Credit Where Credit’s Not Due

My first ever teacher was called Mrs Green. Or as I secretly called her, “Grisses Mean”, and by that I meant that I viewed her as a perambulating vinegar cruet*, a shameless child-hater and a nasty bigot; I just didn’t have the words for it when I was five.

I cried on my first days at school. I was scared and not happy about being separated from my mum. I’d lived a life full of change and unusual events up until then and I guess I wasn’t the most secure of five-year-olds. I’d lived in Singapore, Poland and Egypt and it was in Egypt that we felt the threat of war and had a rabies scare. Our pet dog got the virus and attacked us all. We had to have hideously painful shots in our stomachs every day for weeks. The memories are still vivid.

So being dropped off at my first school on that September morning in 1976 wasn’t my cup of tea at all. Especially since I was delivered into the hands of Grisses Mean. I played truant that year to cope with the horridness.

“Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” were among the first words she hissed at me. I didn’t really understand the saying back then, but there was no misinterpreting the threat.

 

My school was also attended by local Romany families, whose encampment was nearby. Christopher was a young boy from the encampment and given his unkempt appearance, probably didn’t have access to the laundry and bathing facilities the rest of us took for granted. But he was nice enough and the children treated him no differently. On the other hand, Grisses Mean and the other Reception teacher, Miss Humble (no, she wasn’t), were awful to him. When Miss Humble announced her engagement, we all rushed to congratulate her, Christopher included. He, like many of the other children, gave her a big hug. Grisses Mean turned to her and said, “You’ve probably caught something nasty now!” and they both laughed. You can imagine the effect it had on Christopher.

I’ve had lots of great teachers since then (and some terrible ones), but I paint the picture of Grisses Mean to highlight one particular point. You see, I was one of the lucky children that just took to reading and writing like a duck to water. I was doing both proficiently before I even entered the World of Mean. She taught me NOTHING in terms of literacy, and the thought of her somehow claiming that she did makes my skin crawl.

I’m not the only child who was literate before school entry. Quite a large number of children achieve this easily and many more achieve it with minimal guidance. This is why weaker, lower quality methods of literacy instruction still exist. For some, it doesn’t matter how badly you teach, they’re going to learn anyway. How good does that make an inefficient teacher look?

 

That’s why, if you show me a bunch of beautiful writing samples, you fail to impress me. Those samples prove nothing.

In fact, I think it’s somewhat creepy that any teacher would consider reveling in phony glory over achievements that mostly had nothing to do with them.

For every one of those samples, I can show you samples of children in all grades, all the way to adulthood, who slipped through the net of poor instruction and ended up illiterate.

Show me instead, your outliers: the ones whose odds are already stacked against them, the Christophers of this world, the ones from backgrounds that don’t support literacy development or the ones who got first prize in the dyslexia lottery (not a great prize, I can tell you).

Six year old boy after one year of ‘balanced literacy’, 3-cueing and analytic phonics.
The same boy after one year of systematic, synthetic phonics and structured literacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to make an impression, show me the samples of those who struggle and the difference you’re making to them over time. Show me them two, three, four years up the track. Show me how you’ve passed them on to their next teacher with a meaningful learning plan and the intention of checking back on them to make sure they’re progressing. That’s something that takes expertise and excellent tools. That’s impressive.

If you can make a difference in their lives, you have my attention. If you understand, campaign for and demand a better deal for them and the thousands all over the world like them, you have my respect. A better deal means higher quality teacher training, phonics screening and decodable reading material that matches the sequence of your systematic synthetic phonics teaching. It means understanding the Simple View of Reading and the Big Five of literacy.

As for those who were going to read and write anyway, try to remember this: it’s not because of you and it’s not about you. Put your samples away. I’m not interested, and neither is anyone else in the field who has the slightest understanding of how literacy acquisition works.

*I stole this insult from an excerpt of a 1922 will.

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11 thoughts on “Credit Where Credit’s Not Due”

    1. Avatar

      And it’s how well they do over time, not just a temporary placebo or Hawthorne effect that you might see in Reading Recovery or other whole language/balanced literacy-based interventions.

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        Preach!!!
        This is so amazingly inspiring. Thanks Lyn.
        I absolutely agree and have always felt like this, but you have given me the words to put to the feelings now.
        Thanks again.

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    Thanks Lynne. A timely reminder as I head into a new school year supporting and teaching students with complex reading difficulties.

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    Richard Stephenson

    My daughter homeschooled her children and for reading instruction, she used “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons”
    By: Phyllis Haddox. One child who is not as intellectually gifted as his siblings can also read although at a lower level compared to his peers. I often comment that sadly he would not have achieved this literacy level if he was taught by the average primary school teacher. The book uses many of the elements that you advocate for good literacy instruction.

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      Thank you for this, Richard. All too true I’m afraid.
      My youngest daughter learned to read with the Haddox/Engelmann book and I use it for beginners at my practice. I can’t speak highly enough of it.
      The co-author, Siegfried Engelmann was a giant in the field of eduction. He brought the world Direct Instruction along with many other treasures.
      All the best,
      Lyn

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    Hello Lyn,

    I just thought I’d share with you a conversation I had recently with a primary school teacher. She had overheard me showing another educator (of adults with disability) at the social gathering some information about phonics and the alphabetic code. She recognised some of the terms that I was explaining (phonemes, graphemes, phonological awareness) and she excitedly interjected “That’s what I do with my kids!” She went on to explain that she teaches years 1 & 2 and declared that she has included phonics instruction in her classroom for many years. So far, so good…but she then went on to talk about the ‘other strategies’ she used to ‘complement’ her phonics instruction. It was during this spiel that she proudly showed a picture of one of her exemplary students’ writing while making reference in the same breath to those other strategies she used to assist with reading comprehension. Alas, they were the same strategies that I’d seen you debunk recently in your video ‘Writing and Balanced Literacy’ (the Let’s play ‘Look-away bingo!’ poster). It was then that I realised her version of phonics instruction was likely analytic phonics or onset-rime phonics (or a combination of the two). So I showed her your video, reiterated my position that SSP is the best form of early reading instruction, and left it at that. I’m an early-career secondary school teacher that’s only just learning about reading science and the Simple View of Reading after some rather confronting experiences with the range of reading and writing abilities in my classroom. So I didn’t really have the confidence to challenge her more on her method of phonics instruction, and it was neither the time or place to do so (my mum’s birthday party). I can only hope she took something away from the brief conversation that leads her to reflect on her understanding of phonics instruction…she did seem rather taken aback at your video!

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      Thanks Dave. Interesting indeed. I’m glad you’re taking an interest in the SVR. If only this were more widely understood, we’d be in a lot less strife!
      Cheers,
      Lyn