Literacy Now

Father Time has turned a page in his calendar again and the New Year is upon us. I, for one, am excited—especially because we have inched that much closer to the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.

I spent a lot of time during my break thinking about the new standards. Re-reading them, listening to and contemplating tons of commentary, unpacking and then re-mixing ways to approach them (and so on), and the more I dive in—the more I reflect, the more I internalize and absorb them—the bigger fan I am of adopting Common Core.

Perhaps I could list 20 reasons why this is the case if I truly wanted to make the effort, but instead I’ll focus right now on a lean and pertinent two.

#1: The death knell for weak multiple choice tests has been sounded. Hooray, I say! The fact is, I’m not really sure who amongst us isn’t happy to hear this chime begin to ring throughout the national educational kingdom.

As so many of us know, No Child Left Behind brought us a plague of poor assessments (perhaps the peak of it can be found here), and over the past decade standardized tests have become the unfortunate tail that wags the schoolhouse dog. Principals have been fired over poor test results, teachers have been publicly ostracized—and terminated—over poor test results, and the underground resistance which has vociferously been shouting from the rooftops, “Your tests stink as student performance measures and are actually doing more harm than good to our schools” is about to see the notch of victory be etched into their collective belts.

photo: albertogp123 via photopin cc

Common Core is too complex, too rich, too demanding and too forward-thinking to be captured in a mere A, B, C, or D form of student assessment. In fact, our nation is seeing a bold new series of groups (namely, this one and this one) build better student evaluation mousetraps. Some of the ideas I’ve seen kicked around have me smiling at the notion that, “Hey, this ain’t your momma’s rote memory, lower-level Bloom’s type of test anymore.”

The coming assessments are going to be adaptive, multi-layered, trans-media, technology-based (of course) and far more insightful in terms of actually getting to see what a student really knows than anything we’ve poured billions into over the past ten years.

And yes, they are going to be much more challenging, as well. Which leads me to my second cause for celebration.

#2: The overall academic challenges our students will face will be much more demanding, but also more relevant as well.

The Common Core will raise the bar, and though there are skeptics—some of whom make some credible points —on the whole, I believe that Common Core is an elevation.

• Common Core puts a premium on writing unlike any we’ve ever had before.
• Common Core puts a premium on re-reading and close reading, unlike anything we’ve ever had before.
• Common Core recognizes the interdependent relationship between reading and writing and places a premium on students being able to read well and then write (cogently) in response to what they have read… unlike anything we have ever had before.
• Common Core places a premium on all of the aforementioned occurring in an interdisciplinary capacity—across all disciplines, across all grade levels—unlike anything we’ve really seen before.

This is “life tools beyond the K–12 classroom” stuff. After all, as so much data shows, people who read well and write well attain a sense of success in America that transcends mere income.

Highly literate people:

• Vote more.
• Are incarcerated less.
• Play a more active role in the community.
• Live longer lives.
• And so on…

See, Common Core isn’t shying away from asking more of many, many American students than our classrooms have been traditionally asking of them. “Raising expectations” used to be an empty buzz phrase that admins would casually toss around at their cozy little district offices. With Common Core, expectations have actually been raised and for some folks, the actual sight of this is terrifying.

Being somewhat afraid is a good thing. In a way, American schools have become somewhat stale and those butterflies we’re all feeling in our bellies are a sign, to me, that BIG CHANGE is coming. I’m not alone in thinking that the United States has become too comfortable, too filled with a sense of self-entitlement, and this sense of national hubris could very much be the trigger which precedes a great fall.

Our schools can certainly be more demanding. Common Core plans to tackle this issue head on.

Ultimately, I guess I don’t really have a problem with higher expectations. However, I do have a problem with unrealistic expectations. If the right PD and the resources aren’t provided for the Common Core, and policymakers take a page out of the NCLB playbook and merely want to shame teachers with dubious data without actually making a genuine effort to help them improve their craft, then this column is going to have a different tenor a few years from now.

That’s a promise.

But as the old saying goes, “Don’t fall before you are pushed.” We haven’t not risen to new heights yet, so why pre-suppose that we are not capable of doing so?

Common Core, you hold the promise of a new tomorrow—and it’s the time of year when thinking about new tomorrows excites me.

[The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the International Reading Association or its Board of Directors.]

