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Okay, first graders. Let’s all read the lyrics to “Yellow Submarine!”

(January 26, 2007) It is 3 p.m. Older Son has finished his last midterm and is probably walking out the door of his school right now, feeling that wonderful feeling of being done with 1 ½ weeks of grueling, non-stop studying.

In the meantime, I am standing in the window-less auditorium of Younger Son’s gifted and talented elementary school, watching the first rehearsal for the school’s upcoming talent show. Two of the mothers of kids in Younger Son’s first grade class have, very kindly, taken it upon themselves to choreograph a performance of The Yellow Submarine that anyone in the first grade is welcome to take part in.

Now, about 20 kids are sitting in the side rows of the auditorium, ready to hear what they will be expected to do.

One of the mothers in charge passes out lime green sheets of paper.

Each first grade child takes a lyric sheet.

Mother-in-Charge says, “Okay, everyone, let’s read the lyrics out loud.”

My heart sinks.

My son cannot possibly read the lyrics to Yellow Submarine.

My son is working on learning how to read the Dick and Jane stories.

Can all his first grade classmates read the Yellow Submarine?

As I watch, each of the first graders looks at their lyric sheet and begins reading, “In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea…”

My eyes seek out the mother of son’s Reading Partner. She is standing across the auditorium. She is looking at me. We exchange a meaningful glance that says, “Look at what these kids can do. Look at what our kids can’t.”

I look back at my son. He is not looking at his lyric sheet. Instead, he is aimlessly looking all around the auditorium.

I look at son’s Reading Partner.

He is looking at his lyric sheet and appears to be reading it.

Feeling such sadness, such empathy, for my son, I look back at him. If I feel this bad, I can only imagine what he must be feeling. It can’t feel good.to be the only child in the first grade who is not able to participate in this first step of the rehearsal because he is not able to read the lyrics.

I want to run to him and pick him up and tell him it’s okay.

I want carry him out of here, away from the sense of exclusion and difference he must be feeling.

I feel the way any parent would feel if they watched their child be left out of something, if their child was the only one not picked to participate in a game in the playground, or not picked to be on a team.

Except this is worse, because other kids are not excluding him.

He is excluding himself.

He is not even pretending to be able to read the lyrics.

Months later I will come to realize that this is a good thing. My kid is done pretending to be able to read. He is done memorizing all the books in his reading basket and then pretending to read them. All through kindergarten he asked for help in learning how to read and his teacher did not help him. I told her that Younger Son would say things at home like, “I want to learn how to read, Mommy, but my school isn’t teaching me how to. They tell us to look at the pictures. That’s not reading, Mommy. I want to really read.”

Neither his teacher, nor I, at the time realized this meant that the Balanced Literacy approach of learning to read was not working for my son. Neither one of us realized he was trying—in every way a 5-year-old could possibly do so—to communicate to us that he needed to be taught phonics.

Now I have heard him. Now I am teaching him phonics at home and he is being pulled out of class to learn phonics in school. He has made great strides with phonics and, now, he is brave enough to openly let everyone know what he tried to tell me a full year ago: He does not know how to read. And he wants someone to teach him how to do so.

But I do not recognize his braveness at the moment.

Instead, I see his open inability to not read the lyrics as exclusion and my heart breaks for my son.

The reading of the lyrics seems endless.

It is torturous to watch.

I don’t know how I will make it through.

I wonder if my son will make it through. I wonder if he will continue looking around the auditorium, or if he will begin pretending to know how to read the lyrics.

As I watch, my son takes his lime green sheet of lyrics and folds it in half. Maybe he is getting ready to leave?

I am with him.

I will take him home.

He does not have to participate in the talent show if it makes him feel bad.

But my son does not stand up and give any indication of wanting to leave.

He continues to sit there, waiting for his classmates to finish reading.

He folds his lyric sheet again.

And again.

Tears spring to my eyes as I realize that, while his classmates are continuing to read the lyrics to Yellow Submarine, my little boy is slowly, methodically, transforming his sheet of lyrics into a paper airplane.

I sign my son up to do more of what, clearly, isn’t working when it comes to teaching him how to read

(January 26, 2007) After the reading of the lyrics has finished and all the kids—including Younger Son—are on the stage learning their song and dance moves, I head upstairs to the main office of my son’s elementary school to iron out the final logistics of signing Younger Son up for the school’s extended day program.

Each Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, this program gives a group of kids an extra 45 minutes of time learning whatever they may need help with, be it reading, writing or math.

Younger Son had participated in extended day last year when he was in kindergarten but, because his school is uptown and we live in the West Village, his bus would always get stuck in rush hour traffic and Younger Son wouldn’t get home until around 5:30 p.m. The poor kid would be exhausted. After about a week, I pulled him out of the program. At the time, I thought it was more important for him to have time to play and unwind than to, at the age of 5, extend an already long day.

Now that he’s at the bottom of the class, I’m willing to do it even though extending a day of what already isn’t working for him in the classroom doesn’t make any sense to me, especially since he has made so much progress by working at home on phonics with me.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that signing Younger Son up for extended day will probably not help him and might actually hurt since he’ll be too tired to do reading with me when he gets home.

And I keep thinking about a story I recently read in the excellent book “Parenting a Struggling Reader,” by Susan Hall and Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D. In that book the authors tell the story of a mother who hired her child’s teacher to tutor her child after school even though the child wasn’t learning how to read with that same teacher in the classroom. One of the authors also asked her son’s teacher for help and advice but when her advice didn’t make sense to the mother, she and her husband hired a tutor who did systematic phonics with their child.

That author wrote, “At about the same time that our son began his tutoring, our acquaintances began their journey by relying solely upon their daughter’s teacher for advice and help. The mother…hired that teacher to tutor the child after school. In the spring of our children’s second grade year, the mother wanted to know the name of our son’s tutor because she was aware our son was making considerable progress. After about two months of working with our tutor, the daughter told her mother, `Gee, Mom, Mrs. D. (the tutor) could sure teach Mrs. G. (her classroom teacher) a lot about teaching reading!’ Once she began to make real progress in learning to read, even the child knew the difference between effective and ineffective teaching.”

I know what is effective and ineffective for my son.

I know that the Balanced Literacy curriculum was totally ineffective when it came to teaching him how to read.

I know he has taken his first big steps towards being a reader by working on systematic phonics at home with me.

