Setting the Record Straight on the “Great” Wisconsin Reading Debate

By Bill Henk – Having followed the ongoing debate in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the best way to teach reading over the past few weeks, I’m ready to weigh in.    Hopefully I’ll be neither too simplistic nor too technical in addressing some ultimately pretty heady stuff.

It started with a column arguing for a “science-based” approach to reading instruction on the op ed pages, and it’s been followed by letters to the editor on both sides.  The contention has centered on what Governor Walker’s third-grade “Read to Lead” initiative ought to conclude and recommend as far as beginning reading instruction.  The task force has an extremely important overall charge, and its work is rooted in some heavy-duty stipulations about children’s reading proficiency determining whether or not they are promoted to fourth grade.

The members of the task force, including the author of the op ed piece and one of the letter writers, are being asked to decide issues that could conceivably lead to legislation about how children must be taught to read and about how teachers must be trained to instruct them.  In other words, this is a VERY big deal for K-12 education in Wisconsin.

And for what it’s worth, my personal feeling is that these are NOT the types of matters that ought to be grounded in politics or legislated, and I’ll say why in the remainder of this post. 

Technology Promoting Reading

By Steve Ryan – Teaching children how to read is a fundamental principle of every school district, teacher, and classroom.  Children need to know HOW to read.  Undergraduate teacher education programs actively promote reading within their curriculum, just look at Marquette’s Hartman Center.

Reading is critical to the success of any one individual and as such needs to be taught, promoted, and encouraged within our students starting at a young age.

Technology can help to promote reading, especially as we become more accepting of how we define reading.  Our students have grown up in a digital world and as such are active in front of the screen of computers and other mobile devices.  Thus, they are constantly reading something.

Whether that be email, text messages, IMs, blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook posts, or anything else electronic, our students are still reading.  We need to recognize the fact that reading can be more than just the touch and feel of the paper held together in a book binding.  Encouraging our students to engage in a variety of formats through reading will only better prepare them for the life that lies ahead.

Our students are exposed to books in the traditional print format or electronically.  Most of our “digital natives” prefer the electronic format of a book more so than others.  I know I prefer an eBook because of the features built in.  The reader can manipulate the text far easier by making annotations, looking up unknown words in a dictionary, or adding special bookmarks to return for a later review.  The reading process becomes much more intuitive because all of the resources are built into the electronic book, as opposed to putting down the hard copy and seeking information elsewhere.

Teachers can encourage their students to read by telling them what they are reading and what they have read.  The connection between the teacher and the students can certainly promote an active reading environment.  In the more traditional sense of reading novels and other books, I’ve recommended Shelfari to teachers within my own district as a means to foster that connection.  Shelfari allows a user to input their own collection of what they have read, what they will read, and what books they are currently reading.  And, a user can add their own reviews of these books.  This website and online environment will only assist in fostering reading as personal recommendations become common as some students don’t always know what to read on a regular basis.

All in all, technology is making reading much easier and available because the access will not be an issue as books can be downloaded and accessed directly from the Internet.  The ubiquity of reading will continue to grow as more and more individuals have their own mobile, handheld devices and schools adopt new methods of acceptable reading to include blogs and newsfeeds.

Technology will only help our students have access to reading and promote it throughout the process.

Little Things Matter Most

By Anna Luberda — My main job in the first grade is to teach reading.  I have been working with different groups of first graders since September to get them on track with their reading levels.  The students who were doing well are still doing so and the ones who weren’t doing so well have been slowly improving.

It is nice to see the kids responding to my methods that include reading centers, word wallets, independent reading, special reading buddies, etc.

Every student– with the exception of one– seems to love reading time.  This particular student has been struggling since the first day of school and he is continually frustrated with reading.

This student started first grade at a very low reading level.  He performs well in other areas like math and in social contexts, but he just can’t seem to get the hang of reading at a first grade level.  Whenever I work with him, he becomes angry and basically shuts down.  As I was trained to teach high schoolers and deal with a different age group, I have had to adjust to coping with a temper tantrum that involves tears and name calling.  Now that the second quarter of school is almost over I have learned to control his outbursts but he is still unable to read at the proper level.

One of our reading centers involves matching rhyming word puzzle pieces and then writing a sentence using both words.  Almost all of the other students are able to complete this task.  My struggling reader, however, has never been able to form a complete sentence on his own–until last Monday.

It started as a day like any other.  We sat down at our reading center and set out to match some words.  When I asked this student, once again, if he could make a sentence with the words “ride” and “side” I expected a breakdown.  But then, as the heavens opened up and shined down on my little table, the words left his mouth. “I ride on the side of the road.”  It was like a chorus of Handel’s Messiah began to play as I enthusiastically congratulated him on his feat.

I never thought I would get so excited over a kid making an eight-word sentence.  I have been working with this student for four months now, and this was the first time he had shown any sign of progress.  Not only was I exceedingly proud of him, he was proud of himself.  Since then he has been able to make more and more sentences and has even been able to write them without spelling errors.

Seeing the improvement in these kids is one of my favorite parts of teaching.  I absolutely love how excited they get when they learn something new or master a challenge.  First grade is a lot different than ninth grade– it involves more runny noses and tears for sure.  Just as I feel overwhelmed by the everyday annoyances of being around 6 year-olds all day, some little thing like this reminds me just how much I love teaching and experiencing something completely new.

