This story breaks your heart and give you hope for the future all at the same time. It is about a man whose life got turned upside down, so he made some serious lemonade. We could learn a lot about resilience and living in the moment from this guy.
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| Ken Rensink found his calling, teaching special education, after a debilitating accident when he was 19. Now 47, he talked about his journey with friend and colleague Laurel Hill-Ward at StoryCorps in Chico, Calif. |
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| John Horan was dean at the charter school where Tierra Jackson was a struggling student. Part of the reason she struggled: Jackson was homeless. |
Teachers use a variety of methods to get students of wildly disparate levels up to reading speed
Hailey Heinz / Journal Staff Writer/Published: Oct 9, 2012Reading abilities in a first grade classroom range from students who read with near fluency to those who don't know which letter makes the sound at the beginning of "he." In a group with such variety, and with an increasing emphasis from state officials on ensuring all students can read by third grade, elementary teachers must use a whole host of strategies as they try to reach every student. "It is a lot of different things going on, and it's whatever will work," said Jami Jacobson, the executive director of curriculum and instruction at Albuquerque Public Schools. "And every classroom is different, the needs of the kids in a classroom are going to vary … those days where we all sat at our desks and worked on one thing together, those days are gone." In Yvonne Sanchez's first grade class at 7 Bar Elementary, students spend part of their morning on separate reading and writing activities, giving Sanchez time to work with individual students. Sanchez assigns students to different activities, so they don't do the same one every time. Some students went straight for the classroom computers - perhaps not intuitive to adults, but computers are part of reading instruction in 2012. Since there aren't enough adults in a classroom to read to each student, the computer "reads" while students listen through headphones and see the book's words and illustrations on the screen. Some of the illustrations even come to life. Several pairs of students were assigned to read together. Sofia Gonzalez, 6, is a strong reader, so she helped her partner with words he didn't know. She said she likes reading in pairs. Other students did "word work," with activities based on several assigned words to improve their understanding. They were practicing words with "short i" sounds, like hit and win. They had to write the word five times, draw a picture showing its meaning and use it in a sentence. Lucia Garrett, 6, was working with the word "win," last week, and she used it in the sentence "I can win games every time." She said she enjoys reading, and immediately started talking about her favorite moment in the children's classic "The Polar Express." "Some words I have to sound out, but some I don't, because I know them," she said. The value of sounding out words, versus figuring them out from context, is an ongoing conversation in the world of reading instruction. Through the years, the pendulum has swung from strictly phonics based methods that focus on sounding out letters to methods that emphasize "whole language" by encouraging students to figure out words from context. Jacobson said the best way to teach reading is with a combination of both - teaching students how to decode their language, but also how to understand what they're reading. "You need to have a balance," she said. "You need children to have phonemic awareness. They need to understand how their language works, the mechanics of it and how to sort it out when they get stuck." But she said if that's all students learn, they won't be strong readers. "What we find is we have kids who can decode until the cows come home, but they don't know what they're reading," she said. "They can sound out a 17 letter word, but they may not ever understand what it is, how to use it or to use it in context with anything else." Rep. Jimmie Hall, R Albuquerque, is passionate about making sure phonics are included in any reading program used in New Mexico. He unsuccessfully pushed a bill in 2011 that proposed defunding any college of education that doesn't teach reading instruction in line with "scientifically based reading research and the science of reading." Hall said the bill meant to ensure that phonics are included in any reading program.
Sometimes even those students and schools everyone has decided are a lost cause can show us that numbers and statistics are not the only story...
Editorial: Anthony Elementary Teaches N.M. a Lesson
Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board/Published 10/11/12: At Anthony Elementary, almost all of the 420 students come from low income families. Almost all entered the K 6 school speaking Spanish as their first language. And apparently someone forgot to tell them, their parents and their teachers at the schoolhouse door that poverty and having English as your second language are insurmountable roadblocks to learning absent huge new injections of taxpayer cash - which carry no guarantee of positive results. Apparently nobody told them - because poverty and ESL don't result in poor student performance at Anthony. APS Superintendent Winston Brooks, teacher union boss Ellen Bernstein and legislative naysayers should take note. Anthony Elementary, with its low income, Spanish speaking students, puts statewide and APS reading and math proficiency rates to shame. For 2011 2012, 70 percent of Anthony Elementary students tested as proficient in math; 62.4 percent tested as proficient in reading. Compare that to the math averages of 51 percent statewide/43 percent at APS and reading averages of 43 percent statewide/51 percent at APS. Anthony is the only school in the Gadsden district to get an "A" from the state and one of the top five schools in New Mexico, according to the Public Education Department, based in great part on the progress its students have made over three years. And that progress is based in great part on culture - one of success. Principal Linda Perez has the halls lined with college pennants and named for area universities. The school motto is "No excuses! We're a College Bound Campus!" The faculty has set a goal to improve test scores by 10 percent each year, and students are tested quarterly so teachers know where they are and where they need to focus. Short term and long term. Perez and her teachers are entrusted with educating 420 K 6 students in southern New Mexico. But their approach, teamwork and success provide a lesson for every school in the state.This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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