This is the reading instruction show. I'm your host as always Dr. Andy Johnson.
The title of today's podcast is called Jessica Winter, Lucy Cockens, Units of Study and the
Way to Get Good Reading Instruction. Long title I know. Jessica Winter is an editor at The New
Yorker where she writes about family and education and she recently wrote an article for The New
Yorker entitled The Rise and Fall of Vibes Based Literacy. Now in this series of podcasts, I'm
analyzing this article because it describes or misdescribes reading instruction. And as I first
started reading this article, I realized that Jessica Winter had no idea of what she was talking
about. Her misrepresentations and ununderstanding could have a negative impact if readers actually
took what she wrote seriously. And since The New Yorker has a circulation of over a million
readers, I felt I should say something. But will my humble little podcast actually make a difference
with my listenership of maybe a thousand on a good day? Will it change anyone's mind? I don't know.
But at least I can sleep at night. Jessica Winter's article represents everything that's wrong and
harmful about the current science of reading movement. And that's why I'm analyzing. It's a
good representation of the whole science of reading thing. That's because it's based on a knowledge
base related to reading instruction that's shallow and disjointed. Little knowledge. It relies like
the science of reading on anecdotes, personal experience, and emotions to create a picture
that's not at all accurate. And like the science of reading movement, Jessica Winter's article uses
very unscientific processes to try to understand reading instruction. And when you use unscientific
methodology to come to know things, you must expect to get cartoonish portrayals and misinformation.
And I always find it a bit ironic that a movement with science in the title like the science of
reading is in actuality so very unscientific in its methods used to understand reading reality.
Now, Jessica Winter's article used the term vibes based literacy. It was in the title. And that's
meant to demean those who are teaching literacy in a way that she doesn't understand. And like Emily
Hanford, she seems to think she knows about reading instruction. After all, she's a journalist, just
like Emily Hanford. She must know what she's talking about. Now, in an earlier podcast, I called
Jessica Winter a clown. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. And I've referred to Emily Hanford is a
clown. Maybe I shouldn't have said that either. I don't know. But it's the truth of the matter.
And I'm not trying to be demeaning or pejorative here. But that's what they are. Now, they're not
actual clowns. They don't belong to a circus or wear big shoes or rubber nose. And I don't think
they jam themselves into small cars with other clowns. The word clown here is used as a metaphor.
It's a bit of metaphorical shorthand. A clown in literacy terms is a person who thinks they know
much about literacy instruction when in fact they know very little. And it's not a very complimentary
term I know. But being a literacy clown is not something most people should aspire to be.
But yet, here we are. So, like the science of reading advocates that I sometimes call them
a clown club, Jessica Winter in her article gets all muddled up about things. She gets all confused
about reading workshop and balance literacy and Lucy Cochens units of study, whole language,
queuing systems and the look say approach. So, I'm going to try to disambiguate these things and do
a bit of explaining on them. Because in their eyes, as their articles are written, these all seem to
be the same things when in fact these are all distinctly different things. As I described in
a previous podcast, reading workshop is not a method. It's an approach to teaching reading.
And it's one of several approaches. Now, it's not a method with step by step procedures that
have to be followed like a recipe. And as I described in another podcast, reading workshop
looks distinctly different in each teacher's classroom. So, you cannot equate reading workshop
with balance literacy with units of study or whatever that is. So, why does Lucy Cochens
always get in the mix here? I don't understand that. In the 90s, I read Lucy Cochens book,
The Art of Teaching Writing and The Art of Teaching Reading. Great books. Go read them.
Very influential and helping us evolve our thinking about how children best learn literacy
and how we can create the conditions to best enable all students to reach their full literacy
potential. After all, we, meaning-based literacy instructors, are about much more than simply
teaching children how to sound out words. We're teaching children to become literate.
Not sound out words, but to become literate. Being literate means you're able to use reading
and writing for authentic purposes and not to simply identify what bubble to fill in
on a standardized test. If you are literate, you're able to use expository text to know and
understand. You're able to read for enjoyment. You're able to use writing to think, to record,
to transmit your ideas. We're teaching children how to be and become literate. That's what
meaning-based teachers do. And for Jessica Winters, literacy is not a permanent state. It's a
dynamic state. We don't reach a single point where we are in a stable place and say, now
I am here. If we continue to read, write, and think, our literacy skills continue to evolve
throughout our lifetimes. And this is important because if we don't do these things once we
leave school, if we don't continue to read, write, and think, our literacy skills evolve.
So if we create literacy programs like the science of reading seems to be advocating,
if we create programs that are so boring, humiliating, frustrating that students never
want to read and write once they leave school, we're promoting illiteracy, devolution, and limitations.
Now, back to Lucy Cochens. She was one of many great writers of the time. She's got great stuff
to say. I admire her. Lucy Cochens wrote some really good stuff, but so did a lot of other people.
