Guest Blogger Harriett Janetos, Reading Specialist
Author, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense
If something needs saying, Robert Pondiscio often says it best: Have We Made Teaching Too Hard for Mere Mortals?
Yes, we have. When my older son started kindergarten 28 years ago, I was concerned that, as a teacher myself, I would be an unpleasant parent: dogged and demanding. The reality was different. I was enthralled by the whole setup: an intricately impressive network of classroom supplies and bulletin boards that I never had to fuss with at the high school level. Here he was in a whole-language classroom (a term that meant nothing to me at the time), having arrived primed to read—and when he dutifully set about doing so, no one wondered how. After all, in my own whole-word classroom Dick and Jane had taught me to read—just as remarkably. As a high school English teacher, I knew nothing about reading instruction, and looking back now through the lens of a reading specialist, I see that my son’s kindergarten teacher didn’t either.
It was, therefore, quite amusing to notice at the beginning of the school year how one frustrated father on social media fretted over when he could expect “academics” to appear in kindergarten, even though we could see from his posts how his child had already nailed knowledge of some key kindergarten skills and was reading and writing well above grade level. I wonder which academics he had in mind. Of course, we need to address the needs of all of our students—which is not just a cliché that we robotically recite but a goal we actually value. However, the question of how to effectively differentiate instruction when the range of abilities in a class is not just vast but often vastly unmanageable is a question more easily pondered than responded to.
For the most part, when it came to literacy, my own children didn’t start receiving “academics” until the fifth grade. Prior to that they spent a lot of time drawing “coffins” around words (Lyn Stone’s comic, but apt, description of that useless activity) with the hope that outlining the shape of a word would somehow relate to reading by igniting recognition of it in text; sitting in literature circles discussing books without the teacher present to guide the discussion; and making mangled macaroni projects at home. So it’s been a bit jarring to witness the push for academics in kindergarten from parents whose children already arrive reading, writing, and articulating with sophisticated vocabulary the wide-ranging experiences they’ve been fortunate enough to have been exposed to. Just as my children did.
The truth is that I didn’t need to be hard on their teachers. They didn’t know better (and, for that matter, neither did I), so they did what they thought was best, even if it was a far cry from what many of their students needed. They were hardworking and dedicated, meticulously managing the minutiae of the elementary school classroom: reading stories, romping around to music, and attending to classroom culture, leaving no wall uncovered and no holiday uncelebrated. My children loved them! But make no mistake about it: With the notable exception of my younger son’s remarkable first grade teacher, these beloved educators weren’t teaching reading to anyone, not even to the students who needed that instruction the most–a situation, thankfully, that we are now on a nation-wide crusade to remedy.
Therefore, when I, a mere mortal, moved from high school to elementary school—from Lady Macbeth to Mary and her little lamb—and, like my colleagues, ran myself ragged assembling centers for students to work at when they weren’t being ‘guided’ by me in small group instruction, I came to the conclusion that instead of getting a multiple subject credential to continue teaching elementary school, I would opt for a reading specialist credential and work with intervention students. The following year I entered a credential program, discovered the writings of Diane McGuinness, and started my professional journey toward the science of reading.
Which leads me back to the topic at hand: teaching academics in kindergarten. It was after becoming a reading specialist that I was offered my one and only opportunity to teach kindergarten, and it was during this teaching stint where I learned most of what I needed to know about teaching reading—how what we do at that level for the students who really depend on our instruction must take precedence over any other academic needs. I don’t say this with pride; I say it with a predictable nod to reality. I know my obligation is to all children; I know I must differentiate instruction; I know what needs to be done in an inclusive classroom. But I also know that my high expectations for myself often go unrealized, which is why I always prioritize those who need me most, while simultaneously attempting to accommodate the rest of the students to the best of my ability. I take refuge under the mantle of mortaldom when it comes to differentiation because if I don’t prioritize classroom needs, the needs of my most vulnerable students might go unmet. That’s the reality.
Let me clarify. I was teaching academics to my kindergartners: letter-embedded picture mnemonics (thank you Linnea Ehri); a focus on the brain’s “hookup” with letter sounds rather than names (thank you Stanislas Dehaene); encoding before decoding (thank you Diane McGuinness); phonemic awareness with letters through ‘word chains’ (thank you Isabel Beck); and independent writing to practice segmenting skills and promote phonemic awareness (thank you Gene Ouellette). But these foundational skills, though essential for the vast majority of my students, weren’t needed by all of them—not by Ivan who was reading chapter books, not by Kardin who was writing short stories. None of these practices, instructional necessities for the majority of my students, was of any use to my high achievers, who arrived in my classroom having aced their kindergarten academics at home.
One student, Neveah, always arrived late, sometimes as much as a whole hour (this, in half-day kindergarten!). With a father behind bars and a mother battling drug addiction, just making it to school at all was an accomplishment. She had a ritual: wrestling with the heavy door, stepping over the threshold, stopping to assess the lay of the land, and then racing over to collapse into my outstretched arms, always flashing a wide “I made it” grin. Once again, I made it. I will never forget those precious, perilous moments.
Because she arrived late, there wasn’t much time for her to access academics. Fortunately, she fell within the 40% on Nancy Young’s Ladder of Reading and Writing who readily advance through literacy skills with minimal guidance, which was fortunate since she wasn’t in class long enough to get much. By the spring, her father had been released from prison, her mother was in treatment, and she was experiencing a sense of normality and stability, on target with establishing her foundational skills as well as her social-emotional well-being.
Here’s what I’ve been trying to say: We do need to do a better job training our teachers to address the full range of literacy skills. We do need to promote a classroom environment that reinforces and rewards attention to student skill as well as the will to learn. But if you find that your high achiever’s kindergarten teacher lingers a bit too long on the rug at the beginning of the school year chanting Higgledy Piggledy Bumblebee Can You Say Your Name for Me before whipping out the high-frequency words, please cut them some slack.
Please, parents, understand that not all kids are alright—not by a long way—but chances are your high-achievers, like my children, will be. And maybe an extra song or two at the beginning of the school year is what’s needed to gain buy-in from the troubled or the timid–and to also buy some time for a teacher who has been plunged into a sea of skill levels and is frantically treading water to figure out exactly how to manage them, how to summon superhuman acumen to accommodate the needs of all of the students making demands on this mere mortal they’ve been saddled with for an entire school year.
Differentiation matters. But it’s a matter of dosage and degree as well as desirability. Kids have preferences, and sometimes theirs don’t align with those of their parents or their teachers. When a professional obligation bumps up against a personal reality, we need to take stock of the students in our care as well as the state of our profession and extend grace when our grandiose expectations fall flat for both. Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past (who can we credit for that great line?), so let’s just work on a better future within the realm of what’s humanly possible.