on TV-babysitting) TV has been the stock villain up to the internet, and gaming, and YouTubing, and the rest. The odds for parenting have become worse. Parenting is hard work. You don’t get much help either. The default mode is not reliable; biological parents can’t stick together, and it’s hard to fill the place with a psychological parent. And even if you had the best interest at heart with two responsible adults, necessity drives you out of the house into some job while the children are outsourced.
How to control TVerculosis. Never let a TV set into the family in the first place until children reach their teen years. If you have a TV, do not place it as a center piece, but have it stored a way in a closet so that you have to get it out to “watch TV” as an activity. Never allow more than 1 TV per family. Learn to negotiate over programming. Do not have high definition TV, with surround systems, and dozens of channels to chose from. Prefer real life over pixels.
For multiple reasons, this was our experience. Our kids are not top readers,…I am happy to give them more time,…I was a late-bloomer myself. Instead they have become athletes and musicians. And they don’t do TV.
I was a TV addict in my youth but I also was an avid reader. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I think video games and other electronic devises are more to blame than television programs. In order to fit in, children need to be exposed to the cultural phenomena of the times and that includes certain TV shows.
I personally feel that eliminating ALL television is too extreme. There’s some really good stuff out there (my son liked Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel when he was little). And what about shark week?
The key is everything in moderation.
If you have seen the propaganda film “Won’t Back Down”, the producers and director must have had no idea that they filmed the truth when they went inside the single mother’s home played by Maggie Gyllendhaal, and all her young daughter did was sit and watch TV while the mother blamed the public school and the public school teachers and the teachers’ unions for her young daughter’s failure to learn. Where were the books? Why wasn’t that child reading instead of watching TV? In fact, I don’t remember ever seeing that child doing any homework at home—just watching TV.
Just because my dyslexic son couldn’t read (actually he had an amazing reading teacher in middle school who used Wilson to get him to the point of literacy) didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy books. We listened to the entire Harry Potter series on tape during road trips to visit my brother in Chicago. I remember book six when we had about twenty minutes left (right after Dumbledore’s death) that we sat in the car listening at one in the morning back in our own driveway – not moving until the book was done.
My son did love The Guinness Book of World Records and Shel Silverstein’s poetry books.
Sometimes you just have to find the right hook to reel them in.
“My son did love The Guinness Book of World Records and Shel Silverstein’s poetry books.”
Jack Prelutsky is another poet who can catch the interest of the kids who struggle with reading. (I would have been sitting in the car listening to the ending with you.)
Diane, this is a great discourse, as schools are opening. I read in The Nation about how UPS workers are being judged by the sensors that are installed in their truck to monitor their on time motions and effectiveness. This idea of technological efficiency is moving into education and testing, which will demolish the real origins of literacy, mentioned in this posting.
Wonderful posting. Wonderful thread.
Thanks to one and all.
😎
Thank you, Lloyd for your courageous service to our country and for your wisdom in the teaching of reading. As a reading specialist and first-grade teacher of many years, I know that you speak the truth.
The sad thing about education right now is that we are ignoring what we know. There is a mountain of research to support what you have said, and yet people tend to ignore it. Part of the reason, I think, is that many lay people confuse decoding with reading. Decoding is a basic skill that many children learn by third grade, whereas reading is a complex psycho-linguistic process, otherwise known as thinking. And the best way at getting good at it is by doing a lot of reading and loving it.
When my son was fourteen, his writing skills were deplorable. My husband and I decided to shut off the TV during the week. We put a lock on it until Friday and put it back on Sunday night.Within six months he started reading more, did better in school and eventually went on to Stanford. My other son, seven years younger, never had TV during the week so he was an avid reader and high achiever from the beginning. He went to Harvard.
If we were serious about helping all children, we’d acknowledge the partnership among student, parent and teacher, and work to improve each component, instead of foolishly placing all responsibility on the school.
Linda, you are spot on! I teach fourth grade and still have to clarify what, exactly, reading is to parents and even some teachers! They still confuse decoding with reading.
My daughter is dyslexic, but has earned her doctorate in toxicology. She recently consulted with an educational neuro specialist. He evaluated her reading and concluded that her true reading ability was what you would expect from a person with a PhD. But her decoding ability was 3rd grade level. My daughter’s reading really took off in 3rd grade. That was when she was allowed to read silently, instead of out loud. Silent reading made it possible for her to concentrate on meaning instead of struggling through letter sounds and the agony of mispronouncing in front of other students.
