With regard to your use of AI (and also about the use of feedback as it pertains to teaching writing) I think you might have a few things to learn by checking out John Warner, author of Why They Can't Write. For one, he says, "Outsourcing writing to something that cannot think or feel, that has no experience of the world, that has no memory (in the human sense) is a willing abandonment of our own humanity."
With regard to "evidence based," I think you might have something to learn from Andrew Johnson author of Designing Meaning-Based Interventions for Struggling Readers. He has a modest proposal that we require students to clip clothespins to their ears as they're reading. He says he did research on it.
I don't see why you don't see that the phrase "below-level students" is problematic. As Metallica has said, "Label me, I'll label you. And I dub thee 'unforgiven.'"
I tend to agree with your stance on tough love. One of the first times I noticed that a man actually cared about me as a person was Marine Corps boot camp.
But your teacher blame and shame game has got to go. There's nothing particularly magical about reading by third grade; every kid matures at their own rate. And Margaret Merga's research suggests that an overemphasis on reading for learning and testing is playing a role in the divorce between reading and enjoyment. It's also very right-wing of you to complain about the unions.
Plus, the fact that you had a machine write your poem for you is a sort of dereliction. As Maria Popova says, "An AI may never be able to write a great poem — a truly original poem — because a poem is made not of language but of experience, and the defining aspect of human experience is the constant collision between our wishes and reality, the sharp violation of our expectations, the demolition of our plans."
We need to truly see the humans in front of us, not be so focused on their deficits that we can't see who they are and who they can become. That is real leadership; that is real teaching.
"We need to truly see the humans in front of us, not be so focused on their deficits that we can't see who they are and who they can become."
Why do you think I don’t see my students? I see their smiles, their joy, their pride at learning to read. "You changed my life; you made me become a reader," declared one of my second graders in the spring. My students and I see each other every day. I acknowledge (and celebrate) their assets and create lesson plans to address their deficits. This is an objective reality, not a putdown. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
I didn't say that. But I shouldn't have to tell you that labels interfere with us seeing our students. Especially when your first comeback is "it's like low iron," and you didn't even see that it was a subjective label instead.
"you didn't even see that it was a subjective label instead."
This goes to the heart of our disagreement: I believe we can objectively determine whether a student is below grade level. If I have a second grader who is only able to read cvc words, there is nothing subjective about making a determination that this child should come to my intervention session. I agree that there is certainly a "range" of ability that we can take into consideration, but by the end of first grade, a typically progressing student is able to decode more than just words with short vowels. If I ignore this objective fact (like low iron), then I am doing far worse than labeling a child--I am denying that child the support that they need.
The truth is that children develop at their own pace, and there is no objective measure of "grade level." Plus, when we put all this pressure on kids to read so early, why do we wonder that they don't want to read when they're older? I have dealt with so many traumatized teens because of stuff like this. I mean, I'm not negating your professional judgment, but you can't deny that it's a very educated, but still subjective judgment. And that should be okay; your judgement of your students should be what matters most. Just be careful who you put a label on and why.
And I'm not saying I'm perfect; I have my own issues with labels.
"The truth is that children develop at their own pace, and there is no objective measure of 'grade level'."
And what factors/measures do you use to determine that a child isn't in fact progressing and needs additional support? When and how do you make that determination?
The same as you, mainly formative and informal assessments; for instance, you said "How do we teach children to read if we can't listen to them read to us?"
But you seem to be confusing your professional opinions with objective measures, and then assigning labels based on them.
First, thank you for continuing to engage. I won't respond to the old ground you cover that we have already disagreed about in past blogs, but I do want to respond briefly to this:
"I don't see why you see that the phrase "below-level students" is problematic."
The phrase is not problematic because the condition is real--just like the phrase iron-deficient isn't problematic. Both situations alert me to do something to help the student/patient. When my second grade parent said to me in the spring--"That boy has got to learn to read!"--she wasn't applying labels and she certainly did not have any access to any research in order to make that proclamation the way I do. She is simply a single parent doing her best to give her children what they need, and she 'gets it' the way most parents get it: being able to decode and comprehend what you read is a pretty big deal. And the reason why the third grade matters is because most teachers don't have the time or the training to address gaps in foundational skills in the upper grades. (See The Decoding Threshold https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED586109.pdf).
