This is the reading instruction show. I'm your host as always a doctor Andy Johnson that the topic of today's podcast is angels
vampires lies and
Educational overlord overlords. It's an excerpt from a podcast. I did a little bit earlier
so the first part let's look at the big lesson and
There's a lesson and there's the lesson beyond the lesson
And the lesson beyond the big lesson here is that when teaching from your highest place
The teacher and the student become one
When you're teaching from your highest place
Learning goes both ways like electrons on an alternating current wire
Meaning that you're learning from your students and your students are learning from you
Now teaching from your highest place doesn't mean that you're always teaching most effectively
But usually you are
We all have lessons that don't go just right and that's okay
If you've never failed you haven't tried enough things
Failure is an important part of success
But when you're teaching from your highest place you're teaching with good intent
This means you're teaching from a place of humility
caring and compassion not ego
You're teaching from love
Ouch, and I said it right there love that word
Let's take a look at the word love
Now did you ever think you'd hear that word in a podcast about reading instruction?
And I admit I was more than a little uncomfortable when it first came out of my fingers and slipped onto the page
Right away. I wanted to pull it back. I
Started looking for another word like kindness or compassion or care
But these words just didn't get to where I wanted to go
Love is a powerful word
But if you're uncomfortable with that word love we can use the term unconditional positive regard there
Does that make you feel better?
They're relatively similar
With love or unconditional positive regard
You seek to nurture to give to yourself to others and to your environment without
conditions
Love or unconditional positive regard is first a disposition or state of mind
That then manifests itself into action
Now let's talk about secrets vampires angels and lies. I
Had no plans to write about these things when I started this podcast
But like the word love
This part of the podcast just slipped out of my fingers and onto the page
First I want to tell you about the secret
You may think you're teaching reading and this may be so on the surface level
But on the deep level if you're really teaching if you're using
Meaning-based reading instruction
You're really teaching your students life
Reading good books
Talking about good books writing and sharing our stories listening to the stories of others is life
Helping students to use literacy to find out who they are and what they may become
Helps them come alive
Teaching students to develop their full literacy potential is bringing them fully to life
Teaching students to be and become literate is life-giving
We're not here just to teach children to sound out words that would not be life-giving
We're here to help children be and become literate and
To be and become literate is to use reading and writing for authentic purposes
Don't let the phonics penguins the number monkeys and the educational overlords distract you from this
And let's talk about vampires
Vampires are real. Yes, they are
They seek to suck the life out of us
In education the vampires try to suck the life out of us through their top-down standards
Their mindless mandates and their really silly laws related to skills-based reading instruction
They seek to make teachers merely technicians on an assembly line
who mindlessly implement standardized curriculum and
obediently followed the dictates of the educational overlords
The educational overlords don't want teachers to think they only want them to follow directions
And they don't want students to think only to respond to letter stimuli
The educational overlords see the world of education through the scratched and distorted lenses of
standardized tests and
profit
Let's take a look at the lies
The educational overlords in Minnesota who assigns standards to teacher education courses would have me teach my students lies
For example, they want me to teach my students quote the ways in which reading achievement is related to
phonological and phonemic awareness
Including the ability to recognize word boundaries to rhyme and to blend segment
substitute and delete sounds in words and
To teach this would be a lie
These people of the lie are asking me to lie to my students to teach them the lie
Yes, there is a correlation between phonological awareness of which phonemic awareness is a subset and
Reading achievement
They co relate or they appear together
That does not mean that one thing causes another thing
Correlation does not infer causation
Phonological and phonemic awareness do not cause reading achievement
Now if you were to spend a lot of time teaching phonological and phonemic awareness
Yes, students will score higher on tests of phonological and phonemic awareness
absolutely
But would the results be persistent meaning would they last and more importantly would the results would the skills
Transfer to authentic reading situations in which students were asked to create meaning with print
That's what reading is creating meaning
Both the national reading panel and I would say no and
Would teaching these things be more effective than reading a lot of good books writing our stories and learning
Skills within this context and again, there's a good chunk of research that says no
Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't teach these things
To your students if you're a reading teacher, I don't want anyone to pull this out of context, but they will
These are important but small parts of early literacy instruction
The problem is that the over emphasis on these small parts
Get students focusing on small parts, which is individual words instead of the big parts which is meaning and ideas
And besides we never encounter individual words floating in space
Outside a meaningful context
We always see them in the context of something
Even words and words on signs and labels are in the context of a place or a product
And context is an important part of recognizing words and creating meaning
Here's another lie the state of Minnesota wants me to teach my students
Quote the instructional progression of phonological awareness
For example words syllabi's on sets and rhymes and phonemes
Well, this too is a lie
There is no instructional progression of when or in what order these things should be taught or even if they should be taught at all
They made this up
Show me a bit of supporting research that might indicate that teaching these things has a causal effect on reading achievement
Or that it's more effective than reading lots of good books and writing our stories with skills instruction taught in the context of this
Is that more effective than teaching them in a specific order?
Rather than teaching them as students are ready for these skills
Now early on when children are learning concepts of print in pre-k
They do need to know what a word is
Absolutely they need to be able to see that a combination of squiggles on the page
They need to be able to point to it
Know that's a word
They need to know that one group of squiggles is separate from another group of squiggles
They should also know that combinations of squiggles mean something
They need to know that sentences contain these things and they're called words
And each word is a separate thing
They need to know that words have sound parts called syllables
They don't really need to know what a syllable is but they should know that words have sound parts
For example the word silly has two sound parts, sill and e
Why is this important?
Well it gets them ready to put letters to sounds when writing and to see and hear word parts when using phonics to recognize words
And there is no instructional progression that must be
There's no research to support the proposition that teaching the instructional progression of syllables or any other of these things has a causal effect on anything other than the profits of the educational overlords
Now let's talk about the angel
These are some of the lies I've been asked to teach my students
And why does the state of Minnesota want me to lie to them?
For-profit entities and a radio journalist who wanted to make a name for herself and lots and lots of money
Have convinced lawmakers that the lie is real
And I will teach these things to my students, yes I will
But at the same time I have a moral obligation to my students to teach them why these lies are lies
I owe it to the taxpayers who pay my salary and the students my students will someday teach to teach them the correct thing
So I've been wrestling with an angel this semester
I have a moral dilemma
I want to help my students develop their full teaching potential so that they in turn are able to help their students develop their full literacy potential
And I want to get them ready to take the stupid teacher licensure test which has no predictive validity but I want them to pass that
Now I can do this and not lie at the same time
I can't lie but I can show them the lie
So I've been wrestling with an angel this semester
This has been the Reading Instruction Show, I am your host Dr. Andy Johnson