I have learned from her experience and use that to help my students with similar issues.
I have been a remedial reading/writing & a developmental reading/writing teacher in JHS and SH. Almost all of those students had no books, newspapers and magazines in the house. Almost all these students had one parent in the home.There was no incentives from the home for the students to read.
Way to go Lloyd!
I agree with this article for the majority of students! But I teach students with dyslexia, and I train their teachers/tutors, too. Just reading more isn’t going to be enough. Let’s not forget this large group of students – as many as 20 % of the population. Learning Ally is a service that will give them access to books until they receive the intervention they need to become independent readers. But they need explicit instruction using an approach such as Orton-Gillingham.
My dyslexia was so severe that when I was six or seven, my mother was told I would never learn to read or write. But my mother used an old fashioned method to teach me at home—a wire coat hanger and pain. Today that method is politically unacceptable.
She was 89 and in the hospital—with tears in her eyes—when she asked for my forgiveness for using that coat hanger, and the pain that came with it, to force me to learn to read. She said she had lived with the guilt all that time. I blame that guilt on the politically correct mob that is against corporal punishment of any kind.
My response, “Mother, I don’t blame you for what you did. If you had let me have my way, I’d have never learned to read and would have gone to prison like Richard (my older brother spent 15 years in and out of jail). I think that coat hanger changed my life for the better and you never did it out of meanness. You were only thinking of my future.”
You see, my mother didn’t use the coat hanger on my older brother—my parents tried reason on him and he refused to cooperate—Richard died a broken man who lived in poverty most of his life. He was age 64, and still illiterate as are most of his seven children. There was never any books or magazines in his house. Richard also had severe dyslexia.
Two weeks later, my mother died.
Thanks, Lloyd, for your excruciatingly personal story.
Dyslexia is a physical condition, but is often considered a symptom of ‘laziness’. No, often it’s a developmental thing, and many outgrow the problem. Those who suffer from it, however, often bear the scars for life. It is a problem that would never have been noticed throughout most of human history.
My next door neighbor was dyslexic, and probably ADHD as well. He was kicked out of the local school system in the third grade. He’s a very bright guy but still exhibits symptoms of adult ADD. Good neighbor. He built the house I live in.
But, he did spend some years in jail (drug stuff, not violent crime). So, what was the greater cost? Attending to his dyslectic needs at an early age or keeping him in jail?
Maybe the coat hanger was a good idea, but had the school system in those days understood, it would not have been necessary. Your Mom did what she could, under the circumstances, and I can certainly see that you understand and respect the love that she had for you as she suffered by giving you pain.
You could put some kids on a Desert Island with a sack of books and come back a few months later to pick up a bunch of avid readers. Others require a more direct approach.
The reason common core won’t work is that each child learns differently and some need a customized approach, especially when they have discernible issues.
Linda, my daughter with a doctorate degree is dyslexic. Interventions were the last thing that helped her. Being able to read silently allowed her to focus on meaning without the distraction of sounding out words in front of listeners. She was relegated to the remedial reading groups until 3rd grade when the teacher saw that she could develop her own compensations. Then her reading ability took off. Her decoding skills will never match her comprehension, but reading IS comprehension and decoding is a skill that can be helpful. See Linda Johnson’s comment.
As a teacher, I have sometimes seen dyslexic kids get too many interventions and accommodations, resulting in confusion and frustration. Each student learns differently. They don’t all need explicit instruction.
My dyslexic son had a teachers side assigned to him (I refused to put him in special ed with emotionally disturbed children) whose job was to redirect her when he went off task. He was a hard worker who preferred to do the work himself and resented interference.
My overly sensitive son did not respond well to loud noises such as yelling and hated any forms of violence, even though he had the potential to explode with enough prodding from his sisters. I requested kind, motherly teachers for him who wouldn’t mind the extra work, and he was well loved by everyone of them. Of course, all bets were off by the time he got to high school, but luckily at that time they still had a reasonable GED that got him off the hook.
Aide
There is an incredible book called “Scattered” that links ADHD to periods in a child’s life where there was tension or disruption, possibly due to conflicting parents, which affects the emotions. I suspect that poverty can do this too, creating what some call dyslexia, many academics in literacy refuse to recognize this with the word, “disease”. Each sibling is different, depending on the events in the parents’ world during their development. The coordination of the brain and eye for reading is special.
If one has congenital blindness, and then is suddenly give their eye sight at a later date, they still can’t see, because they missed the developmental stage of coordinating image with light.
