The entire SAU professional staff met at the high school for two presentations. Ray McNulty, Senior Vice President, International Center for Leadership in Education and Dr. Stephanie Spadorcia, from Lesley University both spoke to the group about literacy, specifically, 21st Century Literacy. After their presentations, all faculty returned to their respective schools, broke into small groups and discussed how what they learned in the morning could be applied to their classroom everyday.
I'd like to share my thoughts about what Ray and Stephanie shared with us, respectively. I'll report some of the general remarks of the staff on a later post.
First, I'd like to comment on Dr. Spadorcia. Her presentation focused on four current issues: scientifically-based educational practices, response to intervention, high-stakes assessments, and the widening of the achievement gap. More specifically, she addressed how effective reading instruction can address all four of those issues. She made the argument that the "Whole-to-Part Model of Silent Reading Comprehension" can be one such strategy. Ultimately, she said, the ability to read and comprehend silently is of vital importance to today's learner. If you think about it, it makes sense. How often do you read aloud and/or are read to once you reach high school and beyond (Although she does believe that all students should read aloud and just be read to not read aloud themselves at upper grades - it is actually more difficult to read aloud and comprehend as you increase in skills no matter the age. Students need to hear words multiple times before they can pronounce it correctly - think of the first time your biology teacher wrote the work deoxyribonucleic acid or adenosine triphosphate on the board. In fact, she specifically said, "Oral language, hearing others read aloud, and discussions are the most effective means of supporting vocabulary growth". She credited www.nifl.gove/nifl/pfr.html for that research.) She really punctuated the fact that students need to be skilled in the area of silent reading comprehension if they are to be literate in the 21st century.
Dr. Spadorcia broke silent reading comprehension into what she called the "three legs" of the reading table. They were Word Identification, Language Comprehension, and Print Processing Beyond Word Identification. She said that just like a table, if any one of these three parts are missing (or undeveloped) the ability of the student to read at grade level is unstable. She then spoke of several practical strategies to increase proficiency in all three areas. I would encourage all of you to review her presentation to learn more about those strategies. Early feedback from the teacherswas that they were glad she shared strategies that could be used the following day in their classroom.
One of the most interesting things I learned from Dr. Spadorcia is the importance in blending strategies from both phonics and whole language instruction. In short, she said that neither way, in and of itself is the one right way to teach reading, that students need to employ both phonics and whole language strategies to be proficient readers.
Ray McNulty shared with the faculty his belief that education systems need to change to adapt to the needs of 21st century learners. He spoke of the "false proxies" we have created to signify learning such as finishing a course or textbook, listening to a lecture or getting a high score on a standardized test. He emphasized that teaching and learning are two separate entities and that learning should focus on meaning, engagement, inquiry, exploration, personalization, collaboration and trust. Mostly, he stressed that educators need to become agents of change. Instead of reacting to change (i.e. NCLB & Standardized Assessment), educators need to be proactive and author and cultivate those changes that are needed to help students compete in a global economy. He spoke passionately about the idea that what has worked in education in the past will not necessarily work today (or tomorrow). The needs of society today are much different than they used to be. For example, our students are immersed in what he called "millennial-oriented Technology" (blogs, wikis, tagging, IM, Myspace and Podcasts for example). Many students talk of "powering down" when they enter a classroom and "powering up" when they leave. He distinguished between digital immigrants and digital natives. Immigrants work at conventional speed, natives a twitch speed. Immigrants like linear problem solving, natives like random. Immigrants read text first, natives "read" graphics first. Immigrants are "work" oriented, natives are "play" oriented. Couple these observations with the fact that the skills needed in todays workforce are changing, that employers are looking for workers who can solve problems, communicated effectively and in diverse manners, apply technological skills to access, apply and create new information, are leaders, and who have a thirst for lifelong learning, self direction and renewal and schools, for the most part, are not only missing an opportunity to capture a fleeing school population, but also to prepare students for 21st century work opportunities, opportunities that are quickly going over seas.
In short, it was a thought-provoking, perhaps even thought-challenging lecture. I encourage all readers to view his presentation and to visit the institute's website.