Alan Sitomer was named California's 2007 Teacher of the Year. In addition to being an inner-city high school English teacher and former professor in the Graduate School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Alan is a nationally renowned speaker specializing in engaging reluctant readers who received the 2004 award for Classroom Excellence from the Southern California Teachers of English, the 2003 Teacher of the Year honor from California Literacy, the 2007 Educator of the Year award by Loyola Marymount University and the 2008 Innovative Educator of the Year from The Insight Education Group. He’s the author of six young adult novels, three children's picture books, two teacher methodology books, and a classroom curriculum series for secondary English Language Arts instruction called THE ALAN SITOMER BOOK JAM. A Fun Look at Our Serious Work appears quarterly on the Engage blog.

This post originally appeared on the Engage/Teacher to Teacher blog in January 2012.

As the child of anthropologists, I learned about origin myths at a very young age. For those whose parents may have been molecular biologists, let me explain that an origin myth is a story developed by a culture to explain how a particular aspect of reality (or reality itself) came into being. Origin myths typically describe the natural world, but they can also be used to describe the social world. I like to think of my book THE CARPENTER’S GIFT as an origin myth.

When I began working on THE CARPENTER’S GIFT, I visited the archive at Rockefeller Center to learn as much as I could about the most famous Christmas tree in the world. I found out that the first tree went up in 1931, while Rockefeller Center was still under construction. It was erected by workers, presumably because they were deeply grateful to have jobs during the depth of the Great Depression. The tree was decorated with strings of cranberries, garlands of paper, and a few shiny tin cans. How that particular tree came to be at the work site and who specifically put it up are details lost to time. But wouldn’t it be fun to know?

Contradicting none of the (few) known facts, THE CARPENTER’S GIFT offers one possible explanation, in which Henry and his out-of-work father give the tree to Frank and the other construction workers on Christmas Eve. Perhaps there are more likely theories, but this story attracted me because it embraced a truth about why people have flocked to the tree in Rockefeller Center these past eighty years, and why Tishman Speyer, the owners of Rockefeller Center, now donate the tree annually to Habitat for Humanity so that lumber milled from its trunk can be used to build a home for a family in need.

I tried to imagine what those workers in 1931 would have been feeling, and I kept coming back to gratitude, especially the kind of gratitude that motivates a person to pay his good fortune forward. The story of THE CARPENTER’S GIFT couldn’t have ended with the erection of the first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree because Frank and the other workers wouldn’t have let it end there, not without doing something for someone less fortunate than themselves—such as Henry, whom they learn lives with his family in a drafty, dilapidated shack.

As you’ve probably guessed, I actually slipped a second origin myth into the book—one for Habitat itself. The story of how Frank and his friends visit Henry’s family on Christmas morning to help them build a new, decent house evokes my own feelings about the organization—that no matter how much you give, you always get more back.

Screenwriter Randall Wallace, who won an Academy Award for BRAVEHEART, called Habitat “a perpetual-motion miracle,” and I think this chain of giving and receiving is what he had in mind. It takes Henry a little longer than it does Frank to realize this, but eventually he pays “the gift” forward, too, and the miracle moves on.

David Rubel is a nationally recognized author and speaker whose work focuses on making American history accessible to a broad audience. His children's books THE SCHOLASTIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR TIMES and THE SCHOLASTIC ATLAS OF THE UNITED STATES have become grade-school standards, selling more than half a million copies each in multiple editions.



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It is disheartening to read the headlines that permeate the media enlightening us that reading scores in America remain flat—or worse, that no significant improvement has been noted since the ’70s. And yet, those of us in this field know full well that READING is the magical key that opens the door into the mind of any human being; it establishes the fundamentals and foundation for whatever he wants to be—or will be. It is the basis for all learning.

However, English, to kindergartners and first- and second-graders, is a foreign language—as German, Italian or French might be to an adult. Speaking a language is not the key for learning how to read it. During a recent lecture I gave to several dozen graduate speech/audiology students, I asked how many had studied foreign languages. Each had studied one or more but not one stated that he learned it the way he learned English: by first memorizing high-frequency words from lists that also went home for further practice. Some admitted to having had difficulty with learning to read, and some stated that it still was not their favorite thing to do.

Having taught college linguistics some years ago as an offering for teacher recertification, it was exciting to see the sparks when teachers learned intriguing nuggets about this powerful and international language called English. They wanted to know the answers to questions that plague both students and teachers (why is CAT spelled with a C and KITTEN with a K?). They were eager to learn how two vowels could be long in TRAIL, make a wiggly diphthong sound in TAUT, and yet split into two different sounds AND syllables as in TRI-AL and LI-ON.