So why am I walking up the school steps with a heavy heart, about to lock him into an extended day program where he will be working with the same teacher, using the same method that didn’t teach him to read in the classroom?

The answer to that question goes back to last weekend, when Younger Son told me Reading Partner had moved up a level in school but he had not.

This announcement had sent me into overdrive, rescue Helicopter Parenting. This was the main reason I delegated supporting Older Son with his midterms to Husband.

Since learning that Younger Son was now the very worst reader in his class. I have devoted every spare moment to researching how to help him move ahead in his reading, to buying the books that would help him, or to actually working with him.

But, clearly, his reading partner’s mother was doing something better than I was.

We had both taken a different approach to teaching our kids to read. I was having Younger Son work with Explode the Code phonics workbook and then practice what he learned in those workbooks by first reading Bob Books, which are friendly-looking, phonics-based, very short stories and then moving on to the Dick and Jane stories, which give him practice with sight words.

I thought he was making great progress.

But, obviously, his Reading Partner was doing better since he had moved up a reading level in school and my son had not.

Obviously, Reading Partner’s mother was doing a better job than I was at teaching her son to read.

The last time Reading Partner’s mother and I had compared notes on how we were teaching our kids to read, she was having her son practice phonics on www.starfall.org. She was also having him read words he could recognize in articles that interested him in The New York Times. And she was the one who told me about Sight Word Bingo, a game Younger Son and I play every night and that he loves.

The Bob Books had launched Younger Son on his way to being a reader but when Reading Partner’s mother had taken Reading Partner to Barnes & Noble to buy a set of those books, he had turned away from them in disgust. “No way am I reading those,” he announced. They seemed too babyish for him.

Two different kids.

Two different approaches.

Last weekend, when Younger Son told me Reading Partner had moved up a reading level, I knew I needed to find out what else Reading Partner’s mother had done that had been so effective.

I had immediately sent her the following email…

You are a better mother than I am

Hi Mother of Reading Partner,

You are a better mother than I am because your son has moved up a reading level and mine has not. Any new secrets to share? I’m upset because I thought Younger Son was coming along splendidly but, clearly, he is not making progress in school. Just the other week he read “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman all by himself at home and I could have jumped for joy. Now I feel totally deflated. I’m becoming as sensitive to these stupid stick dots as the kids are!

Do not ever tell anyone I said this but the fact that your son has moved ahead and mine has not, makes me want to cry. (Isn’t that pathetic?) It makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong. It makes me wonder if I’m not doing enough with Younger Son to move him along when here I am killing myself doing everything in my power to teach him to read.

I don’t understand why Younger Son is making so much progress at home but making no progress in school?

Any advice?

What have you guys been doing with reading?

It was not a fun weekend

I am referring to the weekend of January 13^th . I apologize for this step back in time but I ask you to bear with me because it is an important step back.

This weekend took place one full week before Older Son’s midterms started. It took place before any of the events I’ve written about so far. It took place before I had any idea of the most important experience I would end up documenting in this blog, an experience that would be life altering for me and that would lead to my setting up a non-profit organization to teach parents how to support their kids’ reading at home and to also run an after school and summer program teaching New York City kindergarteners and first graders how to read. (If you are interesting in signing your child up for this please email me at GoodCityLiving@aol.com.)

I started this blog because I thought the stress my family was under as a result of the NYC school system should be illegal. I started it because I felt totally helpless and frustrated and needed something good to come out of what we were going through. And so, I offered our story to the world, as a way of supporting other families who were going through the same thing we were and who were also shaking their heads and constantly muttering, “Unbelievable” when it came to what their kids were, or were not, being taught in school. I started this blog to make other families feel less alone. I took notes on what I was doing to teach Younger Son to read simply to document how much work parents had to do to help their kids at home and to show how school demands and/or failures affect the life of an entire family.

I had no idea that by taking those notes this blog would also end up documenting the remarkable failure of a reading curriculum and the stress that failure can cause a little child and a family. But here is a look at that stress…

On the Friday before the weekend I am referring to, Younger Son—whom I have been methodically teaching phonics and who has been making good, and steady, progress learning how to phonetically sound out words—came home and said , “I have good news and bad news. The good news is I’m going to be a red stick dot soon.” (This is the next reading level.)

I said, “That’s great! How do you know? Did your teacher give you a reading test?”

“No. I’m just really good at reading so I’ll be a red stick dot soon.”

Then he said, “The bad news is that Reading Partner became a red stick dot today.” This announcement caused me to send the email I posted in my last post. It also led to a weekend of…

a. About one dozen emails back and forth to Reading Partner’s mother in which we shared strategies about what we were doing to help our kids learn how to read and what we were finding most valuable. She told me her son had benefited from attending extended day at the school. He said a game called Pie Man, which she could not make heads or tails of, had been the most valuable aspect of it.

b. Emails to Younger Son’s teacher asking her to:

Email #1. Please give Younger Son a few books in the next stick dot level because I am sure he can read them. (I am totally mystified as to why he is making so much progress at home but is making no progress in school.)

Email #2. Sign him up for Extended Day.

Email #3. NOT sign him up for Extended Day but to first please tell me what exactly he will do in Extended Day.

Email #4. Let me watch a session of Extended Day so that I can SEE what he will be doing during that time so that I can know firsthand if it is more valuable than the systematic phonics and sight word work we are doing at home.

Get the feeling that I’m starting not to trust my kid’s school?

Get the feeling I am becoming a pain in the ass for the teacher?

I have not always been this way. I think I emailed Younger Son’s kindergarten teacher two times during the entire school year and one of those emails was to ask what time his class birthday celebration would be held. I used to be one of those send-your-kids-to-school-and-ask-them-what-they-learned-at-school-when-they-come-home-moms. I want to be one of those send-your-kids-to- school-and-ask-them-what-they-learned-at-school-when-they-come-home-moms.

Now that I am a veteran of the NYC public school system and have entrusted not one, but two, of my kids to those schools, I can tell you I will never be one of those moms again.

Now I can tell you Younger Son’s entire curriculum.

Now I can teach Younger Son his entire curriculum—and much, much more.

Anyway, that weekend I also,

c. Snarled at my entire family.

d. Cried.

e. Organized a year’s worth of disorganization in the basement of our weekend house. Organizing helps me gain clarity when things in life don’t make any sense.