Thanks again for sharing your honest opinions. You've convinced me to abandon my plans to become a poet!
Re: "You've convinced me to abandon my plans to become a poet!"
That stings. I'm sure you have plenty of real human suffering and lots of language within you that can be fodder for good poetry. I just hoped to convince you not to use machines to do your writing and thinking for you.
Re: "just like the phrase iron-deficient isn't problematic"
No. The phrase "below-level" carries a lot of baggage about standardized testing; it also conveys a falsehood about what "grade level" entails. For instance, as far as I know, there is no consensus on what "grade level" means. Plus, it's deficit thinking.
You appear not to have responded to “And the reason why the third grade matters is because most teachers don't have the time or the training to address gaps in foundational skills in the upper grades.” For context, I’m the UC Davis lecturer referenced in the essay—and while I don’t have any experience teaching students to read, I have way more experience than I would like trying to teach calculus to students who lack basic algebra skills. With an overstuffed syllabus of calculus topics to cover in 10 weeks and class sizes that frequently exceed 300 (only a small fraction of whom can get individual attention in office hours), it’s next to impossible. I try very hard to make the math I teach fun and engaging, but even I don’t try to gaslight students into thinking that they’re learning algebra for enjoyment. They’re learning it because it’s essentially impossible to proceed in a STEM major without it. And I believe that this is the point for reading as well—it’s a fundamental skill without which the rest of their education simply cannot proceed (whether they enjoy what they read or not). And yes, this does involve ‘deficit thinking’—because the alternative is the heartbreaking situation of students who come into my calculus class with no algebra skills but also the delusion that they will be graduating with a STEM degree in just four years.
Thanks for bringing that up. I missed it, and it's part of why I try to use paragraphing in my comments to separate my ideas.
That seems like a systemic problem, not a problem with students. Wouldn't you agree that we need to meet students where they are, no matter what grade they're in?
Also, would you say it's particularly hard to teach college students basic algebra skills? (if you actually had the time and resources to do that) Or somewhat related, would you say that there's a causal factor in third grade math test scores predicting later life outcomes?
Because that's what's being done with reading: students are being retained in third grade based on shoddy correlations. And we already know the harmful effects grade retention has on students.
Yes, I have no qualifications to comment on what happens at the third grade level. What I can say is that, while I agree that we should try to meet students where they are, there comes a point of no return where students just find that doors are closed to them. We have a small army of tutors and specialists who do heroic work with students with insufficient algebra skills, but they can’t do this until they have been able to communicate to the student that their skills are insufficient—many insist that they can get through calculus just fine by “working harder”, with catastrophic results. The best case scenario is that they graduate with their preferred degree a few quarters behind schedule, but many have to change to a non-STEM major or fail to graduate altogether. So no, I don’t have any particular justification for why third grade is the absolute cutoff point—but if you don’t have urgency at some point, then you get students who will miss out entirely on the benefits of their education.
Have you ever thought maybe that, like Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club, the kids haven't changed, and that maybe you and/or the system has? I mean, since we know that stress interferes with learning, maybe this "sense of urgency," at any stage, is counterproductive.
And with regard to a "sense of urgency," who are you saying doesn't have a sense of urgency? The kids? Elementary school teachers, people who attempt to do more than is humanly possible for less pay than a similarly educated person would get elsewhere? You do realize that our system of education has always suffered from insufficient and inequitable funding and resourcing; right? Think about all the adjunct professors fighting the good fight and getting little pay and few benefits for it. And since about the 1850s, when women became a majority in the teaching profession, it's also suffered from micromanagement and a lack of respect.
Plus, I'd like to hear more about this "point of no return," especially since I got my college degrees in my 40s, with the GI Bill.
Before that, I taught adults to do paralegal work at the Naval Justice School, Newport. Teaching adults is vastly different from teaching children, especially young children. For instance, we know that academic training in kindergarten has no long-term benefit, but we keep doing it anyway. Play-based kindergarten is much more developmentally appropriate. We even try to insist that kids read in kindergarten. For some kids this is fine; they're more-or-less developmentally ready for it. For quite a few of them, they're not ready, but they get a label and a huge dose of "urgency" anyway.
