Discussion Post for Ivette, Paola, Emme, Bethanne, and Nate

Reading Allington and Knobel, as well as Words Their Way, it is impossible to ignore how corporations and the focus of profit over people have dictated how students are being taught how to read; simultaneously, the reading programs that have been ousted as corrupt and ineffective have systematically kept students at a disadvantage by holding them back from making real progress in their own learning and even restricting them to redundancy in grade level-focused banality.  An especially insightful section of What Really Matters When Working With Struggling Readers reads:  "Nonetheless, fidelity to flawed core reading programs became a goal in too many schools, especially schools serving low-income children. The irony here is that this was done in the name of 'scientifically based, reliable, replicable research.' This is ironic because no research existed then, or exists now, to suggest that maintaining fidelity to a core reading program will provide effective reading lessons."  As educators struggle to fight the damaging effects of No Child Left Behind-mandated programs like Readers First, what are some ways that we can fight an overabundant focus on independent reading, required texts that are too difficult for many of our students, and ineffective strategies such as "round robin" reading?

In I'm Not a Pencil Man, many of us in this cohort have encountered several, if not many, students like Jacques; indeed, his case in the exact opposite of atypical.  I'm sure that we can all readily agree after hearing about Jacques' story in saying that we fear for our students becoming "shunted into intensive remedial programs that would be likely to alienate them even further from school forms of literacy.  In the corporatocracy that we find ourselves living in these days it has fallen on the shoulders of educators at the individual level to fight against nationally mandated testing.  As Professor Patel has stated, this fight is one of the many factors that could contribute to termination of employment in schools that have their agenda propped up by profit.  How far will we be able to get before they stop us in our tracks at these schools?

Words Their Way opened up on an incredibly interesting note with Read's study showing that the way children make sense of words in English as they grow ties in with how English came to grow as a language.  One of the opening pages of the piece that stuck out to me reads:  "Students need hands-on experience comparing and contrasting words by sound so that they can categorize similar sounds and associate them consistently with letters and letter combinations.  This process is the heart of the alphabetic principle."  Moving forward in our practicum experiences, what are some ways that we as educators can help to build on what students do correctly, help out with what students use yet confuse, and be there for them (and help them to discover a growth mindset) when their frustration sets in when spelling concepts become too difficult?