Our basement now makes sense.

How Younger Son is being taught to read still does not.

f. Read “Parenting a Struggling Reader” which made me realize many parents have trod this path before me. As that book says, “Sometimes the methods the school is using to teach your child to read are known to be less effective than another approach or program…Many parents decide that the most efficient and effective way to help their child is to hire a private reading tutor to work with the child outside of school or to attempt home schooling with a program the parents purchase on their own.

“But wait, you are likely to say. Why is all this up to me? Why should I have to hire outside tutors to do what the school should be doing? Many parents expend a lot of emotional energy dealing with this question.”

That is the understatement of the century…

The book continues: “One reason why many parents are thrown back on their own resources is that the school is not required by law to offer the best available services They are obligated to ensure that a child derives `educational benefit,’ a term that is poorly defined and that often does not translate into the `program most likely to get the best results.’”

g. Took Younger Son grocery shopping and paid him ten cents for every word he could read on the boxes and in the aisles of the store. In the baked goods aisle, I pointed to the words “Ring-Ding” and “Ding-Dong.” Younger Son should have been able to read those words easily yet, for some reason, he did not. I started worrying more.

Younger Son earned $1.30 reading boxes and signs in the store. He did not enjoy the game. He wanted to be picking out his favorite flavors of Go-gurts and drinkable yogurts instead. Perhaps this was why he couldn’t read Ring-Ding and Ding-Dong. Maybe he was too focused on finishing our game and getting to the yogurt aisle.

Usually Younger Son and I enjoy grocery shopping together.

Neither one of us enjoyed it today.

I am beginning to worry that Younger Son will think I am a Ring-Ding and a Ding-Dong. I have never seen another mother have her kid read boxes in the grocery story. I have never made my son do this before.

Life used to be so normal…

I used to be so normal…

h. Had dinner out with Husband and my two wonderful kids at our favorite Italian restaurant. Usually, we have a really nice time when we go out to dinner as a family.

We talk.

We laugh.

We share stories.

Not that night. That night at dinner I interrogated Younger Son about what Pie Man was. (It is a politically correct way of playing Hangman.)

Then, instead of talking to each other and enjoying each other’s company, we all took turns playing Pie Man with Younger Son.

None of us enjoyed it.

Not me.

Not Husband.

Not Older Son.

Not Younger Son.

We brought most of our food home, untouched.

That night I cried myself to sleep.

The tension is rising. The worry is rising because…

My son’s school thinks there is something wrong with him

I have not told you this yet because I have been afraid.

I was afraid of what the outcome would be and if I would be brave enough to share it with you if it was bad.

However, to fully appreciate what I am experiencing and to have you not think I am a Ding-Dong, I think you need to know that my son’s school has recommended that he undergo a full psycho-educational evaluation.

Translation: They are pretty darn sure something is wrong with my kid.

I, on the other hand, am pretty darn sure that the only thing wrong with my kid is that his school is not teaching him how to read. Instead, as most Whole Language-based curriculums do, his school is expecting him to pick up reading on his own by guessing what words are by looking at pictures for clues. (For example, he is expected to “read” the word “tomato” by looking at the picture on the page and seeing that there are tomatoes in the picture.) He is expected to learn phonics rules from a ten minute lesson that lumps a bunch of different vowel combinations together. This cursory phonics lesson is never supported by worksheets, drills, or stories that apply those phonics rules and that would help solidify them in his mind.

Last summer, I read an article in Time magazine on the math wars currently raging in our country. See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1561144,00.html. That article said the reading wars were pretty much over. (Not in New York. This is a city where progressive education is in vogue. In New York the reading wars are alive and well.) The Time magazine article portrayed Whole Language-based curriculums as the losers in the reading wars because those curriculums produced “a generation of kids who couldn’t spell, including a high percentage who needed to be turned over to special ed to learn how to read.”

I remember reading that article and feeling sorry for those kids.

Now the same thing may happen to my child.

I am sure there is nothing wrong with him.

The school is sure there is nothing wrong with its curriculum.

Who’s right?

The school or me?

We will not know until the evaluation happens and the results are in.

Until that time comes, every time another child moves ahead in reading (and my child does not) is a step towards something possibly being wrong with my kid.

Now you can see I’m really not a Ding-Dong.

I’m just a terribly scared and worried mom.

Between the above post and the next post, is a large section of the blog that is missing. I will post that section here as soon as I can. In the meantime, if you are interested in those posts go to the regular helicopter mom blog (not the one in chronological order) and scroll down until you find them. Starting with the following post I will resume posting here chronologically each time I post to the regular blog too.

Asshol has an “e” at the end

(Jan. 29 2007) While I was on the phone with the assistant principal, I heard my kids bickering in the other room. Then, Older Son had come into the bed room and written me a note that said, “Younger Son is writing, “Older Son is an asshole over and over on his drawing eisel.”

I had waved him away since I wanted to focus completely on what the assistant principal was saying. Now I go into the living room and see that Younger Son has indeed written, “Older Son is a ass hol” on his drawing eisel.

The few times he has used bad language he has always gotten in trouble.

Younger Son is looking at me, ready to be yelled at, ready for a consequence to be issued. But I don’t yell at him. Instead, I say, “Hole has an e at the end of it. It’s h-o-l-e.”

“Oh,” he says. “Thank you.” He picks up a dry erase marker and adds an “e” to the end of the word.

Older Son is mad and I don’t blame him. He does not know how worried I am about his brother’s reading. He does not know his brother has been referred for a full psychoeducational evaluation. He does not know his brother’s school thinks there is something wrong with his brother while I think there is something wrong with the way the school is teaching kids to read. He does not know that I am pulling out all stops in order to teach Younger Son how to read myself. I will let him read, and write, just about anything at this point as long as it is spelled correctly.

Older Son picks up a piece of paper and writes, “Younger Son is the stupidest asshole.”

My wonderful, empathetic, kind, older child is so mad at his brother (and me too, I’m sure) that he then goes right for the jugular and says the most hurtful thing he can think of to his brother. He says: “I bet you can’t read this. You can’t read!”

My immediate response is to protect. I feel the way a mother of a handicapped child would feel if someone had made fun of his handicap. And so I say to Younger Son, “Of course you can read. What did Older Brother write?”

Younger Son reads, “Younger Son is the stupidest asshole” beautifully.

