HIGH FIVE LITERACY AND ACADEMIC COACHING

It’s not Passover yet, but we should be asking the following four questions:

Do the 60% or more of students across the country not meeting grade level proficiency in reading all have learning disabilities? 

Why is student growth stagnant even though so many children receive reading pullout services? 

Why do so many students have IEPs? 

Why is the importance of “fundamental” skills recognized in all disciplines and endeavors but literacy education?

To answer these four questions, I can’t help but use metaphor. The following is a quote taken from the book Cured, by Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, who describes the work of the scientist, Antoine Bechamp, a less-known contemporary of Louis Pasteur.  Bechamp thought Pasteur’s approach to killing germs with antibiotics was dangerous and short-sighted.

According to Dr. Rediger,  Bechamp “compared the situation to a pile of excrement sitting on the ground, attracting flies.  Do you keep swatting the flies away one by one, indefinitely?  Or do you remove the pile of excrement?”    

Rather than using an ever-increasing smorgasbord of antibiotics to treat illness, Bechamp urged physicians to first focus on prevention of disease.  Keeping tissues healthy and ensuring cells have the nutrients to function optimally should be the priority, according to Bechamp. 

Nobody listened, and today we are seeing the effects of the over-use of antibiotics and a movement toward prevention.

In education, we continue to “swat flies.”  Just as the medical establishment’s focus had long been on “killing the germs,” the education establishment continues to pour money into interventions without removing the underlying cause of failure.  Unfortunately, we cannot intervene our way out of problems caused by ineffective core instruction.  

When, as Dr. Rediger suggests, we “fixate on tearing down disease at all costs instead of building up flourishing health and immunity,” there’s a tendency to overprescribe antibiotics to patients at an alarming rate.  This is the same risk we are confronted with in literacy education. 

If we screen children for dyslexia but, at the same time, continue to use teaching strategies such as picture cueing, whole word memorization, and repetitive leveled books, we will spend a fortune on “destroying the microbe” without addressing the fundamental cause.  Many of the screened children will be deemed at-risk for dyslexia and placed in groups for remediation when all they really needed was to be taught correctly from the start.

In school districts across America, administrators are finally recognizing the importance of explicit instruction for some children.  On the surface, this approach gives the appearance that the problem can easily be eradicated.  However, it is simply another example of the “kill the germ at all costs” theory Bechamp found questionable.  In the medical model, despite obscene amounts of money spent on finding the next miracle pill, we haven’t been able to eradicate many of the most serious diseases.

Perhaps rather than focusing on remediation or a quick fix when signs of a problem arise or are finally recognized, we should build a strong “immune” system.   Let’s ask our schools to find ways to create a learning environment free of toxins by nurturing a healthy foundation.  

The quality of a question determines the quality of an answer.  We in education should be asking better questions. 

How is reading taught in general education?   This is THE most important question, as it determines the number of children in intervention services and special education!

Which assessments point to the skills necessary for reading success? 

Do the assessments being used value “levels” over skills? 

Does an A-Z gradient system help inform us sufficiently to give children targeted instruction?

Are children being taught with phonics but told to use the context and pictures receiving conflicting and confusing messages?   

Do the books used in our classrooms encourage guessing instead of decoding words?

Do reading teachers understand how to teach reading using evidence-based practices or are they using the same ineffective strategies that do not produce results?

It’s time to stop swatting flies, remove the excrement, and ask better questions.

Faith Borkowsky is the founder of High Five Literacy and Academic Coaching, with over thirty years of experience as a classroom teacher, reading and learning specialist, regional literacy coach, administrator, and tutor. Ms. Borkowsky is a Certified Dyslexia Practitioner and provides professional development for teachers and school districts, as well as parent workshops, presentations, and private consultations. Ms. Borkowsky is the author of the award-winning book, Failing Students or Failing Schools? A Parent’s Guide to Reading Instruction and Intervention and the “If Only I Would Have Known…” series.  She is also a board member of Teach My Kid to Read, a 501(c) non-profit organization with a mission to support and empower students, teachers, and parents through education so all kids, including those with dyslexia, learn to read.