MELS Reading Workshop

I attended another wonderful workshop today. It was all about the reading competency. Although it has been far too long since my last entry, I just had to write tonight.

It is incredible to me that in this group, avid readers who love books and teaching language arts, there are so many negative reading experiences. So many people talk about having bad feelings about themselves as readers at some point in their lives.. Others talk about flying under the radar and not really understanding what they read for a long time.

This is all so very different from my own experience. I was surrounded by books from an early age. When it wasn’t books, it was my father reciting poetry from memory. One morning, my mother found me with a stack of Dr. Seuss books. I announced that I could read them, and I could! I never looked back. Books were always there to be my friends when no one else would.
I have so many warm memories of books. My parents read aloud to me, rich books like “The Jungle Book”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Hobbit”, and “Anne of Green Gables”. I lent books I had read myself to my mother so that she could read them and discuss them with me. I was allowed to stay up an extra hour in the evenings as long as I was reading in bed. This is how I stormed through the Little House Books. When I graduated university as a teacher, my mother gave me picture books – “Thank-you Mr. Falker”, and “Koala Loo”. No gift could have been more meaningful.

In part, it is my love of reading that I hope to share with my students.

I will leave this workshop with a sense of urgency about reading instruction. We learned today that children need to develop the strategies and skills for decoding, understanding, and processing printed text by age 10-11. This age is just beyond that of the children I teach. I will be returning to my class with a new eye toward those students who are “learning at their own level and their own pace” but are not quite up to scratch. How can I support them to ensure that they not only love to read, but are learning to do it well?

The Assessment part of the workshop is tomorrow. I hope to write again with further thoughts.

What!! No PD?

I’m in San Antonio for NECC. I am looking forward to a great week.

Right now I am thinking about professional development. At supper tonight, the DG of our school board was telling me about his recent trip to Uruguay. They are deploying OLPC laptops to all their students following the approved “saturation” approach. Apparently this involves getting the laptops out there, and letting the teachers and students figure things out. No PD!

I am appalled.

I teach in a school board with 1:1 laptops. Some teachers use them extensively, some hardly at all. Some use them well, others less so. Either way, they most certainly use them more and better than if they had received no professional development. Teachers who are intimidated by the laptops have at least become brave enough to use them a little. Teachers who are comfortable with the technology use them more creatively as a result of our PD.

In my experience, PD is essential for 1:1 laptops to work at all. Even the teachers who know how to use the technology benefit from hearing new ideas about how they can use the machines effectively. For those teachers who are less proficient, or who are resistant, the right kind of PD can show them how the technology fits with what they are already doing.

What a shame to simply pitch these machines willy-nilly into classrooms. Some will certainly be used, but the challenges will be too many for most to meet on their own.

Earlier today, Gary Stager posted the following on Twitter: “PD to do what? (important question) PD doesn't work. Professionals develop autonomously in environments where it is supported and expected.”

PD to do what? If all I know about my laptop is that I can type text, and I never have an opportunity to learn otherwise, am I using my laptop well? If the challenges and frustrations are numerous, and I feel abandoned, helpless, and alone, will I use the laptops at all? PD does not need to be something that is done to 50 teachers in a room – far from it. What if the environment supports and expects teachers’ PD in collaborative environments? What if PD consists (in part) of time for half a dozen teachers to get together and talk about what they are doing? They can share ideas, what’s working, solutions for challenges, etc. They might also connect with a mentor teacher online using Skype.

Whatever the shape it takes, I believe that PD is a necessary part of 1:1 laptop deployment.