SECOND OPINIONS : In Real Back to Basics, Teachers Talk to Parents : As the most foolish aspects of whole language instruction are discarded, teachers must remember to treat parents as partners in educating children.
Having been an educator for many years, having been around the innovation block more times than I’d care to admit, I am not surprised about the back-to-basics push, and the “Scarlet Lettering” of the whole language approach. I always found the whole language philosophy to be somewhat cloudy, for want of a better term, and the element that seemed to block out most of the logical sunshine for me was “invented” spelling, allowing for and even enkurajing mispelled wurds.
The epitome of confusion crossed my desk the other day when a teacher I used to work with sent me a blank report card created by some esoteric educational administrator at the height of the whole language thing. On it, teachers were asked to assign a letter grade for invented spelling.
Now, just how does a teacher grade a student on invented spelling? From this relatively unsophisticated educator’s standpoint, a report grade of an A, for instance, means that the student cannot spell. And that’s good, right? I can envision a teacher talking to the student’s parents and saying, “You know, Johnny is a terrible speller and that’s why I gave him an A! And as far as Mary getting an F is concerned: “Mary’s a great speller, therefore I had to fail her.”
But to these confused parents I say, hang in there because with the eventual demise of invented spelling, today’s A’s will be tomorrow’s Fs, and the current crop of Fs will dominate future honors English classes. I’m not quite sure why children simply can’t just be encouraged to get their “thawts” down on paper, then have a teacher make suggestions and corrections, and finally have the children rewrite those “thoughts” in a style that’s acceptable to an old educational codger like myself. I assume that’s too simplistic an approach.
Sarcasm aside, this scenario is just one vignette in a broader canvas of educational uncertainty generated, in large measure, by an uncertain and somewhat frightened professional educational community not wishing to come across to parents as dinosaurs in regard to curriculum and instruction. And what better way to prevent that from happening than by setting oneself up as an “expert,” surrounding oneself with jargon and circling the wagons with cutting-edge, ambiguous curriculum consultants, all to put some safe distance between the educative process and increasingly confused parents.
I always refer to parents as “natural educators” and contend that raising a child from infancy is probably one of the most sophisticated educative processes. Parents are teachers. I also encourage school districts, boards of education and private school advisory boards to recruit and select educational leaders who are capable of explaining the elements of any instructional program in terms that parents can readily understand.
Therefore, the real back to basics movement is defined in the communication domain. Be forthright, be open, treat parents like partners in the educative process. Be an educator, not a bureaucrat; be a teacher, not a pencil pusher. And don’t be afraid to admit you are wrong every now and then.
My personal back to basics movement has nothing to do with phonics versus whole language (some elements of which, by the way, I do believe can coexist), or any or all of the other myriad of competing methodologies. My movement is defined within the classroom, because that is where I like to be. I want to watch great teachers teach, I want to see children learn. I want to be a partner to that magic dynamic. I do not want to be an administrator, I want to be an educator.
There are days when I have doubt. There are days when my office is a whirlpool of problems, when the paperwork piles up, when the phone rings off the hook, when there is a line of people outside my office door. There are days when I begin to wonder whether this or that program is effective, or if such and such a methodology is working. There are days when I ask myself, “Why am I here? What is my role?” And it is during these periods that I leave my office and walk into any classroom, and gaze into the beautiful children’s eyes, and I know exactly why I am here, and why I do the job I do. That’s basic, and I love getting back to it.