I remember the first grade teacher I had met in the East Hampton library. She had said she tells parents to let their kids read anything they want to, including the instructions for their Nintendo games. “Reading is reading, no matter what they are reading,” she tells the parents of her students.

“Don’t ever say Younger Son can’t read, ever again,” I say to Older Son. My tone is very harsh. “He reads beautifully.”

Younger Son picks up a piece of paper and writes, “Older Brother is a ass hol and I am smart.”

“Remember, `hole’ has an `e’ at the end,” I say.

Younger Son adds an e to hole.

My Older Son is stunned.

At first he is speechless. Then he says, “Mom?”

This is not typical behavior for me. I have raised nice, good kids who are not allowed to use bad words. That was before his school referred my 6-year-old for a psychoeducational evaluation. That was before the focus of my life was fundamentally altered by that referral. Things are different now. Now I am desperate to save my kid’s academic life. His entire future rests on how his school sees him and what the school expects of him. His entire academic future rests on his being able to read.

I say, “If he’s gonna use the word, he’s gotta know how to spell it right.”

My older son sighs and turns away. I know he is feeling lost and confused. My heart breaks for him. I do not want to tell him Younger Son’s school thinks there is something wrong with him because I do not want Older Son to start treating Younger Son differently. I also don’t want him to tell Younger Son that he has been referred for an evaluation. Not until we know the results. At that point I will tell Younger Son myself. For now I want to operate as if life is still normal. Although life has not been normal ever since I got the phone call from the school telling me my son needs to be evaluated.

Since then I have been consumed with teaching him to read. My obsession makes me think of a passage in the book Parenting a Struggling Reader in which an older child tells his mother, “I lost you from the time we found out (his younger brother) had dyslexia.”

Older Son must also feel as if he has lost me the me I used to be, a mom who refused to allow bad language to be used in the house.

Needing to teach your child how to read can change a person.

Needing to teach your child to read can take over your life.

Believe me, I know.

See what a Whole Language book looks like

(Jan. 29, 2007 Continued) Younger son is stressed and grumpy. He obviously needs to relax and unwind. He generally does so by building or creating something. I never know what he will make. Today he blows up some balloons and asks me to hang them from the ceiling with streamers. He then tapes toy astronauts to the balloons and uses sheets of construction paper and scotch tape to create space stations and docking stations. Soon, the living room is tranformed into a fantastic scene from outer space. The balloons are planets and astronauts are walking either in space or on the planets or docking in the space station. Younger Son creates and creates. With every minute that passes, he become more relaxed. Soon, he is humming and happy.

After dinner, it is homework time. We start with his spelling words. Next, he does two pages in Explode the Code. A piece of cake. His math homework consists of finding things in our apartment that are shaped like squares. He does so in the blink of an eye. Now it is time for us to read. I hold up a new, hardcover,. Dick and Jane book.

“I don’t want to read that,” he says. Later I will realize he does not realize this is a Dick and Jane book because Dick and Jane look older in the picture on the cover and, also, there is an African American boy in the picture with them. Later I will realize Younger Son is intimidated by this book because it looks like a hardcover chapter book. But I do not realize this at the time. I think he realizes this is a Dick and Jane book but, as usual, wants a book that will give him a sense of accomplishment instead of something that will take a long time to read.

I say, “This book is divided up into a lot of different stories in it. I will put post its in it so that you will see where each story ends.”

He says, “Susie said to read the books I brought home from her.”

Yuck.

I hate those books. If I never see another Whole Language book in my life, I will be very happy. The creators of Whole Language books stated that early phonics readers are boring and make no sense. They stated that these boring books were turning kids off to reading. So they went out and created books that are deadly boring in a different way— each page keeps repeating the same beginning words and varies only the words at the end of the sentences. To keep kids on their toes they decided to throw in really big words that beginning readers can’t possibly know how to read yet. To see what I mean, go to http://www.wilbooks.com/catalog/show_book.php?bfac=2214&grl=C&page=1 Once you are there, click on “view this book.” In this example, you’ll see how the words “I wear a mask” are repeated on each of the pages. Whole Language proponents believe kids pick up reading by seeing words used often. Now, if the class was learning the words “wear” or short “a” words like “mask” I could see these books being effective since they would support what is being taught in class and the kids would learn from repetition. But the kids are not being taught these words. Instead, they are given baskets full of books like this to simply go ahead and read. You can see why so many kids are unable to do so.

What I think is a total waste of time will, in a few days, end up being one of the most valuable things my son and I could have done

(Jan. 29, 2007) The last thing in the world I want to do is waste valuable reading time at home reading Whole Language books. But I do not say this to Younger Son. I don’t want him thinking I am at odds with his school.

I have never said anything bad about his school’s reading curriculum to him. And I have never gone against something the school wanted him to do. I even used to sneak his spelling words to his teacher so that Younger Son wouldn’t know I was the one choosing the appropriate words for him.

Then, one week, the assistant teacher screwed up and wrote wrong, very hard words in his spelling notebook for him to learn that week. “No way can I learn those!” he’d said, staring at his spelling notebook in horror. “No way.”

He was right. I never wanted to see that look of horror on my child’s face again so I’d started writing the weekly spelling words I was assigning him into his spelling notebook myself.

I have been so careful about preserving his respect for his teacher and his school that I wouldn’t throw out the sight words his reading specialist had given him even though she told me to do so. She’d told me to throw them out after I had pointed out to her that he was getting three sets of spelling words to learn each week—one set from his teacher, one set from her and one set from me.

“Isn’t that too many words for him to absorb?” I’d asked. “And shouldn’t he learn the easy sight words before he learns the hard ones?” (I’d realized he did not know simple words like “of” yet was bringing home words like “gone” and “because” from school.)

She’d said, “You’re absolutely right. Use the words you’ve been giving him. Throw mine in the garbage. Tell him I said you should throw them out.”

“No,” I’d replied. “You tell him. Let it come from you, not from me.”

So I had packed the flash cards with her sight words into his backpack, and had him carry them to school so that she could take them away from him herself and throw them in the school garbage can.

I had done that because I didn’t want him to think I’m taking too much control over what he learns.

Of course, I am taking total control over how he learns to read but I don’t want him to know that.

I want him to, one day, start learning what they teach in school.

I don’t want to home school him for the rest of my life.

