I don't think I quite appreciated the gravity of the of the economic incentives behind teachers’ manuals, consumable workbooks, end-of-unit-tests and comprehension worksheets, a kind of teacher support commodification, which seemed to have significant leverage against whole language reading.
Embedding phonics instruction into the whole language approach is also not something I often encounter on Substack and elsewhere, with the usual debate appearing very polarised (and often strongly against language reading). Do you see the 'science of reading' movement adopting a more balanced and integrated approach in the future, or do you think this debate will remain murky? I'd be curious to hear your view.
Many thanks for your work on this and I'd be very interested to read the rest of your book.
The Science of Reading is tied to selling products and services. Over $100 million is spend just in Minnesota on training and curriculum which will have no impact.
I'm new here, and I want to thank you for validating my experiences as an elementary classroom teacher and eventual reading specialist. I too started my university experience in 1980 with some of the groundbreakers in whole language--Jerry Harste and Carolyn Burke at Indiana University. Dr. Burke was responsible for the Reading Methods courses for the undergraduates in elementary ed. I was inspired by her to take more reading classes for my minor in reading. We were reading Frank Smith's 'Understanding Reading' and looking at multiple sign systems that Jerry Harste had started to incorporate in an instructional model that closely resembles your integrative model. Burke looked at what she termed "The Linguistic Data Pool" wherein all of the strands of language use reinforce all the other strands. The model was “open” and included social pragmatic cues in addition to grapho-phonics, syntax, and the semantic core that drives everything else.
After a total of 35 years teaching in mainly urban settings, I eventually retired as a reading specialist in 2020 working in a suburb in the Washington DC Metro area (28 years). We had a diverse community of refugees and immigrants comprised of many languages and countries of origin. Our ESL population was close to 90%. When I started in this school district it was 1992 and new ideas about how to teach reading and writing were starting to flourish. We had a solid group of teachers who had learned how to "use all of the tools in the toolbox" in order to provide a curriculum that would meet kids where they were and move them along. We were doing balanced literacy, process writing, and content area reading that took advantage of background knowledge and schema theory tying it all together. We even had an established Reading Recovery Training program.
Then after I left in 2020, things started to change with the Science of Reading taking over the reading curriculum. Guided reading and Fountas and Pinnell leveled books were thrown out and a process approach to writing was supplanted with formulaic tasks akin to copying texts from the board. Common Core materials were used in the primary grades that were above the average student’s listening comprehension. As a reading specialist we were used to taking running records and using oral reading inventories to record miscues and monitor comprehension. This was replaced by the DIBELS test which left people short changed when it came to analyzing miscues and evaluating comprehension with open ended retellings.
Thank you for listening. Your emails are a breath of fresh air and I hope more people start to realize what we gave up for SoR.
Thank you for the work you are doing. Thank you for speaking out. After tiring of the fight in Ohio k-12 and teacher education I work on the backend now helping community college students who were failed by all of the bad decisions in literacy. I wish I had the energy to stay and fight like you did. Thank you!
Hi Brenda. I appreciate the kind words. I have retired from University life - and glad to be away from it. In the last years, I was embarrassed to be a part of it.
I contacted you around 2019. I had given up tenure to go to a university closer to home to improve my commute. The administrator with no experience or education in literacy was pushing LET'RS. He had a partner from the Ohio Department of Education who did all the trainings. I was still so naive but figured they were either having an affair or getting rich off of LETRS (thinking sex, power, or money were the biggest motivators for unethical folks). It was the latter. They were forcing the training they provided on every teacher in the area. I left for a different university and, on day one, the trainer from ODE turned up there too! She remembered that I had questioned the science. I was called into the dean's office within days and asked, "Will you teach your students SoR?" I tried to keep my job and be honest by replying, "I will teach my future teachers what they need to help children become lifelong readers." I received my pink slip a few days later. This is very personal to me. These people getting rich off of literacy, were keeping me from being able to provide for my children, AND they were keeping children from learning and loving reading. Thankfully, I have found a place to teach reading well-the only thing I ever want to do professionally. My fight got me (mostly) silenced so I can provide for my children. We need people like you to keep talking. Once my daughters have launched, I will rejoin the fight.
I will continue to keep speaking until nobody listens to me. Your support is helpful. Get others to subscribe to this substack. It's free.
If you’re looking for accessible, research-based information that slices through the endless loads of overly worded baloney, I would encourage you to subscribe to my free Substack, The Reading Instruction Show.
The SoR silences those who would speak out. And they see no problem with this practice. That's the scary part. I don't recall, in the 90s and 00s, anybody being fired because they took a skills-first perspective.