Really disappointed in your anti-union stance here. I agree 100% that evidence based practice should be mandatory, and that as a profession teachers NEED to follow this evidence in their lesson planning. I agree we need to shine a light on teacher ed programs that fail over and over to properly train their teachers, and districts who refuse to offer meaningful PD, or even a shred of a useful resource to teach with. They are to blame for the union’s insistence on teacher autonomy, I believe. Unions, by definition, are created to protect their workers. When you have teachers working in violent, hopeless, untenable situations with zero support from lacklustre administrators, the union needs to protect its workers. I see a direct line that needs to be drawn between teacher working conditions and their willingness to change and adopt evidence-based instructional practice. There’s way too many people banging on about teachers needing to “remember their why” and completely neglecting the fact that teachers are getting punched in the face by students, being shoved into overcrowded classrooms without any materials or books, and so on. When shifts need to happen, which, in this case we 100% know they do, we have to create the conditions within which it is possible to effect the change. Currently in public education in many jurisdictions, that just isn’t the case, and so change is spotty and happens inconsistently as some teachers have the capacity and others do not, based on their working conditions. Make no mistake, I agree we need to ensure students are being taught in ways that are proved to bring success, but I don’t agree with your premise that unions are to blame. Collaboration with unions can be achieved if reasonable supports that are in compliance with the collective agreement and teacher contracts, and working conditions are addressed.
For some reason your complete comment did not come through initially. Thanks for providing so many important details, areas of concern that I agree must be addressed. However, I believe this point--"I agree we need to ensure students are being taught in ways that are proved to bring success, but I don’t agree with your premise that unions are to blame"--is where we disagree. In some districts, like mine, which provide excellent working conditions for teachers, I do think the union is to blame for resisting mandatory training in evidence-based reading methods, which is why the recent systematic review conducted by a third-party evaluator made this one of their recommendations. Thanks again for raising important issues.
Can you be more specific? This is an important discussion, but in order to have it, we have to make precise points. I believe that anything that undermines support for students is concerning and that we have lots of ways to support teachers that don't shortchange students. Thanks for commenting.
With regard to your use of AI (and also about the use of feedback as it pertains to teaching writing) I think you might have a few things to learn by checking out John Warner, author of Why They Can't Write. For one, he says, "Outsourcing writing to something that cannot think or feel, that has no experience of the world, that has no memory (in the human sense) is a willing abandonment of our own humanity."
https://engagededucation.substack.com/p/an-unserious-book
With regard to "evidence based," I think you might have something to learn from Andrew Johnson author of Designing Meaning-Based Interventions for Struggling Readers. He has a modest proposal that we require students to clip clothespins to their ears as they're reading. He says he did research on it.
https://thereadinginstructionshow.substack.com/p/reading-pins-a-research-based-approach
Stay tuned for the next post where I explain exactly how I use research to guide instruction.
I don't see why you don't see that the phrase "below-level students" is problematic. As Metallica has said, "Label me, I'll label you. And I dub thee 'unforgiven.'"
I tend to agree with your stance on tough love. One of the first times I noticed that a man actually cared about me as a person was Marine Corps boot camp.
But your teacher blame and shame game has got to go. There's nothing particularly magical about reading by third grade; every kid matures at their own rate. And Margaret Merga's research suggests that an overemphasis on reading for learning and testing is playing a role in the divorce between reading and enjoyment. It's also very right-wing of you to complain about the unions.
Plus, the fact that you had a machine write your poem for you is a sort of dereliction. As Maria Popova says, "An AI may never be able to write a great poem — a truly original poem — because a poem is made not of language but of experience, and the defining aspect of human experience is the constant collision between our wishes and reality, the sharp violation of our expectations, the demolition of our plans."
We need to truly see the humans in front of us, not be so focused on their deficits that we can't see who they are and who they can become. That is real leadership; that is real teaching.
"We need to truly see the humans in front of us, not be so focused on their deficits that we can't see who they are and who they can become."
Why do you think I don’t see my students? I see their smiles, their joy, their pride at learning to read. "You changed my life; you made me become a reader," declared one of my second graders in the spring. My students and I see each other every day. I acknowledge (and celebrate) their assets and create lesson plans to address their deficits. This is an objective reality, not a putdown. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
Re: "Why do you think I don’t see my students?"
I didn't say that. But I shouldn't have to tell you that labels interfere with us seeing our students. Especially when your first comeback is "it's like low iron," and you didn't even see that it was a subjective label instead.
