The hope-and-optimism time of the school year is upon us. Have you seen examples? There is a hint of it in the welcome entry Jennifer Sadowski posted on a school’s blog.
Welcome Back! My name is Jennifer Sadowski and I am proud to say I am the school’s new Reading Specialist. I recently graduated from DePaul University with a master’s degree in Reading and Learning Disabilities along with a Reading Specialist certificate. Prior to this year, I taught first grade here at St. Bens. As much as I loved working in the wonderful world of first grade, I am greatly looking forward to working with the teachers and the students from grades K-8.
My responsibilities as the Reading Specialist include providing weekly professional development workshops to the teachers as well as providing remedial reading instruction, in the form of a pull-out program, to those students who struggle to acquire literacy concepts. In addition, I will also be providing supplementary assistance, again in the form of a pull-out program, to those students who excel in literacy.
I hope that Ms. Sadowski will be using effective teaching practices. I wondered whether the Depaul Web site might offer an indication, so I burrowed around there. You can see links to what I found at the end.
I learned that Depaul adheres pretty closely to the standards recommended by the International Reading Association (IRA), mixes in standards from other organizations (e.g., Illinois State Board of Education, ISBE), and employs standard rubrics for describing students’ knowledge and skills. There are 29 standards, covering competencies addressing “Disciplinary Foundations” (neither IRA or ISBE), “Inquiry & Reading Research,” Major Components of Reading” (IRA), “Reflection and Professional Development” (IRA), and “Communication with Wider Audiences” (ISBE not IRA). These are brief statements that say little. For example, here is the standard for “Effective Reading Instruction” indicating that the candidate for a degree with emphasis on reading and learning disabilities “Plans and uses appropriate instructional practices to provide effective reading instruction for students at varying developmental levels.”
The description reminds me of what I’ve seen elsewhere (sometimes including my august school of education, I’m sorry to say). It’s the usual mix of great emphasis on knowing a lot of somewhat relevant stuff but not knowing how to do the really important stuff. I think this sort of material would attract scorn from people who have little patience with contemporary schools’ emphasis on peripheral aspects of teacher education rather than on making dang sure that teachers can do the critical things needed. See, for example, Professor Plum’s EducatioNation commentaries (which sadly, are not updated often these days) or the Instructivist.
I hope, of course, that those criticisms would be inaccurate. I hope that the Depaul faculty showed Ms. Sadowski how to teach segmenting, blending, phoneme-grapheme relationships, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehesnion strategies—not, “Oh here are some strategies you could use” or “There are many equally good ways to introduce letter sounds” or “You need to find the mis of methods that fits your teaching style”—and then put Ms. Sadowski in difficult teaching situations where expert teachers provided models and feedback so that she could practice the effective strategies to mastery. In short, I hope that Ms. Sadowski learned exactly how to teach beginning and remedial reading effectively. I hope all the standards were there because, after she got really good at teaching, the faculty explained where those effective practices fit in the panolopy of opinions about reading and how the research on those practices far and away outruns the inquiry on other methods and views.
Link to Ms. Sadowski’s post. Link to the Depaul School of Education site where you can read about the program in reading and Learning Disabilities and download MS Word documents providing the standards and rubrics. Link to the section of the International Reading Association site on teacher education. Link to Professor Plum’s commentaries and the Instructivist.
In the absence of a evidence-validated commercial curriculum, I would not have high hopes that Ms. Sadowski will be able to piece togaether a coherent curriculum based on what she learned at Depaul.
Ken, your thoughts are likely to be right about this. Even experienced teachers who understand the Famous Five Components (FFC; ~™ or ~©) would likely be more effective if they used an evidence-validated, coherent curriculum than they would be if the rolled their own. But, that’s a dang good empirical question. We’re planning to pose it for research funding in a future project.
I glanced through the documents from the university you mentioned John, and had a sinking heart. As much as I would like to believe that there is substance under those generic descriptors, I have met too many recent grads that are themselves frustrated by their lack of practical knowledge.
Besides the Famous Five Components, I also think a teacher needs to have a good grasp on linguistics and on the history of the English language. I have read a couple of books on the origin of the language, and took linguistics in university. I use it in my attempts to explain some of our idiosyncrasies and down right bizarre rules. My students are grateful for the attempt to explain what has been such a mystery to them, and we are all amused by it.
I applaud this young woman’s bravery and her convictions, I can’t help but think that in order to be an effective teacher of students with severe challenges in reading, some time in the trenches is necessary. While I don’t know her age, her experience is limited to teaching grade 1 if I understand that correctly. I taught for 18 years before getting my Masters degree, and I felt lucky to have those years to draw on during the course of my studies. I think one needs to see alot of children reading to be able to know what normal looks like, and to recognize real trouble when one sees it. (not 18 years perhaps, but a span of time)
Kathy, I also found those materials saddening. So much hope, so little sense. I agree about the value of experience. I also think it’s valuable to know why, for example, comb has a “b” on he end. I also think that there is another extremely important feature to teaching reading: The teaching itself, scaffolding (as we now say; remember when it as “prompts?”), providing practice, etc.
Thanks for the comment. I’m glad to have your contributions here.