I don't think I quite appreciated the gravity of the of the economic incentives behind teachers’ manuals, consumable workbooks, end-of-unit-tests and comprehension worksheets, a kind of teacher support commodification, which seemed to have significant leverage against whole language reading.
Embedding phonics instruction into the whole language approach is also not something I often encounter on Substack and elsewhere, with the usual debate appearing very polarised (and often strongly against language reading). Do you see the 'science of reading' movement adopting a more balanced and integrated approach in the future, or do you think this debate will remain murky? I'd be curious to hear your view.
Many thanks for your work on this and I'd be very interested to read the rest of your book.
The Science of Reading is tied to selling products and services. Over $100 million is spend just in Minnesota on training and curriculum which will have no impact.
I'm new here, and I want to thank you for validating my experiences as an elementary classroom teacher and eventual reading specialist. I too started my university experience in 1980 with some of the groundbreakers in whole language--Jerry Harste and Carolyn Burke at Indiana University. Dr. Burke was responsible for the Reading Methods courses for the undergraduates in elementary ed. I was inspired by her to take more reading classes for my minor in reading. We were reading Frank Smith's 'Understanding Reading' and looking at multiple sign systems that Jerry Harste had started to incorporate in an instructional model that closely resembles your integrative model. Burke looked at what she termed "The Linguistic Data Pool" wherein all of the strands of language use reinforce all the other strands. The model was “open” and included social pragmatic cues in addition to grapho-phonics, syntax, and the semantic core that drives everything else.
After a total of 35 years teaching in mainly urban settings, I eventually retired as a reading specialist in 2020 working in a suburb in the Washington DC Metro area (28 years). We had a diverse community of refugees and immigrants comprised of many languages and countries of origin. Our ESL population was close to 90%. When I started in this school district it was 1992 and new ideas about how to teach reading and writing were starting to flourish. We had a solid group of teachers who had learned how to "use all of the tools in the toolbox" in order to provide a curriculum that would meet kids where they were and move them along. We were doing balanced literacy, process writing, and content area reading that took advantage of background knowledge and schema theory tying it all together. We even had an established Reading Recovery Training program.
Then after I left in 2020, things started to change with the Science of Reading taking over the reading curriculum. Guided reading and Fountas and Pinnell leveled books were thrown out and a process approach to writing was supplanted with formulaic tasks akin to copying texts from the board. Common Core materials were used in the primary grades that were above the average student’s listening comprehension. As a reading specialist we were used to taking running records and using oral reading inventories to record miscues and monitor comprehension. This was replaced by the DIBELS test which left people short changed when it came to analyzing miscues and evaluating comprehension with open ended retellings.
Thank you for listening. Your emails are a breath of fresh air and I hope more people start to realize what we gave up for SoR.
"It was always about money, power, and control."
Thank you for the work you are doing. Thank you for speaking out. After tiring of the fight in Ohio k-12 and teacher education I work on the backend now helping community college students who were failed by all of the bad decisions in literacy. I wish I had the energy to stay and fight like you did. Thank you!
Hi Brenda. I appreciate the kind words. I have retired from University life - and glad to be away from it. In the last years, I was embarrassed to be a part of it.
I contacted you around 2019. I had given up tenure to go to a university closer to home to improve my commute. The administrator with no experience or education in literacy was pushing LET'RS. He had a partner from the Ohio Department of Education who did all the trainings. I was still so naive but figured they were either having an affair or getting rich off of LETRS (thinking sex, power, or money were the biggest motivators for unethical folks). It was the latter. They were forcing the training they provided on every teacher in the area. I left for a different university and, on day one, the trainer from ODE turned up there too! She remembered that I had questioned the science. I was called into the dean's office within days and asked, "Will you teach your students SoR?" I tried to keep my job and be honest by replying, "I will teach my future teachers what they need to help children become lifelong readers." I received my pink slip a few days later. This is very personal to me. These people getting rich off of literacy, were keeping me from being able to provide for my children, AND they were keeping children from learning and loving reading. Thankfully, I have found a place to teach reading well-the only thing I ever want to do professionally. My fight got me (mostly) silenced so I can provide for my children. We need people like you to keep talking. Once my daughters have launched, I will rejoin the fight.
I will continue to keep speaking until nobody listens to me. Your support is helpful. Get others to subscribe to this substack. It's free.
If you’re looking for accessible, research-based information that slices through the endless loads of overly worded baloney, I would encourage you to subscribe to my free Substack, The Reading Instruction Show.
Substack: The Reading Instruction Show
https://thereadinginstructionshow.substack.com/
The SoR silences those who would speak out. And they see no problem with this practice. That's the scary part. I don't recall, in the 90s and 00s, anybody being fired because they took a skills-first perspective.