Sunday night I was relaxing at home, flipping through the T.V. channels and something caught my eye.  A&E’s new reality show Teach: Tony Danza follows sitcom start Tony Danza as he tries his hand and teaching English in the biggest public school in Philadelphia. The thing that caught my attention was his reaction to the students in his class who had reading disabilities.

From Mr. Danza’s perspective, letting a student go to resource to take a test would be isolating that student from the mainstream class.  He felt that the student was choosing to be lazy.  In this particular episode Mr. Danza gave his 10th grade class a test on the book, Of Mice and Men. Half the class (12 students) failed the test. Mr. Danza’s reaction was that the students aren’t reading the book and aren’t doing the work because they aren’t trying.  He said he did the same thing when he was in high school.

Tony was called in to the principals office and she informed him that BY LAW he is required to allow any student resource time when they request it. The principal also tried to help him understand that learning and reading disabilities are real and aren’t just something “lazy” kids make up.

A few things stood out to me in this episode.  One, I think that there is still that stigma in America when it come to reading disabilities. Some people still believe that if the student can just motivate themselves enough then they will love to read. It broke my heart to hear some of the students comment to the camera that they tried to read.  They said they read a page over and over and they still couldn’t comprehend what the text was saying.  They were putting forth the effort to read and they still struggled with comprehension. Much of the time poor reading comprehension originates with poor decoding skills.  For students with reading disabilities a program that is systematic and explicit instruction is crucial to improve their reading abilities.

The end of the episode showed his students left frustrated and Mr. Danza crying. I could tell he was at a loss for how to help the students. I think he was beginning to understand that he needed to change his mindset in order to reach his students. I am interested to see how the semester progresses.

In a recent interview in Parade magazine Tony Danza talks about the difficulties of being a teacher. “It’s tough—you’ve got kids who read at a third-grade level and others in the same room who read at an 11th-grade level. That’s what teachers are up against—not to mention the culture in general. As a teacher, you’re supposed to “model” things for the kids—show them the ways that education matters in the world. But where in their communities do they see that? ... I tell them, “If you have one person who’s committed to your education and your future, you’re very lucky.” A lot of these kids in public school don’t have that. They need to know that someone cares.There’s this story another teacher told me, about a big storm that comes and throws thousands of starfish onto the beach. The next day, they’re broiling in the sun, and a guy starts throwing them back into the ocean. Another guy comes along and says, “There’s thousands of them—how are you going to make any difference?” And the first guy picks up another starfish, throws it in, and says, “It made a difference to that one.”

Overall I think that Tony Danza has a good heart and really wants to help inner city students succeed.  I just hope he quickly understands that reading disabilities aren’t a made up excuse made by kids who didn’t want to read Of Mice and Men.

Please leave your comments about your perception of learning disabilities or the show Teach: Tony Danza.

By Reading Horizons Curriculum Director & ESL Specialist, Heidi Hyte

The other day I had the opportunity to participate in an online training to discuss the role phonics plays in the ESL classroom. Following are a few of my thoughts regarding the implications of phonics for ESL students learning to read and speak English:

1) How many times do our ESL students ask, “Teacher, how do you say this word?”

We tell our students how to say the word, but we don’t often know why we say it that way. We can help our ESL students develop autonomy by teaching them strategies to help them pronounce words on their own. This approach better prepares them for “real-life” experiences that occur outside the classroom (where their teacher isn't available).

2) Incorporating phonics instruction in the ESL classroom provides focused training on the sounds of the English language.

Such training provides an opportunity to analyze and dissect the English language in new ways. With this focused and conscious practice, pronunciation improves.

3) When ESL students learn the meaning of the word along with the sound of the word simultaneously, it “sticks” better.

Students are able to remember the word more effectively when they associate the meaning and the sound with the written word.

4) Who couldn't use a little help with their spelling?

Phonics instruction helps ESL students' improve their spelling since encoding (putting sounds together) is an integral part of explicit phonics instruction.

5) ESL students’ confidence increases when they are empowered with skills that help them successfully read and pronounce and spell English independently. 

I saw this first hand. One of my students who I had taught in a previous semester approached me one day in the hallway of the school and was very excited to report that he could decode and pronounce vocabulary better than his friend who was in a higher-level English class who had not had phonics training. His confidence empowered him. To witness this first-hand helps me realize that although this was simply anecdotal feedback, the effects of teaching phonics to ESL students is not only effective, but powerful.

As the Curriculum Manager and ESL Director at Reading Horizons, I have learned a lot about the "development" aspect of the coined term "Curriculum Development." To "develop" in this context means to create, polish, and improve materials and to oversee projects to completion.  For me lately, it means getting down in the trenches, rolling up your sleeves, and going to work.  As I have been actively engaged in improving the Reading Horizons software and direct instruction materials over the last few years, I have learned the role of patience, balance, and vision.  I have been reminded of the importance of character in the work place--sincerely caring about your work, consistently striving to do your very best, and putting in an honest day's work. 

I mentioned the word vision.  Under the leadership of Tyson Smith, President of Reading Horizons, each department has its vision "emblazoned" on the wall in each respective department to always remind its employees of what we are there to do.  I want to share the vision statement for Reading Horizons' Curriculum department.  It reads:

Produce excellent-quality curriculum that fills expanding needs without compromising the simplicity and effectiveness of the method.

I had an experience this week while engaged in a significant, "brain-draining" task that kind of popped up out of the blue.  I was "in the zone," concentrating deeply on the task at hand, when the end users of the product I was working on came to mind.  I thought of students learning how to read for the first time in their lives.  I thought of refugees who have had very little formal education who would learn life-long literacy skills.  I thought of non-native English speakers who have never learned reading strategies that have "clicked" for them before.  I thought of teachers and tutors and volunteers who have a noble "vision" and a strong desire to help their students learn to read, to learn literacy skills, to learn English.  It put things in perspective for me.  It made my efforts seem worth it.  It made the workload, though very heavy and overwhelming at times, seem lighter.  It made me want to try even harder to "produce excellent-quality curriculum that fills expanding needs."  

There are a lot of needs out there.  I'm grateful to work for a company that assumes a small role in helping to fulfill some of those needs.  I appreciate those users, both students and teachers alike, who motivate me to do my best to live up to this curriculum vision while fulfilling their own.

To see where this blog post coexists, see http://www.esltrail.com/.