Teachers love to learn new things, but not all of us learn the same way any more than children do—yet, what is really different about what we are doing in the classroom today that we were not doing in the ’70s? Not much, sadly. Special education has been added, but all too often this is a slowing down and trimming of what goes on in our regular classes.

Remedial teaching, however, means the need to take a different tack.

Most any language entails five linguistic facets in order for one to learn it: phonology, morphology, etymology, orthography, and philology. But in English, the largest language in the world (more than a million words), changes occur daily, and it is mind-boggling to consider the many variances that are updated approximately every six years in our dictionaries. To buy a new dictionary and compare it with “old faithful” sitting on a shelf somewhere in our home or classroom will elicit shock. (Go on. Do it.)

photo: alexbrn via photopin cc

For example, as a child, I rode to school on a “buss” (“bus” was chipped off the Latin word “omnibus” and my “buss” now simply means a kiss). When I got stung, I got a big “whelp,” but today, that would be a young animal/child or the pre-teen version of the interjection “well.”

Once our class got underway, it was stimulating to hear the questions: Why do we hear a “d” in WATER, METAL, and SWEETISH/SWEDISH? Why does TU work just fine in TUNE and TUG, but “sneezes” in CENTURY, TARANTULA, NATURE? Why does METER sound sensible, but when put into the word SPEEDOMETER, it sounds so different? How can I tell when to “sound” the G as a /guh/ sound versus a /jjj/ or a C as an S or a K?

Great questions! All answerable!

One of the most “fun” pronunciation and spelling oddities I have ever encountered is WHEN to spell with a C versus a K, or how to know the hard sound of G in GAS versus the soft sound in GERMS. (C and G were both called “gamma” by the Greeks and, thus, follow the same rule.) That is great for those of us who teach.

Write down the six (yes, six) vowels in lower-case form: a e i o u y.

Note that the a, o, and u are nice and chubby in appearance while the e, i, and y are formed by first making a straight (stick) stroke. When trying to remember whether or not to spell a word with a C or a K, use C when followed by a “chubby” (or round) vowel or a consonant as in CAT, COAT, CUT, CRIB, CATTLE, SCOTCH. But, if one wants to retain the hard sound of C (K) when using a stick vowel (e, i, or y), the “stick-consonant” K must be used as in KITTEN, KISS, KEEN, KETTLE, SKETCH; otherwise, the “stick” vowels turn C into an S sound as in ICE, CITY, FANCY.

This wonderful rule will let one down so few times that it is not worth trying to memorize the multitude of C/K words. It is interesting to note that C is the only letter in the alphabet that has no sound of its own; it borrows from S or K.

G, on the other hand, has a hard sound that it makes in MOST words that have a ROUND vowel or consonant following, such as GAS, GOAT, GUM, GRASS, while the “stick” vowels allow the G to become the soft J sound as in GERMS, GIANT, and GYM.

Learning why the ARR makes an air sound in SPARROW but an R sound in SPARRING is helpful for spelling rules; learning why we cannot hear SCIENCE in conscience or SIGN in signal is also helpful for unlocking unknown words. We also have to know why there is a T or a sound before CH in BATCH, ITCH, BENCH, and INCH, but none in BEACH, TEACH, and LEECH.

How I wish I had known so many of these language goodies when I was in elementary school and not had to wait until graduate school to learn the majority of them! Including speech science and audiology in my training certainly made the English language the most exciting one on the planet for me.

A fun exercise for teachers and young students alike is the task of spelling the alphabet. Unlike America, where it seems to be a pre-requisite to reading success to know the alphabet in order, in foreign countries where a command of English is often the indicator of an educated individual, frequently the naming of the alphabet is the last thing learned. However, it is necessary in order to spell anything aloud or to be able to alphabetize. Think about it. Spell H, Y, C, G, J—aich, wie (why), see, jee, jay.

Students, too, love learning oddities about their language. The more engaged they become in its forms and complexities, the more likely they are to increase and develop yet more skills.

Teaching reading to students beginning at age four all the way into adulthood is my life’s work, and I consider it the most exciting of all vocations. How could I not? Is there anything more exciting or self-fulfilling than looking for a previously struggling student who is now hiding in a closet reading a book instead of doing his homework?

Sadly, like fog (to borrow an image from the Carl Sandburg poem of the same name), illiteracy “sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches…” and keeps moving “in” instead of moving “on.”