Celebrating Lauren Leslie: Lots More Than A Local Literacy Legend

By Bill Henk — My valued friend and colleague, Dr. Lauren Leslie, served Marquette University, the Milwaukee educational community, and the children of the region with distinction for more than 30 years.  Somehow Dr. Leslie managed to integrate her work as a teacher, mentor, researcher, consultant, and service provider in extraordinary ways that benefited a wealth of others including me.

And so, it’s my honor to pay tribute to her here and now as she enjoys the well-earned fruits of retirement.

Teacher and Scholar

As an instructor, Lauren Leslie prepared countless numbers of classroom teachers and reading specialists over the years.  Her guidance resulted in an array of outstanding educators who have, in turn, deeply touched the lives of the children they teach.  She always set extremely high standards, and her pre-service and in-service teachers learned an incredible amount as a result.  Although her students respected her in the classroom, they appreciated her even more when on the job. That’s where they fully grasped how well she had prepared them for the vital work they do.

What I Did This Summer: Discovering Why I’m Here

By Megan Morman — After being nearly convinced that I would have to spend the summer completely uselessly due to a lack of job opportunities, I saw the email from Dean Henk that informed Marquette’s College of Education students about a summer tutoring opportunity for the Milwaukee Summer Reading Project.

I was first drawn to the fact that it was a reading program, which, since I’m an English major, is my favorite subject to teach. Secondly, the entire program was created “in response to the recent reports of reading failure in Milwaukee Public School.”

I later learned that, more specifically, Wisconsin’s black fourth graders had the worst reading scores this year than black students anywhere else in the country. Dr. Fuller, Dr. Ellis, and others put together this program quickly, but with a lot of heart. Dr. Fuller expressed his outrage to all the summer employees concerning not only the reading scores, but even more how unconcerned others seemed.

The leaders of the program, the student support staff, and the donors represented the Milwaukee community coming together to show that we care about these students and are committed to doing what we can to address this problem – now. The student support staff, or literacy tutors, came from all different backgrounds, ages, and fields of study ranging from high school students to education students to nursing students. I was proud to be a part of such a diverse and hard-working team, one that was so committed to the children in MPS.

What’s the Point? When Hypertext Goes Horribly Lame

By Bill Henk — For what it’s worth, I spend far too much time anguishing over posts, all with the goal of keeping readers engaged with the text.  Any tactic in my arsenal that manages to discourage visitors from “clicking away” stands an excellent chance of popping up in what I write.

That’s because I always have in mind those  unsavory, mouse-happy readers with gnat-sized attention spans when I blog.  It becomes a personal challenge to maintain their  interest by sealing off every imaginable escape route.

“Never give readers a reason to make a hasty, rash, and impulsive exit, “ I always say.

That’s why the “TEXT-ONLY” article below, which appeared in a recent on-line issue of “The Onion” qualified as blog material here.  It fit the point of this post perfectly — it held my attention to the very end without using any of the hypertext features it mocked.   And from an educational standpoint, it highlights the high expectations readers have for on-line material and how it breeds dependencies.

So here’s the point:  without the bells and whistles, and the spoiling these features do of readers, both interest and comprehension will be at risk.

How Literate is Milwaukee Anyway?

By Bill Henk — If you’ve ever wondered how Milwaukee stacks up in literacy compared to other major U. S. cities, I’ve got just the source of information for you.

Every year since 2005, America’s Most Literate Cities has ranked the 75 metropolitan areas whose population exceeds 250,000 using six key indicators of literacy.  These studies have been done at Central Connecticut State University by its President, John W. Miller.

As Dr. Miller indicates, he’s attempted to “capture one critical index of our nation’s social health—the literacy of its major cities.”   He suggests that this set of factors measures people’s use of their literacy, and therefore, presents a large-scale portrait of our nation’s cultural vitality.  Specifically, he says,

From this data we can better perceive the extent and quality of the long-term literacy essential to individual economic success, civic participation, and the quality of life in a community and a nation.”

Be VERY Careful What You Ask For — Especially If Assembly’s Required

By Bill Henk —  Honestly by now you’d think I’d have learned my lesson.  But no, not me.    Instead, every Christmas, birthday, and other gift-giving occasion I make the same mistake.

What is it?  Simple.  I ask for stuff without considering that it probably needs to be assembled, may require an actual brain to operate, or both.

This past year’s major mistake – a Bowflex.

Yep, my wife decided to call my ridiculous bluff about wanting to become a lean, mean fightin’ machine.  Talk about stunned.  I never thought she’d actually stoop so low as to buy one knowing the deep emotional toll it would take on me.

Don’t get me wrong; I was blown away by the generosity of the gift.  And under different circumstances I would be incredibly appreciative.  But, before you conclude I’m an ingrate, you need to know that it’s not just the prospect of exercising that bothered me.

There was something much more terrifying:  once the huge box full of Bowflex parts and hardware became mine, I’d be expected to put this marvel of applied engineering together.

In other words, the pressure to now get in shape took a backseat to a new emotion — the fear of piecing together a  mechanical puzzle of immense complexity.  That task might be fine for a normal human being, but not for me.