March Response - Workshop 9 GLIT 6728

March Response

In this response I will address the interesting stance re: the position that illiterate people are not social failures or social outcasts (Frank Smith) and the over-selling of evaluation practices. I will also review the political critique of reading intervention programs available in our school systems.

Society plays up the fact that literacy opens the door to the world and opportunities and in contrast those that are not literate will miss out on all of this. I found the position that Frank Smith takes and his evidence to support his view was intriguing and explains many examples I have seen in communities around me. In certain areas of Toronto, there is a concern for high –drop-out rates at the high school level (Jane and Finch area). One reason is due to the fact that these students who don’t fit into our education system and view themselves as potential illiterates and are considered social outcasts. They are individuals who will lose their self-esteem and will believe they can’t be readers and writers. Thus, they feel no purpose or gratification from school and see no purpose in continuing in a system that has defeated them. These students are subconsciously told from society that to be a success there is a specific pattern /method a student needs to follow to allow this to happen. If students do not fit into the mould of the perfect student as set out by the teacher (and this set of patterns varies from teacher to teacher or school to school), then they are considered failures. The overuse of instruction and evaluation is often self-destructing to the student just described. School boards and educators must understand which types of classrooms are worthwhile (when they promote interest, collaboration, confidence and learning and sensitive to cultural differences) and which classrooms are detrimental (boredom, disinterest, competitive, and condescending). “Every effort needs to be made to look at classrooms, not for just the instruction and evaluation aspect, but for the affective and the effects on the students and teachers” (Frank Smith 1995-Overselling Literacy). If the ultimate goal is to raise and develop learners who are confident and able to navigate throughout our world, then all aspects of learning needs, for all students ,need to be analyzed.

We are caught up in a system where there is an over-selling of evaluation practices and then set practices that are supposedly going to make students improve. What is missing is the understanding that literacy needs to be powerful. In becoming powerful, literacy needs to be enjoyable and relevant. Imagination is the foundations of comprehension, learning, remembering and reasoning (Frank Smith pg. 61). In order for students to learn, they must be shown from role models who are experiencing literacy in ways that we want our students to learn- through enjoyment and imagination and that literacy can be powerful.
From my reading this month, I noticed that evidence has shown that not only do disadvantaged students, from poverty and discrimination, don’t have their needs met in our school system, but research also indicates that school discourse practices favour students who enter school with a certain kind of “cultural capital” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), specifically those ways of talking, thinking, acting, doing and valuing associated with White, able-bodied, middle and upper-class students (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). The literacy practices found in the white middle-class neighbourhood classrooms resemble those practices from middle-class homes – these children learn to talk about and do literacy. These same practices are visible in classrooms across our city. My concern is do remedial and special education programs in cultural neighbourhoods preserve the status quo of struggling students or ,as presented by Dudley-Marling , is there more of a concern to protect the structure of our schools? Are the reading intervention programs putting a “band aid” on a problem, when we should be addressing the inequities related to race, class, gender and language?

In our school board (TCDSB) we have a primary remedial literacy intervention program – 5th Block. This is an early intervention program that identifies students who are behind in reading levels in grades 1 and 2. The understanding is that students who need a “boost” will get the small -group instruction setting one hour /day. This instruction is an intense remediation program for duration of 17 weeks. The focus is on addressing the needs of the students based on pre-program assessments, mid- program assessments and monitoring of students after demission of the program (end of program assessments). This program also assists with early identification of students that may require further testing of learning needs. This is a prescribed program that although needs of the student are the focus, the instructional practices are set and implemented by all of the 5th Block teachers across the system. The instructional practices are based on the gradual release of responsibility instructional approaches. The content of resources used in the program is the same across our system- regardless of cultural diversity. Initially the focus of the program was primarily on decoding and moving the students across the reading levels chart (A- P). On many occasions, the students who are demitted from this program are successful- according to the standards described above.

As an extension to the 5th Block Intervention Program, and as comprehension needs for students in the junior division grew, a Junior Intervention Program was initiated. It was answering the needs of those fourth and fifth grade students who were decoding, yet did not comprehending what they were reading. The focus of this oral – based program is to assist students with strategies in becoming thinkers as readers, to improve comprehension, to provide situations to discuss texts, and to develop oral language. Again, this program is centred on the needs of the students through assessments (pre, on-going and post). As a teacher of this program for five years, the benefits to students also included an increase in confidence and desire to read. Students’ enthusiasm and interest in literacy increased tremendously as a result of this program.

One concern I noticed, and often wondered about, was that on many occasions the students who attended the Junior Literacy Intervention Program (JLI) were the same students who had in the primary years, attended the 5th Block Program- this was witnessed by other JLI teachers across the city. Are these students going to have on-going learning needs or have these programs only fulfilled institutional needs by appearing to explain and solve the problem of school failure? The students in this community are from Portuguese-speaking homes. Literacy was not modeled and defined as it is in many middle-class white homes. The majority of the parents were working in construction or mothers were cleaning offices in the night hours. The children went to school and then would often have to go home to help care for siblings or accompany their mothers to work as the fathers arrived home after long hours of work. The parents would often mention how they could not assist their children with their work but also supported the work being done by the teachers and valued the advice that teachers offered regarding methods of improving school grades. Rarely, in my five years at the school were the teachers questioned or challenged on advice or suggestions for the children. The parent community had a great deal of faith that what was being done in the school was in the best interest of their children.

In attempting to define students ‘gaps in learning from the community that I worked with, I found the students required a great deal of oral language at this junior division age because their vocabulary development was low and understanding the nuances of the English language was very simple. Again, the JLI program was successful in attempting to address these learning needs. However, these students also experience gender biases and often the girls felt their only goal in life was to get married and become cleaning ladies or to work in daycares. Many felt their road to education ended in grade 12. Although many of the teachers attempted to break these patterns through informal class discussions, did we really did address the cultural, language and gender biases that existed in the community.

I am aware that I have presented one small example of learning in a cultural community, I do, however, believe that the same holds true for many other students within the various diverse Toronto communities. I am uncertain what the answers is and know that both of these intervention programs have resulted in many success stories, but is this all sustainable for these students? As the JLI program does attempt to address the various learning needs for the junior learner, what happens to these students in high school? Have we addressed the cultural, language and race biases these students encounter and will continue to encounter after they leave us in the elementary system?