Regie Routeman, Nancy Atwell, Donald Graves, Constance Weaver, Marie Clay, Brian Camborn,
Richard Allenton, and Ken and Yeta Goodman. More on Goodman in just a minute because I know
people get all riled up when they hear that name. But Lucy Cochens no more represents and speaks for
all meaning-based instruction than I represent and speak for all neurotic bald men. She is one of
many good writers and thinkers out there. And as I said, everything evolves. That's the thing about
understanding literacy and literacy research and the science of reading. Everything evolves. People
continue to study, research, learn, and change their views on things. They evolve. The field of
literacy instruction. It's a dynamic, constantly changing thing as we get more knowledge and new
knowledge. We never get to the place where something is proven once and for all. As science of reading
people like to say, science has not proven this or unproven that. That represents a naive understanding
of science and reading science. Controlled experimental research is used to support or not
support an individual research hypothesis. And in order to control all extraneous variables,
good research focuses on a very specific thing with a very specific problem and a very specific
population. All of these studies are used to create research-based theory and not only controlled
experimental research, but qualitative research, ethnographic research, all these different
kinds of research are used to make up theories. And a theory is a way to explain a set of facts
and we use them to understand phenomena. Different theories explain different facts
differently. But theories continue to evolve in all manners of science. They continue to
evolve until they no longer explain phenomena. They become inadequate or weak. Then they're
replaced by new theories. That's the way it works in science. Now, I've written three books about
reading instruction and you can see the evolution of my thinking with each. And even though I thought
my last book was my best, as I hope I do with all my books, I see a need to start on another one.
And while I thought Lucy Cochran's book about teaching writing was one of the best ones back
in the 90s, I found recently that I couldn't use it today simply because it didn't capture what needed
to be said today. Thus, I had to write my own book about teaching writing published by Rutledge,
due out in 2024 sometime. That was a little commercial. Being and becoming teachers of writing,
a meaning-based approach. Look for it on your bookshelf soon.
All right. Now, let's go to the teachers college reading and writing project, which is a teacher's
college is used as a short term and units of study. Somehow Jessica Witters and the science of reading
clowns, and I say that in the most respectful way possible, have equated teachers college and units
of study and Lucy Cochran's is a binary proposition opposite of science of reading. In other words,
if you are not fully aligned with the science of reading propositions, whatever they are,
then you must be following Lucy Cochran's and teacher colleges, etc. in lockstep. It's one or
the other. And this is where it gets really, really silly. There are many manifestations and
iterations of meaning-based literacy instruction. And that's what makes it so powerful and effective
because it requires teachers to know and understand some important principles about literacy learning.
However, they must then adopt and adapt only those research-based strategies that meet the needs of
their students and align with their own teaching styles and philosophy. There is no such thing
as a one size fits all program. What works for one may not work for another. There are no magic
bullets. There's only magic teachers with teacher toolboxes filled with research-based tools,
and they are empowered to use those tools. Now, thinking that a school could buy a particular
program or a curriculum or even units of study is the antithesis of good meaning-based literacy
instruction. It's Falderal being promoted by the science of reading clown club. And I mean that in
the most complimentary way. To think that you're going to solve all reading problems by purchasing
and then mandating a particular program or curriculum is just silly. It's foolish. It represents
clown-based thinking. And then to force teachers, as the science of reading clown club wants to do,
to teach in a particular way, disempowers them and disallows them to create instruction that best
meets the needs of all their students. These top down mandates serve only to force teachers to
commit educational malpractice on a daily basis. And any school superintendent who's silly enough
to think that he or she can buy a product to solve their reading problems probably shouldn't be a
superintendent. They should probably look for a position on the home shopping network instead.
If you think you have to pay for very expensive special training that you can use only if you
been trained like letters or orton ghillie n' em. You can't use it if you haven't been trained.
If they think you need that to get good reading instruction, well, you're just misinformed.
The way to get good reading instruction is and always has been very simple to understand.
Again, we need knowledgeable literacy teachers. That's the answer, not some silly product or curriculum.
Expert reading teachers, knowledgeable reading teachers, expert reading teachers have six
kinds of knowledge. And here they are. If you're an expert reading teacher, you have knowledge
of how humans learns. Human learning, that's number one. Number two, expert reading teachers
have knowledge of how the brain creates meaning with print, how it operates during the reading
process. Three expert reading teachers have knowledge of literacy teaching and learning.
Number four, expert reading teachers have knowledge of literacy research.
Number five, expert reading teachers have knowledge of literacy assessment and diagnosis.
And six expert reading teachers have knowledge of literacy pedagogy, different strategies.