I suspect that certain “reading programs” are an obstacle to this development as too many children are labeled. The Danes and Finns do not label children until age 7, while we have a huge jobs program for Special Ed teachers, where children are being labeled in kindergarten, so much wasted money, but it’s a third rail for politicians, so we continue to ruin more lives with “early intervention”, like we are all knowing.
Good and educational story, but the account on corporal punishment is questionable. I don’t think corporal punishment is just simply not fashionable anymore. No, it was found to be unreasonable, and has been replaced by more effective methods that have greater long term value.
While I agree that there are other, more effective methods to achieve postive behavior in a child, consider parents who don’t know that or don’t care and when they were children, their parents used corporal punishment to achieve what these alleged more effective methods do that they never heard of.
Take my parents for instance. Both were high school dropouts and never earned a high school degree. My father was an alcoholic and a gambler. When he was in his teens, he ran the streets and learned how to fight with his fists. He was even in the Golden Gloves and went 50 rounds in a bare fist fight.
My mother was about as close as you can get to being a fundamentalist Christian without being one.
In Proverbs 23:13 it says, “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.” My mother lived by what she learned from the Bible. When she died she had a box full of different translations, an audio version and a video version and she’d read/studied them for guidance for at last 50 years of her 89.
There are 24 Bible verse about “spare the rod spoil the child”
” I don’t think corporal punishment is just simply not fashionable anymore. No, it was found to be unreasonable, and has been replaced by more effective methods that have greater long term value.”
You mean like shaming? I suppose it depends on who is defining “value.”
Everything is relative. For instance parenting styles.
Authoritarian
Authoritative (allegedly the best)
Permissive
Uninvolved
Where does the helicopter parent fit?
I can’t find the study that set out to determine the ratios of parents for each style but what I remember is that the number of Authoritarian parents is about the same in China and the U.S. at about 25% give or take 2 or 3%.
“The type of parenting style used by parents may be determined by the parent’s own
cultural heritage. According to researchers, the primary cultural difference between
Caucasian Americans and Asian American culture is the concept of independence versus
interdependence.”
http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=hsshonors
I used the threat of the wooden spoon, but never once used it. My adult children, however, swear that they were beaten on more than one occasion.
Each child is different. My oldest had a bad temper and time out was the best form of discipline. I always sent an apology note with some suggestions to her elementary teachers on the first day of school to warn them of possible conflicts.
I’m not against a swat on the butt for immediate feedback on occurrences such as toddlers running towards the street, but I don’t think beatings are the best reinforcements for bad behaviors. As a teacher, some of the worst behaved children would beg me not to call home since their parents were sure to use corporal puniishment. If called into the school, they sometimes began hitting the child right in front of our noses.
When I first started working in Buffalo I found a paddle in my desk. I gave it to the principal and she actually used it on a few kids. Of course, that was over 25 years ago with a black woman reprimanding black children in her office, but I was still horrified.
We all have our own thinking when it comes to corporal punishment. For instance, paddling on the butt. As long as it is not excessive and the parent (possibly a psychopath or sociopath—yes, they can become parents too) gets no thrill out of inflicting pain in their child, I will not protest or preach to someone who does it.
But just like the right-to-life movement that is against a woman having the power of decision over her own body—even the use of condoms—I do not agree with the power of a politically correct mob that says my way is the only way.
Everything is relative. For parents who think corporal punishment of a child is an acceptable option, I suggest leave no physical scars. Do not inflect pain in a child for the thrill of power an adult might feel. Make sure to clearly explain to the child why the adult is paddling them. Don’t paddle a child hours after the child did something unacceptable. The punishment, no matter what type it is, should be as soon as possible after the unacceptable behavior.
Time out is good. We used time out but only after a discussion followed by another discussion after the time out.
I think strongly that all the nonphysical methods of child behavior modification should be tried first before resorting to the paddle and if that also doesn’t work …. Good luck. Our parents only resorted to the paddle or wire clothes hanger as a last effort and even that didn’t work with my older brother. He resisted every effort to teach him to read from ice cream bribes to the paddle. Eventually our parents gave up on him. When my turn came about 14 years later, the wire coat hanger worked. Reason and talk didn’t. I also resisted but lost to the pain. My brother of course won the battle and didn’t learn to read but lost for the rest of his life.
And for teachers in states like California where the law says the teacher must report any suspicion of child abuse, don’t look the other way if you have any suspicion that a parent is being mentally or physically abusive of their child. File the report or you could lose your credential and your job. After filing the report leave it up to social services to conduct the investigation.