So, now, we sit down and do what the assistant principal told him to do. He reads Whole Language books. The first book he reads is The Way I Go to School. This allegedly much-more-interesting-than-phonics-readers-Whole-Language book goes like this:

“I go to school.

I go to school in a wheelchair.

I go to school on a bike.”

By the time he gets to the third “I go to school” I realize he is not even looking at the words in the book. He is simply reciting “I go to school” from memory and then looking at the picture to see what the end of the sentence on each page should be. On page four he recites “I go to school,” looks at the picture, sees a car, and says “in a car.” When he gets to page 5, he recites, “I go to school,” looks at the picture, sees a taxi, and says “in a taxi.” He does the same thing for the pages with a van, a bus and a boat.

You can see why these books are so easy to memorize. The same word pattern is, basically, repeated on page after page, after page.

The next book is called The Skier. Its scintillating text goes like this:

He is going down the ladder

He is going down the stairs.

He is going down the path.

He is going down the steps.

He is going down the road.

He is going up. (Instead of saying “up,” Younger Son says “down” since that is the pattern that had been on the previous pages. I tell him to look at the word. “It isn’t `down.’ What is it?”)

“Up,” he reads, correctly. Then he reads, “He is going up and up and up.”

On the next page, the pattern changes again. Instead of continuing with “up,” the sentence says, “He is going down the mountain.” But, because the previous page had said “up,” Younger Son recites, “He is going up the mountain.”

“Look at the word,” I say. “The pattern changed again.”

When Younger Son actually looks at the word, he reads it correctly: “down.”

His tendency to memorize and recite intially trips him up with the next book, Cat and Mouse, too. Cat and Mouse goes like this:

“Mouse ran over the shovel. Cat ran over the shovel.

Mouse ran under the broom. Cat ran under the broom.

Mouse ran over the rake. Cat ran over the rake.

Mouse ran under the wheelbarrow. Cat ran under the wheelbarrow.”

After reading the first sentence, Younger Son incorrectly says “over” instead of “under” in the second sentence. I stress that he needs to actually look at the words on the page instead of assuming that a pattern exists. When Younger Son actually looks at the words, he reads “over” and “under” correctly.

Understandably, he does not know the big words like “shovel” or “broom” or “wheelbarrow.” Nor does he need to know them at this stage in the reading process. How often does the word “wheelbarrow” show up in the books or street signs we read?

Totally useless, I think as my son wastes precious reading time with these ridiculous books.

Time is so precious. My child needs to become a fluent reader and he needs to become one quickly since being behind the class curve in reading is affecting everything else at school..

Each one of these Whole Language books we are wasting time on is taking precious time away from the phonics books and worksheets that really would teach him how to read. But we continue to dutifully do what the assistant principal has asked us to do.

Younger Son picks up the final book, We Are Special. He has obviously read this one before because he, very quickly, recites it from memory, turning each page even before the words written on it are out of his mouth:

“She loves to jump.

He loves to run.

She loves to paint

He loves to build.

She loves to sing.

He loves to read.

We are all special.”

When he is done “reading,” I am annoyed at the time we have wasted. I do not yet know that what I have just observed him do—get words wrong because he is not looking at them, but, rather, assuming they are following a particular pattern—is one of the most important things I could have seen. It is an observation that, in just a few days, will help me make someone at his school finally even begin to consider that maybe, just maybe, the problem may lie with the books they are giving my child to read and not with my child.

Younger son skip counts beautifully, even though his report card says otherwise

(Jan. 29, 2007 continued) After he finished reading those ridiculous Whole Language books, I hold up a hardcover collection of Dick and Jane stories. “Read one story in here and I will give you a Tic-Tac,” I say to my little Tic-Tac lover who has already read more than his quota of books for the night.

“I want Dick and Jane,” he says, suspiciously eyeing the hardback I am holding. He has never seen a hardcover Dick and Jane book. The ones we’ve been reading are soft cover and very slim. This is also the first Dick and Jane book he’s seen with an African American boy on the cover. Plus, Dick and Jane look a lot older than they do in the other books we’ve read..

Dick and Jane books feel safe to him. Who knows what unfamiliar words an unfamiliar book might hold.“This is Dick and Jane,” I reply. I point to their names in the title. “I wouldn’t have recognized them either if it wasn’t for the words. They look older, don’t they?

“Yeah. A lot.”

He begins negotiating. “Two Tic-Tacs for one story,” he says.

“One.”

“Three.”

“Two,” I say. “That’s as high as I’ll go.”

He accepts the deal and reads a story. He reads it beautifully and is surprised when it ends. “That’s it?” he says. “Let’s do another one.”

“Okay,” I say.”

“So I get 4 Tic-Tacs.”

I sit up straighter. He skip counted. He got a “2” on his report card for skip counting by 2, 5s and 10s yet he just skip counted on his own with no problem at all.

I say, “Right. What comes after four?”

“No more,” he says.

He must know I am testing him. I don’t care. I want to see what he knows. “I’ll give you two more Tic-Tacs if you skip count by 2s for me. “If you had read another story how many Tic-Tacs would you have gotten after 4?”

“Six,” he says, instantly.

“And another?”

“Eight,” he shoots out.

“And another?”

He goes all the way up to TWENTY-EIGHT without taking any time to think. Then he gets stuck because he doesn’t know what number comes after 29. I tell him and we stop.

“Go show Daddy how well you can skip count,” I say.

He hops off the bed and walks into the dining room. There, Husband is busy yelling at Older Son because Older Son did not write down the formulas for his science homework and, therefore, put the numbers for two of the questions in the wrong place. (Thank you TERC. The original TERC curriculum, which Older Son was taught in elementary school, taught kids to do “mental math” and urged kids to solve problems in their heads. Older Son’s biggest downfall now is not writing down formulas and equations before plugging in numbers. This unwillingness to write down formulas and math equations inevitably results in him getting them wrong. The Specialized High School Test Prep tutors I have signed him up with have told me that their biggest job with District 2 kids is to get them to write down their work when they do math. They spend many sessions (for which parents pay hundreds of dollars) getting them to do just that.

Husband has been doing it for years but to no avail. “Haven’t I told you to write down the formula?” he yells.

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“A lot.”

“So why do you refuse to do it?”

