Educators have no reason to not integrate literacy into their curriculum with the access to resources we have today in the internet. We focus more on test taking skills and neglect the simple fact of knowing how to read and comprehend a paragraph. Too much emphasis is taught on how to eliminate wrong answers and not enough attention is paid to keeping kids reading at their grade level. The best example I can think of is one student in my student-teaching placement. She's an outgoing, intelligent girl, but she reads on a third grade level... she's in the seventh grade. Her writing samples are atrocious. She can hardly write a sentence, but she's been passed on all the way until now and she's finally biting off more than she can chew. I was trying to think of who should be to blame; should it be the parents, educators, administrators, or the system itself? I think it is a combination of all of the above. For this much neglect to a child's literacy to occur, it bothers me. She's finally getting help, but I wonder if it's too late. She's going to fail seventh grade and if her reading level doesn't improve quickly, she could fail again. She could potentially be driving to middle school in a couple of years. We as educators must pick up the slack of our predecessors. It starts by integrating literacy into our classrooms. I can deal with students not knowing who Mao Zedong is or what were some of the acts brought about from the New Deal, but I will not tolerate my students not being able to read and write basic sentences. (By the way, I felt like there were a lot of metaphors and anecdotes in this chapter)
Monday, February 28, 2011
Readicide, Chapter 2
In this chapter, I could definitely relate to the teacher's story about Al-Queda. I just taught a lesson last week over the Iraqi War and my students couldn't tell the difference between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. This blew my mind. The lack of background knowledge is crippling to Social Studies. It's kind of like in math. If you can't add single digit numbers, how can you be expected to multiply anything? This goes along with the author's Phelps story. We expect students to be able to swim the English Channel when they've never even been in a bathtub. If they happen to make it across great, but when they don't, we try to point to everything but the elephant in the room: the lack of reading in schools.
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Josh,
ReplyDeleteThe analogies you use are fabulous! This really helps relate what you're talking about to the real world, whether it's teaching your students about the Iraqi War or teaching us through your blog.
The admonition that we, as educators, have no reason to not be utilizing all the resources we have on the internet to integrate literacy into our content area lessons is so true. Through this class, I have gained so many more resources and even more ways to find resources on my own. It certainly is our duty to be using these to help our students develop their thinking, reading, and writing skills. Your student's story brings to mind some concerns I have with the special education students on my team. They receive so much extra assistance, and it has gotten to the point that many of them don't even try to do their work in any academic class because they know their inclusion teacher will help them put all the pieces together and that they will be given so many extra chances and opportunities so they won't fail. Even some other students have begun to rely on the extra help provided by our inclusion teacher, so their work ethic is slacking. Today, we went over a unit test and, just like you mentioned, emphasis was repeatedly placed on eliminating wrong answers and test-taking tricks. Reading for comprehension or learning for understanding seem to have been tossed out the window!
This is a harsh but truthful reality that is plaguing a majority of students. There are students that do not know who the Vice President of the United States is and I wish I was kidding about saying this. The problem is that the public education system is so concerned with test taking they are forgetting what they are testing over. Students read because they have to and could careless what they absorb from doing it. Education has taken this the test shows learning and we are getting lost on why we are even teaching. I agree with the analogies and the swimmer example is such a great analogy in chapter two. We want all these passing test scores and AYP to be met and graduation test scores to be off the charts but yet we fail to teach anything the students see on the test much less concerned if they are understanding the material. Test scores and requirements is what our students are receiving not an education. I think the irony of it all is that we are in a economic crunch and we constantly preach the test, we want higher reading scores, higher graduation rates, and lower drop out statistics but the first thing that is cut from the budget is education figure that one out.
ReplyDeleteYou really are getting deeper into the deleterious effects of testing. Students are "recognizing" the right answers and not thinking and constructing meaning and formulating opinions and ideas.
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