NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?

[Bekah]

Thank you!   Many parents (as well as whole school districts these days)  just want quantifiable "results."   

Visualization is so lost in some kids.  They have no idea.  To try to remedy this I would tell stories without any text - or read to them from a storybook I had without pictures - and "teach" them to see it in their minds.  It's a whole 'nother skill as is feeling the language,  the rhythms and structures. 

Bekah -  (who did love it)

On Apr 7, 2013, at 10:41 PM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Many thanks for the impassioned précis. I ask because I've tutored a number of kids (8-15yo's) who all seemed to respond to reading in the same way. They couldn't handle extended prose. Give 'em something short: fine. But a book, sometimes even an essay, and it was striking; to me it seemed that they saw a "storybook" as a thing entirely unrelated to a longer piece of writing. These kids all came from disadvantaged backgrounds, or had parents who viewed education as something they paid for; in the latter case a service at best, usually a commodity (I was once fired when I'd got a child passing). Eventually, during a group session, I realized the common link: "just sound it out", one said to another (and testily, as you might imagine). And, that's what they were all doing. For a whole novel. 
> 
> The sheer psychic strain of breaking down everything into these little phonemic units meant that reading became this Sisyphean clusterfuck. For them, there was no meaning in any structure of order higher than, usually, a paragraph. A few of them liked to dance, or to draw, or to paint, or to play rugby. I told them that writing, and reading, were really not that different. One picks movements, and lines and colours and feints according to desire, according to what it is one wants to convey; they weren't ascribing intensionality, or even occasionally intentionality to what was written. I told them that when an author writes, she picks her words; I told them to imagine a city, with each word a turn and the journey a novel. There are many ways to get to the country, but some may pass the tip, while others the zoo, and a good author always takes you past the zoo. Layers of meaning build at each turn, but of course it matters how you take the turn, too.
> 
> To them, words conveyed actions - and those actions carried punitive weight. I told them that written words were just pictures to be seen, and to read was to react, and to feel the feels attached to those words was, ultimately, the point. I set them tasks: I would speak, and have them "see" the text in their minds; they kept diaries, journals of collected impressions due to text. They all improved, but the parents weren't happy. I don't really know why. People don't like presenting children with complexity, maybe.
> 
> The debate is obviously more nuanced, and I'm no pedagogue, but some of what is missing is, exactly, love. Love for the subject, and an attachment to it and its menagerie. This is a big thing in mathematics education. People have functionalised and proceduralised mathematics into mere arithmetic symbol manipulation, and nobody can see its beauty. Intuition, the pre-analytic feeling that, "Hey, something's up!", isn't impossible to teach, it's necessary. Physicists ask one another other how they feel about theorems, propositions; they rely on the circumstantial. The papers which result are stripped of such, but the inducted imbue the husk with idiosyncrasy. The adventitious is not the enemy of the practical.
> 
> Anyway, I'll shut up now,
> Prashant
>  
> 
> 
> On 8 April 2013 06:15, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I totally loved teaching for over 25 years in a lower socio-economic school which was probably 80% Spanish speaking.  I retired due mostly to health - but I was eligible for several years prior to leaving.  I just didn't want to go.
> 
> When I started,  Whole Language was the only method unless the State exempted your school.  Some teachers didn't have a clue how to go about it and wanted the script provided with the old phonics based programs (and the good ones added good literature and context clues,  etc.) .   The good Whole Language teachers added the phonics as necessary.   We'd just make them read and read and read and read and read.  (Or we'd read and read and read and read and read to them. And we'd talk about reading.
> 
> Whole language is better only if the teacher is capable of seeing the learning process and putting a program together.   I totally agree that a lot of what we have now is a mishmash and some teachers have become a bit (!) confused.  Meanwhile,  everyone just teaches to the standardized high-stakes test as efficiently as possible.
> 
> The State wants speed.  They want Kindergartners reading by Christmas (yes) and writing paragraphs by March (yes) - and with proper minimal punctuation by May (yes).      Back when I went to school (1950s)  you learned the letter sounds in the first half of 1st grade and started using them in words to read in the second half.  It went fast when the kids were mature enough.  Now they want that pushed back a full year.   Why?  Because tests show that the kids in Palo Alto can do it.   (The parents of these kids are doctors and engineers,  etc.)   Kids from Palo Alto are coming from literate homes where education is pushed and  proficient English is used -  many of those kids come to Kindergarten knowing how to read.
> 
> One way Charter and private schools show better test results is by filtering out the low-performing kids - even in Kindergarten.  This is changing for the Charters.
> 
> Kids in my part of California came to school barely knowing the names of the colors in their native tongue (Spanish).   Some of these kids are quite smart - they pick it up and fly when someone teaches them.  But they aren't ready like the PA kids are ready.  (And some of the Spanish speaking parents are lucky to have had 2nd grade educations in Mexico.)  Yet we were/are expected to teach our kids to the same levels as the PA kids.   That is just too, too, too fast -  but we did it with most - while the PA teachers probably had to come up with meaningful enrichment activities to satisfy very demanding parents.   (not fun)
> 
> Bekah
> venting by now - and thank you for your patience -
> 