(Because he is a Big Picture/Intuitive/Wholistic learner, I now know and these kids do not like rules. Combine that with an elementary school that never taught him to develop the good habit of writing out complex math when he was young and you are now stuck with a seemingly unbreakable tendency to do math in his head.)

“I don’t know,” says Older Son.

I interrupt. “Daddy?”

I only call husband this when I am about to introduce an important topic that has to do with the kids. The unspoken message is: This is impotant. I’m sorry, I know I’m interrupting but you really have to give this all of your attention.

“Daddy” looks up.

“Listen to what Younger Son can do.”

Younger Son is standing tall and beaming with pride. He says “Two” and stops.

I say, “Another 2?”

He says “Four.”

“ And another two.”

He goes all the way up to 30, this time getting 30 right.

“Wow!” Says Daddy. “That’s great! You’re skip counting!”

Daddy spent an hour over the weekend gluing little squares of numbers together to make a number line to teach number sense and skip counting. The one for 2s can now go in the garbage without ever being used.

When Younger Son is done, Husband shrugs and turns his palms up towards the ceiling. His gesture is meant to communicate, So what’s up with the “2” on the report card for doubles and skip counting?

I shrug back.

We are doing a lot of shrugging lately. I pull out the list I have started keeping of “things to talk to teacher about.”

I write down “skip counted by 2s beautifully” on the list. The list is long. We will never have time to cover everything I want to talk to her about.

If we tried to talk about everything, we would be meeting every morning for the next week.

Maybe we should talk on the phone too.

Maybe she should move in with us.

Then maybe she would learn a thing or two about how to teach kids to read.

A summary of what went wrong for my son when it came to learning how to read

It is not often that a parent gets to meet with her child’s assistant principal and tell her side of the story about how the school’s reading curriculum tragically failed her child. Wanting to make sure that I get things across to her clearly and succinctly, I make notes for the meeting. They sum up how:

• Younger Son started kindergarten eager and ready to learn how to read. I taught him one sight word (“the”) a few weeks before kindergarten began. He learned it quickly and, on his own, began searching for “the” often—in the books we read together and in the books and magazines he saw me reading. He was also beginning to try to sound out words he saw on subway ads with no prompting from me.
• At the start of kindergarten, he sat in the front of the room, ready and eager to participate. By the time I attended open school week in November, he was sitting in the back of the room, not saying a word. During open school week I watched as his whole class read “Mrs. Dishy Washy” outloud as the teacher pointed to the words. I watched my son looking out the window. (I will forever be sorry that I did not take immediate action to bring him up to speed with the rest of his class. I did not realize how much not being able to read as well as the other kids did would affect him emotionally and how it would affect his performance in other subjects too.)
• As the weeks passed, I sat with other kindergarten moms in the playground after school and listened as they talked about how they were teaching their kids to read at home. I thought they were pushing their kids too much. I thought the kids would be taught to read in school. I turned out to be tragically wrong.
• At our parent-teacher conference in January, his kindergarten teacher told us, “He does not know all the sounds that consonants make.” Her forehead was furrowed and she looked very concerned as she said this. I told her this did not surprise me since he had never learned those sounds. Although his preschool presented “letter of the week,” Younger Son took no interest in the letters and his preschool did not push him to learn them. I explained that when he started kindergarten, Younger Son did not know the sounds that letters make. His kindergarten teacher looked shocked. “Oh,” she said. “Then he’s doing great. I can’t believe what he’s learned if he didn’t know any of them when he started the year.” She told us not to worry since he had made such progress. But she advised us to play games with magnetic letters on the refrigerator door to help him learn the sounds the letter make. I began doing so.
• His kindergarten teacher made a fatal error. She never taught the kids the sounds that short vowels make. Even though reading researchers recommend teaching kids the sounds that letters make in the following sequence: a,m, t, s,i,f, etc., his kindergarten teacher told the kids to ignore the vowels because they were “tricky” and made different sounds at different times. She also told them to do their best NOT to sound out the words. In a list posted in large print for the kids to refer to in the classroom (as well as in the teachers’ lounge) sounding out words was the very last strategy listed for the kids to use. It came after guessing from the picture and asking the person sitting next to you if they knew what the word was!
• By January my son was having nightmares and saying he hated school. I couldn’t understand why. He seemed very happy whenever I came to school for lunch and recess duty. He had a ton of friends and was always smiling when I saw him. But at drop off in the morning, he would cling and say he didn’t want to go to school. During the first few weeks of school, Younger Son had run into the school without even glancing back over his shoulder. Now he didn’t even want to go in. I did not realize he now hated school because he did not know how to read and his peers did.
• Younger Son’s inability to read affected how he felt about himself in every class. For example, in November his science teacher expected the class to write up the results of an experiment investigating what a magnet would, and would not, attract. She handed out sheets with the question, “Is the solid attracted to the magnet?” written on top. The kids were expected to read that sentence by themselves. Then they were to refer to a list of objects they had used in their experiment. That list said: paper clip; red octagon jewel, pipe cleaner; steel washer; steel nut; steel ball; blue rubber ball; taster spoon. My son could not read “cat” or “hat.” There is no way in the world he could read “read octagon jewel.” When I pointed out to the teacher that not every child in the classroom could read those words, she said, “The assistant teacher can help them.” The assistant teacher was not in the room when I observed this class. I was the one who read the list of objects to my son. One other mother helped her child too. The rest of the kids read the words with no problem.You can imagine how the two kids who needed help from their mothers felt.
• In January, Younger Son began bringing home Whole Language books to read outloud for homework. From the very beginning, he brought home books he could not possibly read. The very first book he brought home was called, “After School.” One of the sentences in that book was, “After school I have a snack.” (Those are very big words for a very little child who has not yet learned how to read words like “cat,” “hat,” “sat” or “bat.”) Younger Son was expected to learn to read the words “after school” because he would see them on each page in the story. He was expected to guess the word “snack” by looking at the picture on the page the word appeared on. The picture on that page was of a girl eating a sandwich. Not surprisingly, when Younger Son “read” the sentence on that page he said, “After school I have a sandwich.” I said, “No. That’s not what the word is.” Younger Son then ran through a whole list of other possibilities of what the girl could be eating by looking at the picture. I kept saying, “No” as he kept guessing incorrectly and getting more and more frustrated. Finally, he said, “That is a sandwich in her hand. It has to say, `After school I have a sandwich.’” I said, “Yes, that is a sandwich in the picture, but that is not the word on the page. The picture doesn’t really show what the word is. See if you can sound it out.” But Younger Son had not been taught how to sound words out, so he was stumped. Finally, I said, “The word is `snack.’” Younger Son’s wise response was, “How the heck am I supposed to know that?” Good question, since the picture was of a sandwich and since his teacher had expressly told the kids NOT to sound out words. She would actually cover up the words in their books as they “read” to get them into the habit of using the pictures in the book to help them “read.”
• As he continued being expected to guess the words in the books he brought home to read for homework, Younger Son continued to guess wrong. With each incorrect guess he would get increasingly frustrated. He would say things like, “This isn’t really reading. This is looking at the pictures. I want to really read.” But he didn’t know how to. He began to say he hated reading and would do everything in his power to avoid doing so.
• As summer vacation approached, his kindergarten teacher advised us to make sure Younger Son read over the summer so that he didn’t “lose the progress he’s made.” I asked the teacher to recommend books for him to read. She recommended the series of Biscuit books. “He can read them,” she said. Not my kid. How could a kid who didn’t know how to sound out works like “hat” “hit” or “hut” read sentences like, “Woof, woof! What’s in the basket, Biscuit? Meow. It’s Daisy. Meow. Meow. Daisy has two kittens?” He couldn’t. I stopped the Biscuit books and, each night, worked with him on sounding out words in a book called “Who’s a Pest.” That didn’t work either. The words were too hard for him and, remember, the kid didn’t know the sounds that short vowels make so he couldn’t even sound out words like “did.”
• In July, he would moan each time I announced “it’s reading time” and squirm all over the couch as he tried to read “Who’s a Pest?” I urged him to make the sound each letter makes and then put the sounds together into words. He did the best that he could, but it was hard and there were so many words that couldn’t be sounded out and, so, I stopped making him read. I knew I was doing more harm than good. I knew I was turning him off to reading, possibly for good.
• None of this made any sense to me. By the end of kindergarten, he had seemed to be reading pretty hard books even though he said he hated reading and his little body would be so tense every time we sat down to read. I did not know at the time—had absolutely no idea—that the kid had memorized every single book and was hiding the fact that he had no idea how to read any of the words on the pages of the books he was “reading.” He had told me his school wasn’t teaching him how. I had not listened and, so, now he was pretending he could read when he really couldn’t. (Imagine, just imagine, what that felt like for him. It must have been like the kid in Jurassic Park who tells his parents there is a dinosaur outside and his parents don’t believe him. What’s a kid to do? He stops saying there is a dinosaur outside. He stops saying that his school isn’t teaching him to read.)
• At the end of July, my son was no longer reading to me but I continued to read to him every night. Every night, he begged me to keep on reading but he made no move towards picking up a book himself.
• In late August, I Googled “how to teach a child to read.” I found an article saying that if a child protests about reading, then what you are having him read is too hard for him. I also found an essay by conservative, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly called “The Most Fulfilling Thing I’ve Ever Done.” (See http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/1994/mar94/psrmar94.html .) I don’t agree with this woman’s conservative political stance but I was open to reading what she had to say about reading. Even though she did terrible things for the women’s movement, I will always be grateful to her for opening my eyes to what the real problem with my son’s reading was. In her essay, she wrote: “It is terribly important that your child be taught to read by the correct method before (emphasis hers) he is taught bad habits such as pretending (again, emphasis hers) to read by looking at pictures and guessing at the words. Your children and grandchildren can avoid all those bad habits, and the disappointments that result, if you teach your child to read at home.”
• Her article was the first inkling I had that there was a problem with the way the Balanced Literacy curriculum was being implemented at my son’s school. It seems so obvious to me now but, before I read that article, I honestly didn’t even think that the reason my son wasn’t learning how to read is because he wasn’t being taught how to do so. He was being expected to somehow, pick it up on his own. That is what Whole Language proponents believe—that kids pick up reading on their own, the way they picked up how to talk. (Can you imagine? No wonder we have such a huge a literacy problem in our country.).
• As soon as I finished the Schlafly article, I picked up the phone and ordered the book she had put together to help parents teach their kids to read at home. (I wouldn’t recommend it, by the way. Explode the Code is a much better tool but I didn’t know that at the time.) I told the woman who answered Schlafly’s office phone about how Schlafly’s comment about kids being “taught bad habits such as pretending to read by looking at pictures and guessing at the words” had made me realize there was a problem with the reading curriculum at my son’s school. I told her how my son—at age five—had told me, “I want to learn to read but my school isn’t teaching me how. They tell me to guess what words are by looking at the pictures. That’s not reading, Mommy.” The woman’s response? “Your son is smarter than his teacher.”
• In September I called the mother of one of Younger Son’s classmates. She has a masters in speech pathology from Teacher’s College and teaches kids how to read for a living. She taught her own son how to read. She told me to get Explode the Code. I ordered it online.
• That month, I asked every first grade parent I saw on the street in front of Younger Son’s school about how their kid had learned to read. Mother after mother told me she had taught her child at home. One mother had spent the summer using Hooked on Phonics with her child.Another told me her first grade daughter had been going to Score since she was three and was now reading at a third grade level. I felt ill when I heard that.
• At the end of the month, I asked Younger Son’s first grade teacher how his reading was. “Fine,” she said, looking surprised at my question. “Fine?” I asked. It didn’t seem possible. The kid didn’t have a clue how to read. “Yes,” she said. “How is he in relation to the rest of the class?” I asked. “Where does he fall on the class curve?” “He’s at the bottom,” she replied. I don’t know about you, but that is not “fine” to me.
• I talked to the principal too. She told me not to worry. “He’s only in first grade,” she said. “It’s developmental. He’ll read when he’s ready. We’ll keep an eye on him and see how it goes.”
• Having gotten those reassurances from the school, I probably would not have not taught my son to read with any great urgency. I had not yet linked his not wanting to go to school with the fact that he couldn’t read. Then, one day, he came home from school and “read” me one of the books he had brought home for homework. This is what he did: he put the book behind his back and recited it perfectly, even turning the pages WITH THE BOOK BEHIND HIS BACK at exactly the right time. He did this with one book. And then another. And then a third. When I wrote the words from those books on a separate piece of paper, he had absolutely no idea how to read them. My poor wonderful son had finally gotten through to me. His words—“Mommy, I want to learn how to read but my school isn’t teaching me how”—had not been enough. For that, I will always be sorry. I hadn’t listened and he had to come up with another way to get through to me. This action—“reading” with the books behind his back—had finally worked.  
• I began using the Explode the Code workbooks with my son in late September. He made terrific progress with them even though we moved slowly. Just one page in Expode the Code each night. We also played short vowel Bingo and sight word Bingo every night. And he read a Bob Book. At first, he was so anxious about reading that he would move away from the book—all the way across the couch—if there were more than two lines of print on a page. I actually had to cover up the second line until he had beautifully sounded out each word in the first line and his anxiety ebbed a bit. I also had to cover up the pictures in the Bob Books because, inevitably, he would resort to the strategy he had been taught in school. He would look at the pictures, guess at the words and, inevitably, guess wrong. The fall was spent not so much teaching him how to read, but rebuilding his confidence in the fact that there was nothing tricky or mysterious about reading and that it was something he could definitely do.
• I worked with him each night and saw steady progress.
• By December I was 100 percent convinced that the problem lay with my son’s school and not with him. The kid was doing great with me at home. I went to his teacher and said, “I am teaching him how to read at home and that’s not right. He should be learning how to read in school too.” She agreed. She talked to the school’s reading specialist about my son’s reading and showed her his writing. Immediately, he was labeled “at risk” so that he could be seen by the reading specialist and the speech pathologist. (In kindergarten, the speech pathologist had recommended that I take him to a private speech therapist to work on his articulation of certain letters. She said she couldn’t see him at school because his articulation problems were not affecting his school work. According to his report card, he was on or above grade level in his academic performance. In reality, he wasn’t on grade level for reading in kindergarten but his kindergarten teacher totally missed the fact that he didn’t have a clue how to read.)
• I was told that being labeled “at risk” held no stigma and would not go on his record. I was told the reading specialist and speech pathologist would work with him for about six weeks and then would see whether he needed further help.
• After my son had seen these two specialists just two times each, I got a telephone call from the reading specialist telling me she wanted to have my son evaluated. I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when that phone call came on my cell phone. I will always remember the moment I was told the school believed there was something wrong with my son. It is a phone call no mother wants to get. “Why do you think he needs an evaluation?” I asked. “Because he doesn’t know many of the sight words he should know by now.” No kidding, I thought. That’s what I had told both his teacher and the principal at the beginning of the school year. “He doesn’t know them because he hasn’t been taught them,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with him.” The speech pathologist got on the phone and explained that my son needed more than six weeks of work with them and that the only way they could continue working with him is if he was in the pipeline for an evaluation. She said approval for an evaluation takes a long time and that we could always decide not to have him evaluated if, by the time approval came, he was doing well. “The only way he can get help from the school with his reading is if we apply for an evaluation?” I said. “Yes,” I was told. “Fine,” I said. “Do it.” I would do whatever I had to do to get the school to help me teach him to read, even if it took accepting the fact that the school thought there was something wrong with him. (The school was SURE there was something wrong with him, by the way. This was communicated to me time after time after time. For example, in a conversation a few weeks after that initial phone call, the reading specialist told me my son was “lucky” he had been “picked up” so early. “A lot of these kids aren’t identified until fourth or fifth grade,” she said. She said this months before the evaluation took place. “What do you mean by `these kids?’” I had asked. “What do you think is wrong with him?” “Oh, I don’t know,” she had replied. “We need to see what the evalation will show.” She wouldn’t tell me what disability she suspected but the message was clear—there is something wrong with your son. She planted that seed in my mind and, once it was planted, it began to grow. I too began looking for signs that something was wrong with my son. I also began looking for signs that he was OK. Is there something wrong with him? is a question that was always, always, on my mind each and every time I talked to, looked at, or held my little boy.

