The Journey of Learning to Teach “Reading”

The Not Knowing

I was a PreK teacher. I decorated my room. I worked on lesson plans, changed out books and manipulatives according to themes. I took the kids on field trips, opened up Go-Gurt packages, interacted with parents, changed my bulletin board, sat on the floor with kids during center time, patted backs during nap time, and read stories – lots of stories!  However, I didn’t know the first thing about Literacy and language, teaching alphabetic principles, or phonemic and phonological awareness.  I had no training, no mentors, and no direction from the Preschool Director. I was a good teacher, but I wasn’t laying the foundation for my students to be language and word literate. 

I later became Director of that preschool, and found myself slipping into the former Director’s shoes.  I gave no direction to my staff on what was needed to teach students about word decoding because I didn’t know myself.  It wasn’t until I was hired at Learning Ally that I got curious. Audiobooks, hmmm….., why do audiobooks work?  This curiosity led me on a journey of growth and development. I needed to know the why behind an audiobook solution when kids couldn’t decode language. I learned about the need to have an evidence-based, structured approach to Literacy to teach the foundational skills needed to decode words. Audiobooks work because the process of teaching code takes a long time (even longer if a student is not identified early as having reading difficulties).  The transference of skill from explicit teaching of the code to keeping up with grade-level content is very difficult. When augmented with an audiobook, however, the cognitive load of decoding is lifted.  This allows the student to focus on content, constructing and making meaning out of text.

The Beginning of Knowing

Structured Literacy is an umbrella term coined by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) and aligns with the IDA Knowledge and Practice Standards (Lorimor-Easley, 2019; Washburn et al., 2016). While Structured Literacy is an approach designed to address students’ needs with dyslexia, all students can benefit from the explicit nature of this instruction, which is grounded in basic language constructs (Washburn et al., 2016).

Armed with this knowledge of the evidence behind how to teach word decoding, I sought out a program to learn and become certified.  This program took place every day for two weeks straight for two summers while working on practicum hours by teaching or tutoring students. After the coursework and practicum hours were complete, I took the cumulative test and became a Certified Academic Language Practitioner. Now I had the knowledge to teach “reading,” or so I thought. What I didn’t realize at the time is that teaching “reading” is not just about teaching the rules of word decoding but building up the thinking, understanding, and cognitive processing, as well as a purpose for reading and a pathway for students to become truly literate.

Unlocking Genius

When I started learning about phonemes, graphemes, phonological awareness, orthographic mapping, etymology, fluency, and all of the lower- and higher-level components that make up skilled reading, I felt like I had done my students a disservice and didn’t set them up for success.  This new knowledge started a lifelong quest for me.  I wanted to figure out how to unlock genius for every student.

I decided that there was more that I needed to know about Literacy, language development, and reading.  I began a doctoral program in Literacy and Educational Leadership. My dissertation was a mixed-methods study designed to understand if K-2 novice educators with three or fewer years of experience have the requisite knowledge and self-efficacy to teach foundational skills in reading and how experienced educators have guilt related to what they wish they would have known about teaching the foundational skills of reading in their beginning years as an educator.  I surveyed many educators at different points in their careers.  Results indicated a strong belief by novice educators in their ability to teach “reading”.  However, there was a significant lack of knowledge in orthographic mapping and phonological awareness. A dichotomy exists between the confidence of teachers and their actual knowledge.  A novice educator from the survey understands the crisis facing students and educators today; “I’m angry that I was never taught the science of reading, even though the research existed”.

Becoming a Literacy Leader

This journey in understanding how to meet the needs of students in decoding, language, and comprehension has been a long one, and it’s not over.  I’m still on a path to understanding how decoding, language development, and student capacity at different ages and stages co-exist to make up skilled reading.

My next curiosity: how and why do we move so swiftly from wordplay, poems, rhymes, and picture books that are so common from birth to age five, and then run headlong into decodables when students enter Kindergarten, leaving the other critical literacy components behind? The abrupt transition from oral language development to word decoding in early childhood is detrimental to all students. There needs to be a both/and approach:  Simultaneously building up capacity in the code of words while constructing knowledge about the world. 

My mission continues to be growing a community of educators dedicated to literacy leadership.  My mission is simple: to smash the Literacy divide in our country.  This can happen when we collectively learn from our experiences, share the truth of our journeys, and mentor those behind us.

Innovative Approaches to Change the Journey for Educators

Based on my journey and yours, we need mass change.  We need a movement, a tribe of passionate believers, to see a decrease in our nation’s NAEP scores (NCES, 2019) that indicate that 65% of our nation’s students are not meeting proficiency levels in reading. An equally alarming number, according to an EdWeek research report: only 11% of elementary educators feel entirely prepared to teach reading after their pre-service program (Kurtz et al., 2019).

Here’s how:

1. Baseline knowledge of teaching literacy.  There’s a need for schools and districts to establish a baseline understanding of the lower and higher-level processes of reading pedagogy and philosophy for all incoming new hires. 
2. Coursework based on science.  Colleges of education should preemptively look at their course offerings and assigned books to determine if they align with the scientific understanding of how to teach word decoding and language and Literacy development.
3. Only fund best practices.  Restrict funding from state departments and philanthropic organizations to any college that does not align with the best practices regarding teaching word decoding and language and Literacy development.
4. Better utilize experienced literacy educators.  Schools and districts must turn to their experienced educators and lean on their knowledge and expertise to make curriculum, intervention, and accommodation choices.
5. Be precise when discussing the skills that make up “reading”.  Instead of using the word “reading” as a generality, we need to say precisely what we mean.  If we are talking about the lower-level process of teaching word decoding, we should say “word decoding”.  If we are talking about literacy experiences, those differ from simple reading important ways.  Similarly, comprehension is a component of reading, but does not encompass the entire skillset. 

The actual word “reading” is too ambiguous.  The education system must focus on the whole student and the whole educator, such as self-efficacy and self-worth in conjunction with code and knowledge, and there must be a motivated tribe of individuals that believe the same thing.  Join me!