> On Apr 7, 2013, at 10:18 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Well, a pedagogoue can't be effective if she does not love the dynamic she nurtures, that is, the democratic experiences she leads students to discover by giving them freedom and helping them to develop self control and find love in the experiences they create, experiences that have a positive and lasting impact on susequent experiences.  This, of course, is what was once called progressive education, and it is by design, slow and deliberate. Love is essential though not sufficient. Freedom is far more important, and the exercise of freedom, of democratic learning, is slow, but indispensible. Knowing that learners resond positively to freedom, and to democratic instruction, the corporate lobby has jumped on the use of technology to give students choices, freedom, and a more level playing field. But imbedded in the machines are ideologies that make most students into slaves.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 12:49 PM, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
> > Might find some space for love in there, as well, if only as a side-effect...
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Sun, Apr 7, 2013 12:45 pm
> > Subject: Re: NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?
> >
> > Well said. It takes time. And speed is not a human virtue. We are slow learners. We are slow, period. The smartest students are not not quick studies. But we want everything done at light speed. Smart is a Smartboard, a Smartphone, a Smart-gadget. We test students by the clock. How else to weed out the slow ones, right? Sure it takes time. So does excellent sex.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > Studies have shown that about 70% of the common English words are phonetically regular.  This means that 30% are not.   Phonics is nice for "sounding out" new words and for spelling,  but its use is very limited when it comes to deriving meaning.  Phonics also falls short of helping with those 30% of words -
> > (These are words like:  eight,  read (past tense),  could,  said,  climb,  you, light, tough, school, etc. and homonyms (foul/fowl,  to/too/two,)  more and more as you go up the grades.)
> >
> > Eventually the real point of both methods is to have thousands of words memorized for just plain old sight reading with comprehension.  The problem is how to get there.
> >
> > What happened was that in the 1970s and '80s researchers found that phonics was not enough,  so the swing to whole language was too far (it started at the university teacher-training level).  Then more research (done by publishing companies mostly) found that  whole language was not enough (and older teachers and parents agreed).    The swing back was almost reactionary (and political and based on $$ in text book publishing) and imo,  went too far.  Taken to their extremes and alone,  neither one is preferable - imo.
> >
> > I think phonics is a good start,  but not enough - elements of whole language are also needed for getting those 30% of words which are not phonetically regular as well as for learning to get meaning from the text.    (I could also say that whole language is a good start but elements of phonics are also needed for those who struggle with "new words"  - "unmemorized"  words.)
> >
> > Whole language tends to work best for kids who are pretty bright and have a good basis in oral language skills.  These kids can figure out quite a lot and make sense of decoding skills almost on their own (my son did).    Kids with a very good memory can memorize those new words very quickly (and that's the end point),   but kids who don't have such a good memory have to "sound it out" or (figure the context) over and over.   Kids who aren't quite so cognitive have a very hard time figuring out why every time they "read" (repeating and following 'memorized' text) the word "rat" it starts with an "r."
> >
> >  Also,  the kids who don't have a solid basis in oral English have a hard time with whole language because they're not so skilled at using context to help determine what the unknown word is.   ("Read that again - does that make sense?")
> >
> > Phonics is an incredible tool, but it doesn't make meaning from the text and the early textbook stories can be seriously stupid in terms of comprehension.  Otoh,  whole language is an incredible tool but it can be overwhelming for a learner without a LOT of reading readiness skills (being read to,  memorized texts,  solid language base, etc.)
> >
> > A good teacher will use the best of each method and try to use a bit of each as appropriate.  This is feasible using small group instruction - direct instruction - but new methods want whole group instruction to get more teaching time in for all the kids.    The serious whole language people liked indirect (environmental) instruction  -  so that's also a problem.   Whole language done well takes a LOT of time - it's better - imo - overall  - in the long run - if it has phonics included (why ignore that invaluable tool?)   -  but it takes time!
> >
> > Hope that helps -  (?)  We spent years and years in debate about it.  The best reading programs (imo)  now use both,  but the focus tends to be on phonics these days again.
> >
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
> >
> > On Apr 7, 2013, at 5:55 AM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Interested in your answer. Is it just that the metrics used to measure "accountability", "progress", etc. are coarse averages? I mean, for all your failing schools you're still the intellectual and scientific centre of the world, so you know, something doesn't suck.
> > >
> > > Also, what do you think of teaching via the "Phonics" method? Had a debate re this today.
> > >
> > > P.
> > >
> > >
> > > On 7 April 2013 21:38, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > > Why are US schools behind much of the world?
> > >
> > > This is way more complicated than tax-slashers or "accountability experts"  or "higher standards"  folks want to think about.
> > >
> > > Bekah
> > >
> > > On Apr 7, 2013, at 1:17 AM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > What question about your field do you dread being asked? Maybe it's a sore point: your field should have an answer (people think you do) but there isn't one yet. Perhaps it's simple to pose but hard to answer. Or it's a question that belies a deep misunderstanding: the best answer is to question the question.
> > > >
> > > > http://www.edge.org/conversation/whats-the-question-about-your-field-that-you-dread-being-asked
> > > >
> > > > Various responses there; any p-listers willing to chime in?
> > > >
> > > > Prashant
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
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