When I wrote my comment about shaming, I was thinking of what seems to be a favored control technique in charter schools and has infiltrated some public schools with their data walls. As to parenting styles, the only one that really bothers me is “uninvolved.” None of the other three precludes a child knowing they are loved. Being ignored makes a child invisible and pretends s/he doesn’t exist.
It’s horrible for a child to feel unloved. I have never forgotten the mother who showed up on parent conference night for her 14 years old son who was in my English class, and she had a young child of three or four on her lap. She said she was proud of her son for the good grades he was earning in all of his classes. Then she pointed at the child on her lap and said, “But this one we didn’t want. He was an accident. Our 14 year old was planned.”
I was at a loss of words, literally speechless, and then she was gone before I could formulate a proper response if there could have been one for what she’d said. How do you erase those hurtful words from that child’s memory?
Agreed
I began to wonder what could be the link between low literacy in the inner city, many children’s nervous system are affected by toxins in their air, as evidenced by the high levels of respiratory disease, where these levels are highest in the schools, since indoor air quality is worse than outdoor air quality. The most sensitive organ in the human body is the eye and its relationship to the nervous system.
The NYC Union Chief Leader printed my letter today in its Labor Day edition as the debate continues over extending the law to protect 9/11 responders.
Letter to the Editor Letter: Limit to Teacher Rights
Posted: Friday, September 4, 2015 4:45 pm
http://thechiefleader.com/
JOSEPH MUGIVAN | 0 comments
It was interesting to read about the debate over Teacher tenure (Sept. 4 article). It must be realized that it does not exist for Teachers exercising their Federal and State rights due to environmental exposure.
Post-9/11 New York City brought air-quality testing to the fore, along with a push to to build schools on previously owned industrial sites. Mayor Bloomberg created Intro. 650 before the New York City Council, to mandate that all air-quality testing go through the Police Commissioner’s approval process.
The unions were up in arms, particularly those whose workers were with the utilities below ground. I had the opportunity to serve on the Mayor’s Commission, in opposition, alongside the unions,
NYCOSH and NYLPI, as a Teacher advocate. Intro. 650 was defeated.
Schools were also experiencing issues post-9/11, as the zoning laws were rescinded and questionable locations became available for their construction. Industrial sites that lay fallow saw opportunities for development. Technology advanced and vapor-extraction systems (VES) were installed. Schools would now need to be, hopefully, monitored in perpetuity.
In 2007, Info Tech High School, a former metal-plating factory site, leased by the Dept. of Education (DOE) in 2003, was the scene of one such event. The city had not foreseen the future complications of this new policy.
I was terminated, when driven from my school in Elmhurst in 2003 attempting to exercise my rights to an air-quality test at this former Water Department truck yard. The Principal and the Director of the union’s Safety Division sought retirement the following year.
JOSEPH MUGIVAN
Spot on, Lloyd. I learned to read in second grade when I bought my first book for two dollars. It was a hardback copy of Roy Chapman Andrews classic, “All About Dinosaurs.” I still have it. In one year I went from being a struggling reader to one of the best in the class. At age eight I got my library card and spent all summer riding my bike once a week to our Carnegie library, two miles away.
In high school I walked with a buddy every Saturday to our Carnegie library (in a different town) to check out my books. It was 3.5 miles one way.
I taught public school for twenty five years and I made it a habit to let my students select a book, any book, from my personal classroom library on the last day of school. You probably can guess the excitement this generated! They were agog!
Now, how do we make the idiots who are destroying public education understand?
I don’t think we can teach the idiots and fools (all psychopaths I’m sure) who worship at the Milton Friedman, neoliberal altar of Greed-is-Good to care about what works. They have tunnel vision and are focused on one goal—and they will do what they HAVE to do to reach that goal no matter how many children, teachers and parents they must trample and destroy.
These idiots are dedicated to be deaf, dumb and blind. They don’t care about children or education. They only want to be right even if they have to put a cannon to our heads and force us to do as we are told and agree with them or else they blow us away.
And when everything they do has failed miserably, they will blame their victims for the failure. The only thing that might stop them is fear of a mob rising out of the 99% who will tear them apart and turn them into chopped liver.
Hmmm…. We begin to agree at another level. Thanks, Lloyd.
Interesting interview about being dyslexic. Dyslexia does not go away; it simply manifests differently over time and depending on intervention.
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/personal-stories/stories-by-adults/5-questions-for-documentary-filmmaker-sara-entine?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=understoodorg