"you didn't even see that it was a subjective label instead."
This goes to the heart of our disagreement: I believe we can objectively determine whether a student is below grade level. If I have a second grader who is only able to read cvc words, there is nothing subjective about making a determination that this child should come to my intervention session. I agree that there is certainly a "range" of ability that we can take into consideration, but by the end of first grade, a typically progressing student is able to decode more than just words with short vowels. If I ignore this objective fact (like low iron), then I am doing far worse than labeling a child--I am denying that child the support that they need.
The truth is that children develop at their own pace, and there is no objective measure of "grade level." Plus, when we put all this pressure on kids to read so early, why do we wonder that they don't want to read when they're older? I have dealt with so many traumatized teens because of stuff like this. I mean, I'm not negating your professional judgment, but you can't deny that it's a very educated, but still subjective judgment. And that should be okay; your judgement of your students should be what matters most. Just be careful who you put a label on and why.
And I'm not saying I'm perfect; I have my own issues with labels.
"The truth is that children develop at their own pace, and there is no objective measure of 'grade level'."
And what factors/measures do you use to determine that a child isn't in fact progressing and needs additional support? When and how do you make that determination?
The same as you, mainly formative and informal assessments; for instance, you said "How do we teach children to read if we can't listen to them read to us?"
But you seem to be confusing your professional opinions with objective measures, and then assigning labels based on them.
First, thank you for continuing to engage. I won't respond to the old ground you cover that we have already disagreed about in past blogs, but I do want to respond briefly to this:
"I don't see why you see that the phrase "below-level students" is problematic."
The phrase is not problematic because the condition is real--just like the phrase iron-deficient isn't problematic. Both situations alert me to do something to help the student/patient. When my second grade parent said to me in the spring--"That boy has got to learn to read!"--she wasn't applying labels and she certainly did not have any access to any research in order to make that proclamation the way I do. She is simply a single parent doing her best to give her children what they need, and she 'gets it' the way most parents get it: being able to decode and comprehend what you read is a pretty big deal. And the reason why the third grade matters is because most teachers don't have the time or the training to address gaps in foundational skills in the upper grades. (See The Decoding Threshold https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED586109.pdf).
Thanks again for sharing your honest opinions. You've convinced me to abandon my plans to become a poet!
Re: "You've convinced me to abandon my plans to become a poet!"
That stings. I'm sure you have plenty of real human suffering and lots of language within you that can be fodder for good poetry. I just hoped to convince you not to use machines to do your writing and thinking for you.
Re: "just like the phrase iron-deficient isn't problematic"
No. The phrase "below-level" carries a lot of baggage about standardized testing; it also conveys a falsehood about what "grade level" entails. For instance, as far as I know, there is no consensus on what "grade level" means. Plus, it's deficit thinking.
You appear not to have responded to “And the reason why the third grade matters is because most teachers don't have the time or the training to address gaps in foundational skills in the upper grades.” For context, I’m the UC Davis lecturer referenced in the essay—and while I don’t have any experience teaching students to read, I have way more experience than I would like trying to teach calculus to students who lack basic algebra skills. With an overstuffed syllabus of calculus topics to cover in 10 weeks and class sizes that frequently exceed 300 (only a small fraction of whom can get individual attention in office hours), it’s next to impossible. I try very hard to make the math I teach fun and engaging, but even I don’t try to gaslight students into thinking that they’re learning algebra for enjoyment. They’re learning it because it’s essentially impossible to proceed in a STEM major without it. And I believe that this is the point for reading as well—it’s a fundamental skill without which the rest of their education simply cannot proceed (whether they enjoy what they read or not). And yes, this does involve ‘deficit thinking’—because the alternative is the heartbreaking situation of students who come into my calculus class with no algebra skills but also the delusion that they will be graduating with a STEM degree in just four years.
Thanks for bringing that up. I missed it, and it's part of why I try to use paragraphing in my comments to separate my ideas.
That seems like a systemic problem, not a problem with students. Wouldn't you agree that we need to meet students where they are, no matter what grade they're in?
Also, would you say it's particularly hard to teach college students basic algebra skills? (if you actually had the time and resources to do that) Or somewhat related, would you say that there's a causal factor in third grade math test scores predicting later life outcomes?
