I'd like to take this opportunity to respond to David's question re: authentic/inauthentic teaching moments in books, films, TV, etc. Perhaps my story will be of some interest and will help phonemic awareness/alaphabetic skeptics to rethink their positions.

Between my ninth and tenth years in school, I came to a conscious decision that if I were ever going to learn to read, it would be up to me. That summer I kept thinking about a conference held between my fourth grade teacher, my mother, and me. I recalled my teacher showing us what I later learned were my results on the Primary Mental Abilities Test. Ms. Murphy said I had scored at the high school levels on problem-solving and reasoning subtests while failing all subtests pertaining to any and all aspects of reading. My mother asked what she should do about it and Ms. Murphy simply replied that I was a bright girl and that eventually I'd learn to read. Being the last of five children into a family of limited means, my mother took my teacher at her word and thought no more about it.

In second grade, I remember Ms. Street writing the vowels on the board and giving their sounds, but to me, they all sounded the same. That evening, I told Mom about the "joke" Ms. Street had played on us. I remember Ms. Street being puzzled about how I could score so high on spelling tests, but couldn't remember the words in Dick, Jane and Sally. She didn't know that I had developed an elaborate system of cheating whereby all I did was copy the words on a small piece of paper or on my desk. She always dictated the words in order and she seemed not to notice me copying. 

As a curious child and someone eager to learn, my hand was always in the air to ask questions. I wanted to hear explanations of things other students were learning from reading. It was a devastating blow during geography when my fifth grade teacher angrily said, "Bob, put your hand down! Don't you know I get sick and tired of seeing your hand wave in my face all day long?" It was years before I once again enjoyed the study of peoples around the world and the lands where they lived.

For sixth grade, we moved to a larger community where all students in my class were in the same grade. When the teacher realized I could read very little, she sent me to work with the custodian whenever the class was engaged in reading assignments or subjects that required reading such as health and social studies. 

The custodian was very kind; he taught me far more than the teacher. For example, to give me something to do, he asked me to select a picture from a coloring book; I chose a Scotty dog with fur sticking out in every direction. He than asked me to trace it twice on a piece of 3/4 inch pine board, so I could make a pair of book ends for my mother. 

He gave me a coping saw and said to begin cutting. It was difficult. The thin, fragile blade seemed to break at the least amount of pressure. He would kindly say, "Now, Little Lady, coping saw blades are like people. They are fragile and you have to treat them with care." When I'd complain that the board was too tough, he said, "Now, Little Lady you must remember this board is like life; it's difficult to cut through, so it's up to you to figure out how to do it." Then, he'd give me instructions on how to hold the saw, how to move it back and forth in a smooth motion, and how to treat the delicate blade gently. I looked forward to working in the basement boiler room at my work bench with my new friend, Besides, I was glad to be out of the critical environment of the classroom.

Other than my time with this beautiful Black man, my sixth grade year was miserable. One day, the other students decided not to speak to me; so they didn't-- except for the two Black girls in my class. At recess, while standing alone by the building, they came up and said, "We knows just how you feel," and I knew they did, because that was the treatment they received from most of the students every day. That year, I was accused of stealing someone�s stickers and was reprimanded for something I didn�t do. Another time, I was accused of damaging a playground swing over the weekend and had to meet with the principal, because a woman across the street described the child she saw and swore it was me. It wasn�t.

Two weeks into the seventh grade, I was called into the office to learn that I would be transferred to the "Opportunity Class." My heart sank. The boy across the street was in that class. He was older than I, much bigger, and he had great difficulty talking and figuring out how to carry on a conversation. While we enjoyed playing cards and board games, drawing and running around for hide and seek with my youngest brother and other kids in the neighborhood, I knew I wasn't like him. 

Just before the big move into the dreaded class, I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle, and shortly after my stay in the hospital, we moved again. Thank goodness! My sigh of relief must have been heard around the world; however, in my new school, I learned the nightmare of spelling bees. Teams were chosen and we sat in rows. As the first person in the row missed a word, he or she moved to the back and everyone else moved up a seat. When it was my turn to sit in the 'hot seat' I knew not to put my bottom on the chair, because as soon as I was given a word, I'd simply move to the back. There was no way I could spell seventh grade words, consequently, when spelling bee teams were chosen, I was always the last one picked. 
 
We moved once more before the end of the seventh grade making three different schools that year. I really enjoyed meeting new classmates and making new friends with the hope that once they got to know me, they wouldn't care that I couldn't read. And I was right. There were usually some for whom it made no difference. In fact, several tried to help me with my homework.