Teaching, by definition, means imparting knowledge. Anything memorized can be forgotten; anything that is learned and internalized sticks with us more readily. As our educational standing on the global scene steadily slips, it is still true that we, as teachers, hold the key to bringing us back to NUMBER ONE; we just need more reinforcements.

Betty G. Price is a reading remediation therapist with Professional Reading Services in Roanoke, Virginia. She has also taught in the classroom, conducted seminars and workshops, worked for the Virginia Department of Education on special projects, and provided linguistics for teacher training at college level for those seeking recertification credits. She is the co-author (with Dr. Claude Cauolle, professor emeritus, Hollins University) of SEE ME READ, a large, comic-cartoon laps book for preschoolers (ages 3- to 5).

[The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the International Reading Association or its Board of Directors.]

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Twenty-five years ago, on my first day of seventh grade, I walked into my assigned English class to discover a strange sight. A middle-aged man with thinning blond hair was sitting behind the teacher’s desk puffing away on a piece of chalk. Immediately two things were clear to me: 1) He was dying for a smoke, and 2) He wasn’t bothering to hide this from a roomful of seventh graders. This made him the most interesting teacher I’d had all day.

All day long, I’d been meeting my teachers—some were strict, others more laidback—but all of them seemed generally colorless the way most adults seem to kids. It was impossible to imagine any of them feeling the heights of anger or despair I felt daily over my parents’ ongoing divorce, of feeling powerless or alone or different. But this man smoking his chalk seemed like maybe, just maybe, he could understand.

His name was Mr. Hubner and he would be my English teacher for both seventh and ninth grades. He would introduce me to Eudora Welty and William Faulkner, to James Baldwin and the blues, to Holden Caulfield and Hamlet. He would be the first openly gay adult in my life. He was also openly sarcastic (mostly at the expense of lazy students), openly grumpy (he was constantly trying to quit smoking) and openly critical (not only of our essays, which he picked apart in class, but of the books we were assigned to read).

But when he taught his favorite writers, the ones whose photos he enshrined on the back wall of his classroom, he gave the sense that he was sharing something deeply personal, something that could stem the flood of alienation and pain that came with growing up.

There are teachers who teach you how to read, and then there are teachers who teach you how to find yourself through reading. It was no coincidence that I was in Mr. Hubner’s class when I decided to become a writer. It was ninth grade and my parents’ divorce was finally reaching its bitter end. I had stopped talking to my father and had moments when I fantasized about being dead. In the midst of this, Mr. Hubner assigned us a lengthy report on an artist of our choosing. At first, I figured I would pick John Steinbeck, my favorite writer, whose dust bowl novels reflected my own bleak mood. But Mr. Hubner, who preferred the Southern novelists, nudged me toward Flannery O’Connor instead.

photo: pdoyen via photopin cc

I still remember writing that report, the tower of O’Connor themed books stacked up beside my old Macintosh, the photos of peacocks (O’Connor’s favorite animal), which I assembled to decorate the cover. As it turned out, O’Connor was a wonderful antidote to adolescent misery. She was deeply eccentric and undeniably tragic (she would die at age 39 of lupus) but unapologetic and sharp-tongued. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd,” she wrote. “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

In short, she felt very much like a fellow traveler. As I meticulously wrote that report, I realized that my life too—the difficult parts, especially—wasn’t meaningless. It was material.

What a writer, especially a young one, needs most is an appreciative audience. Mr. Hubner could be critical and grumpy but his praise, when it came, was genuine and effusive. Long before I ever received a positive review as a novelist, I still remember the heart-thumping thrill I felt when Mr. Hubner returned that Flannery O’Connor report. The A-plus on the back wasn’t just a grade; it was a validation. I was a writer. And I was going to be okay.

Katherine Marsh is the author of JEPP, WHO DEFIED THE STARS (Hyperion, October 2012). An only child, she spent a lot of her youth reading, trading stories with her grandmother who had run a bar in New York, and listening to her mother's frequent astrological predictions. After surviving high school and graduating from Yale, Katherine spent a decade as a magazine journalist, including as a reporter for ROLLING STONE and an editor at THE NEW REPUBLIC. Her first book, THE NIGHT TOURIST, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award for mystery writing, and was followed by the sequel THE TWILIGHT PRISONER. Katherine lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children. Find out more about Katherine at: www.katherinemarsh.com or follow her on Twitter: @MarshKatherine.



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