Now, you can't bypass this knowledge by trying to buy the right program with a strip that must be
followed with fidelity. And you can't treat teachers as if they're mindless zombies waiting
for the directors of educational management. And you can't expect that teachers will learn all
this stuff in three semesters of any teacher preparation program. It's just not possible.
The only way to improve reading instruction is by providing legitimate and mandated teacher
professional development that occurs over time. It's not a one stop kind of thing. It's not
a drive through experience. Now, you might think that you need to pay the leeches and bloodsuckers
to come to your school to get everyone all trained up.
But training is what we do with dogs and seals. We don't train people. We educate them.
We need good, legitimate professional development for teachers, not the one and done after school
workshop. And there are ways to do this without wasting thousands and even millions of dollars
that could be spent instead on good books. And I'll describe this in another video.
But two things I want to finish up with. First, the science of reading. What exactly?
My clown friends insist that science of reading based teaching should occur in classrooms.
And I actually agree with them. I do. That's exactly what I describe in my books.
What I'd like Emily Hanford and Jessica Winter and other clowns to tell me is this.
What exactly do you want to see more of? What strategies and teaching practices specifically
are not there that should be there? And how do you know they're not there?
And two, what exactly do you want to see less of? What strategies and teaching practices are there
that should not be there? And if we would limit the conversation to specific teaching strategies
and teaching practices, we might get somewhere. But instead, look what you're doing. You're forcing
me to call you clowns. And I don't enjoy calling you clowns. But when you won't engage in a meaningful
way, I'm left to use this very childish type of metaphorical shorthand. I don't want to do it.
All right, let's talk about Ken Goodman. My science of reading friends disagree. They know they should
disagree vehemently with Ken Goodman, not because they've read anything he's written, but because
they've been told they should disagree with him. They've been told he's wrong. He's bad. He's crazy.
And many of these same adjectives, I'm sure, are being applied to me. That's okay. I'm a big boy.
I can take it. But that's not good scientific thinking. Now, I don't agree with everything
that Ken Goodman wrote. I agree with much of it. I don't agree with everything that anybody wrote.
I don't even agree with everything that I wrote. That's why I keep changing and evolving.
And like all good thinkers, Ken Goodman continued to evolve throughout his life. His later material
on eye movement and miscue analysis should be required reading for all teachers of reading.
And before you make any pronouncement about Ken Goodman, you owe it to yourself to actually read
what he wrote and tell us exactly what it is you disagree with. That's good scientific thinking.
Don't rely on misquoted statements pulled out of context. Ken Goodman did some incredible work
in his life. And if you disagree with him, fine. Tell us exactly what it is you disagree,
make your statement and support it. All right. I'm going to end with four terms. And I don't know if
this is a good way to end or not. If it's positive or not, but I'm going to end. These are metaphorical
bits of metaphorical shorthand to quickly pull up what I mean when I say certain things. First
of all, I've used the term leeches and bloodsuckers in literacy terms. These are people who exist to
suck the financial blood out of our educational system. All right. Very objective about this.
Their goal is to become fat and bloated on the hopes and dreams of our parents who want the best
for their children. And they come to town like Professor Harold Hill and the Music Man selling
a dream with their slick tables and graphs promising fantastic results. If we buy their method or their
product or their program, very much like Harold Hill's think method, they tell us their shiny
new products are the answers to all our problems. But these are often solutions to problems that
don't exist. And if a problem doesn't exist, they'll make up a problem like the reading crisis to sell
their product because their problem, the leeches and bloodsuckers are is this. How can we make more
money? How can we garner more resources? The second term is penguins. Penguins are more
accurately phonics. Penguins are those who squawk and wave their flippers in the air saying,
phonics, phonics, we need more phonics. If we just had more phonics, all reading would be solved.
All reading problems would be solved. All right. That is a penguin. Someone who thinks that phonics
is the only thing and the answer for everything. That is a penguin. And in the most objective and
respectful terms, I use that. Number monkeys, again, objective and respectful, try to explain the
world in terms of numbers. They try to explain learning in terms of numbers. If it can't be
quantified, it doesn't exist. The only learning that's valued is that which can be tested or
quantified. If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one is there to assess us,
we can't say that tree fell. And they've convinced, not us, but you, that we can test our way to better
reading. And of course, a clown is someone who thinks they know a great deal about literacy
instruction when in fact they know very little. Clowns go around making decisions, promoting
policies and programs, and advocating change based on personal anecdotes, I thinkisms,
and documentaries and articles written by journalists. Clowns don't waste their time
getting facts if they can make up their own. This has been the reading instruction show. I'm your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson. Today, we've looked, analyzed, this was part two of a series of podcasts
looking at an article written by Jessica Winter in the New York Times. And this article was called
The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy. And I'm analyzing this article in a series of podcasts
because it so clearly illustrates what is going on in the science of reading movement.
Stay tuned for the next part.