I started the eighth grade in a new community, new school, and new challenges, and it didn't take long for the teachers to realize I wasn't living up to their standards. I remember thinking that being a teacher would be a terrible job, because they seemed so unhappy and there was little joy in their classrooms, no fun, and no forgiveness for failure to understand the reading assignments. I worked incredibly hard each evening attempting to read the texts. I'd study the pictures, graphs, and diagrams in hopes of getting clues regarding the content. Next day, I'd sit in class in utter amazement as other students engaged in discussions about what they had read. I wondered how on earth they could gain that much information from texts that were incomprehensible to me. 

While in the ninth grade, Mom purchased a television set, and she loved to share programs with me in the evenings. While working as hard as I could on homework, she often called to me, "Bob, come on down and watch this television show with me. You'll learn more from it than from that book you're reading." I'd protest, but she insisted. The truth is, she was right. 

I treaded water in ninth grade by enrolling in stagecraft, home economics, public speaking and anything else that required little reading. I had no skills to understand the 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' even when someone else read it to me. 'Casey at The Bat', however, seemed like a fun way to interpret a baseball game. And so it went.

I made friends with neighborhood kids, and we often played a teenage version of "Truth or Dare or Desparate" under the light post on the spring evenings. There were cliques at school and none of us belonged. In fact, some from the �in� crowd made fun of my clothing and teased me about getting what I wore at the Thrift Shop. They knew this to be true, because what I wore used to be theirs.

As summer approached, I kept thinking about the first day of school and that dreaded English form everyone was required to complete. After entering my name, I was to list all the books I had read over the summer. Of course, I'd never read a book, so those spaces were always left blank. The more I thought about it, the more that conference with my fourth grade teacher and the lessons from my custodian friend kept popping into my consciousness, so I took my baby-sitting money to the book store and told the clerk I wanted to teach my six-year old niece how to read; I asked her to recommend a book. On the spot, I purchased, 'Teach Your Child to Read." I still have the book. 

I spent the summer working through the pages and came to realize that letters have rather consistent sounds, that the /r/ sisters (er, ir, and ur) are triplets that all have the same sound. I learned that the /oi/ boys are twins who sound alike. By consistently going over and over the same pages, I began to learn that it was possible to sound out words, and that I didn't need to memorize how they looked. I was fascinated that a,e,i,o, and u didn't sound alike at all, but each had distinct sounds. What a revelation! I was amazed and excited. 

Finally, about half way through the summer, I worked up my courage to go to the public library and ask the children's librarian if she could recommend a book. I quietly told her I wasn't a very good reader. She found 'Hot Rod' for me. The biggest word in the book was ambulance; all the others were composed of consonant-vowel-consonant words or some variation that I could now decode. It took the rest of the summer to read that exciting book, and I felt like I had conquered Mt. Everest when I finished reading the last page.   

I took a job that year working at a soda fountain and soon was promoted to manager with responsibility for closing the shop, counting the money, and making certain everything was as it should be for the night. Customers liked me and I really enjoyed interacting with them. For some reason, it gave me some status at school, too. And now, I believed myself to be a reader. 

Unfortunately, that balloon was soon popped when the tenth grade English teacher assigned the reading of a classic book. I was nearly sick with worry until I looked in front of me at the soda shop one evening and there was a circular display of Classic Comics. With a sense of relief, I chose 'A Tale of Two Cities'. I'm here to tell you that the essence of that tale cannot be translated from the illustrations. Further, the words were far beyond my ability to decipher. 

Without fanfare, the teacher asked me to stay after class when my "book report" was more than a little garbled. As she quizzed me, I simply had no idea what the story line was, what cities were involved or who the main characters were. My confession produced a rather mild scolding and encouragement to practice my reading. That was all the help I ever received in school for reading improvement. Nonetheless, I was gaining confidence in myself as a problem solver and decision maker. 

After a massive flood forced my place of employment out of business, I began working at an ice cream parlor. One of my jobs was to paint Disney characters eating ice cream on the windows. They were pretty good, and my photograph standing beside my artwork was placed in the local paper with a nice piece about me. Again my confidence soared and I continued practicing my reading every chance I could.

I wanted to go to college, but my high school counselor warned me that my reading skills were too low for success. She recommended a small, liberal arts college in the wheat fields of western Kansas, but I had visited that campus and felt it was not where I belonged. By this time, my mother had her own business and she sacrificed to send me to Colorado Women�s College. There, I worked in the bookstore, made some life-long friends and was voted president of my dormitory. Later, at Kansas State University, I lived at home and completed an undergraduate degree in elementary education. I had no desire to belong to a sorority, but Mom insisted that I join if asked; she wanted me to have advantages she never enjoyed. To my surprise, my sorority sisters elected me to represent them in the Miss K-State pageant. Mistakenly, they reasoned that since I was a runner-up to Cheryl Richie at CWC who later became Miss America, that I could do it. I begged them to choose a replacement, since
 there was no competitive exercise in the CWC choices, while K-State required a display of talent. They encouraged me and refused to bail me out. I was scared to death and totally bombed my talent performance�a dramatic �reading� of all things. I was glad the competition did not include a bathing suit parade; that would have definitely caused my early demise.