Because that's what's being done with reading: students are being retained in third grade based on shoddy correlations. And we already know the harmful effects grade retention has on students.
Yes, I have no qualifications to comment on what happens at the third grade level. What I can say is that, while I agree that we should try to meet students where they are, there comes a point of no return where students just find that doors are closed to them. We have a small army of tutors and specialists who do heroic work with students with insufficient algebra skills, but they can’t do this until they have been able to communicate to the student that their skills are insufficient—many insist that they can get through calculus just fine by “working harder”, with catastrophic results. The best case scenario is that they graduate with their preferred degree a few quarters behind schedule, but many have to change to a non-STEM major or fail to graduate altogether. So no, I don’t have any particular justification for why third grade is the absolute cutoff point—but if you don’t have urgency at some point, then you get students who will miss out entirely on the benefits of their education.
Have you ever thought maybe that, like Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club, the kids haven't changed, and that maybe you and/or the system has? I mean, since we know that stress interferes with learning, maybe this "sense of urgency," at any stage, is counterproductive.
And with regard to a "sense of urgency," who are you saying doesn't have a sense of urgency? The kids? Elementary school teachers, people who attempt to do more than is humanly possible for less pay than a similarly educated person would get elsewhere? You do realize that our system of education has always suffered from insufficient and inequitable funding and resourcing; right? Think about all the adjunct professors fighting the good fight and getting little pay and few benefits for it. And since about the 1850s, when women became a majority in the teaching profession, it's also suffered from micromanagement and a lack of respect.
Plus, I'd like to hear more about this "point of no return," especially since I got my college degrees in my 40s, with the GI Bill.
Before that, I taught adults to do paralegal work at the Naval Justice School, Newport. Teaching adults is vastly different from teaching children, especially young children. For instance, we know that academic training in kindergarten has no long-term benefit, but we keep doing it anyway. Play-based kindergarten is much more developmentally appropriate. We even try to insist that kids read in kindergarten. For some kids this is fine; they're more-or-less developmentally ready for it. For quite a few of them, they're not ready, but they get a label and a huge dose of "urgency" anyway.
Really disappointed in your anti-union stance here. I agree 100% that evidence based practice should be mandatory, and that as a profession teachers NEED to follow this evidence in their lesson planning. I agree we need to shine a light on teacher ed programs that fail over and over to properly train their teachers, and districts who refuse to offer meaningful PD, or even a shred of a useful resource to teach with. They are to blame for the union’s insistence on teacher autonomy, I believe. Unions, by definition, are created to protect their workers. When you have teachers working in violent, hopeless, untenable situations with zero support from lacklustre administrators, the union needs to protect its workers. I see a direct line that needs to be drawn between teacher working conditions and their willingness to change and adopt evidence-based instructional practice. There’s way too many people banging on about teachers needing to “remember their why” and completely neglecting the fact that teachers are getting punched in the face by students, being shoved into overcrowded classrooms without any materials or books, and so on. When shifts need to happen, which, in this case we 100% know they do, we have to create the conditions within which it is possible to effect the change. Currently in public education in many jurisdictions, that just isn’t the case, and so change is spotty and happens inconsistently as some teachers have the capacity and others do not, based on their working conditions. Make no mistake, I agree we need to ensure students are being taught in ways that are proved to bring success, but I don’t agree with your premise that unions are to blame. Collaboration with unions can be achieved if reasonable supports that are in compliance with the collective agreement and teacher contracts, and working conditions are addressed.
For some reason your complete comment did not come through initially. Thanks for providing so many important details, areas of concern that I agree must be addressed. However, I believe this point--"I agree we need to ensure students are being taught in ways that are proved to bring success, but I don’t agree with your premise that unions are to blame"--is where we disagree. In some districts, like mine, which provide excellent working conditions for teachers, I do think the union is to blame for resisting mandatory training in evidence-based reading methods, which is why the recent systematic review conducted by a third-party evaluator made this one of their recommendations. Thanks again for raising important issues.
Can you be more specific? This is an important discussion, but in order to have it, we have to make precise points. I believe that anything that undermines support for students is concerning and that we have lots of ways to support teachers that don't shortchange students. Thanks for commenting.
I’ve added to my comment. Sorry, I hit the post button by accident!