At K-State, one of my professors asked me to make an appointment for a conference. He, I hope with good intent, informed me that I shouldn�t work so hard, that I didn�t have the background that most of the students had, and that I probably never would be able to catch up. Once again, I realized that it was up to me to work harder and to cut through the toughness of life.

Time marched on as I completed an undergraduate degree in elementary education, a Master�s degree in education of the mentally retarded, and a Ph.D. in Education of the Exceptional with a minor in psychology. I was thrilled to receive commendation for my dissertation defense�the first one awarded in the last four years at The Catholic University of American in my program of studies.
 
As I look back on my career as an assistant teacher in a school for the mentally retarded before children with disabilities were included in public schools, as a camp counselor for a similar population in Maine, as a second-grade teacher in Oregon, as a teacher for special needs students in Oregon and Virginia, and later the initiator of the Special Education Teacher Preparation Program at George Mason University, and now as a faculty researcher in the area of reading disabilities at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, I wonder how I got to a place where my background suggests I should never be. 

My purpose in writing this long narrative is to encourage teachers of adolescent and adult struggling readers to teach phonics beginning with differences between sounds, because some  may just now be ready to learn sound differences. Maybe I�m taking time to share my story, because I have a manuscript to revise and I don�t know where to begin. Reliving my struggles gives me courage to tackle the task and convince myself that with hard work, the task can be accomplished with dispatch and excellence. All I have to do is remember that life is tough and that it�s my responsibility to figure out how to cut through it.

Best regards, barb given



Barbara K. Given, Ph.D.
Director, Adolescent and Adult Learning Research Center
Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, and
Director, Center for Honoring Individual Learning Diversity, an International Learning Styles Center 
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
Fax: 703-993-4325
Ph:  703-993-4406


----- Original Message -----
From: Donna Chambers <donnaedp at cox.net>
Date: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:36 am
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 783] Re: Movies and texts aboutlow-literateadults


> Another note about movies -

> A great classroom lesson/discussion  would be to compare the 

> female heroin 

> in Freedom Writers with the female heroin in Educating Rita. The 

> obvious 

> comparison is the passion of the teacher versus the passion of the 

> student. 

> What obstacles do each need to overcome to get to the goal?  Wow!  

>  Donna 

> Chambers

> 

> ----- Original Message ----- 

> From: "Wendy Quinones" <wbquinones at adelphia.net>

> To: "The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List" 

> <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>

> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 10:43 PM

> Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 765] Re: Movies and texts 

> aboutlow-literateadults

> 

> 

> > So many people wrote about "Freedom Writers" that I thought I'd 

> send along

> > this Op-Ed piece from the New York Times.  The "hero teacher" 

> has always

> > bothered me -- and I'm sure glad I teach adults!

> >

> > Wendy Quinones

> >

> >

> > ----- Original Message ----- 

> > From: "David J. Rosen" <djrosen at comcast.net>

> > To: <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>

> > Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 8:17 AM

> > Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 760] Movies and texts about

> > low-literateadults

> >

> >

> >> Professional Development Colleagues,

> >>

> >> Several weeks ago I asked about books and movies that inspired 

> you as a

> >> teacher.  We had a rich and interesting discussion that 

> produced a

> >> terrific list that I have archived on the Adult Literacy 

> Education Wiki 

> >> at

> >>

> >> 

> http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Books_and_Films_which_Inspire_Teachers>>

> >> I hope you -- and others -- will help now with another 

> question.  Can

> >> you recommend good books or movies (or scenes from movies) that you

> >> believe authentically capture the experience of an adult 

> learning to

> >> read, write or compute.  The film "Stanley and Iris" comes to 

> mind, for

> >> example. For some it is an authentic example, for others it is

> >> inauthentic.  I am also interested to hear about scenes from 

> films that

> >> you believe are inauthentic, or that just plain get it wrong, 

> and I

> >> would like to know what you think was inauthentic about it.  I 

> would>> also appreciate hearing from people who learned (or are 

> learning) to

> >> read as adults.  From your experience as a person who has 

> learned to

> >> read as an adult, what texts, what films ring true? Which don't?

> >>

> >> Those of you who teach adult new readers might be willing to 

> take this

> >> question to your students and post back to the list what they say.

> >>

> >> Thanks for your help.

> >>

> >> David J. Rosen

> >> djrosen at comcast.net

> >>

> >> ----------------------------------------------------

> >> National Institute for Literacy

> >> Adult Literacy Professional Development mailing list

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> >> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to

> >> http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/professionaldevelopment

> >>

> >> Professional Development section of the Adult Literacy 

> Education Wiki

> >> 

> http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Adult_Literacy_Professional_Development>>

> >

> 

> 

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> -------------

> 

> 

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> 

> 

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