That sums up what I wanted to tell the assistant principal. I was well prepared for that meeting. More than anything, I wanted the school to be aware of how much the parents are teaching their kids at home. I wanted to spare other kids the pain of what my son and I were going through in having him play catch-up in reading. The school can’t keep thinking its Balanced Literacy curriculum is working when it isn’t. At least not for all the kids.

Just FYI, I will repost the popular article about how I taught Younger Son to read in the elementary school section of this website. I had taken it down in order to protect my son’s privacy but now I am so proud of him that I feel the world should know how my kid took charge of learning how to read. He is the hero of this story. He is the reason I am writing it. He is the reason he can now read so beautifully. By holding books behind his back and “reading” them perfectly, he finally got through to me that he didn’t have a clue how to read. He, finally, got me to help him. By the way, he is now reading above grade level zipping through books like Magic Tree House, Geronimo Stilton, and even the “Childhood of Famous Americans” series.

“Wow, your kid must like history,” said the cashier at Barnes & Noble last week when I bought Younger Son a stack of the latter books. He is zipping through books so fast when he reads at night now that I need to constantly replenish his supply. “He must be very smart.”

“He is,” I said. I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to tell the cashier, “He’s seven.” Maybe because, this year, for the first time since preschool, I am once again seeing how smart my kid is. The math he does astonishes me. The other day as a bonus question, his fabulous second grade teacher sent home the following math problem: What is 57x19? Now, my son is in second grade. To my knowledge, he has not been taught multiplication. (But this is a sign of a great teacher. Your kid comes home knowing stuff you never taught him.) I told my son not to do that problem. I thought it would be too hard. He said, “No, I want to do it.”

To my astonishment, he took a piece of paper and split the 57 into 50+5+2. He then skip counted by 50s 19 times and wrote down the answer on a piece of paper. Then he skip counted by 5s nineteen times and then did the same with 2s. Then he added those numbers up in a column and got the right answer. Then, because he thought the teacher wanted them to use a number line to get the answer, he taped together 12 pieces of copy paper and made three of the biggest, longest number lines I have ever seen. He then used these number lines to show how he had skip counted by 50s, 5s and 2s. This is a kid who was performing below grade level in math last year. He was performing belw grade level in lots of subjects because his teacher had not taught him how to read. In first grade, he tuned out to school. Thank God, he has tuned back in.

The Barnes & Noble cashier looked at me in surprise. “He’s seven and he’s reading these chapter books? He must be really smart. I go to NYU. I’m pretty smart. I learned calculus in high school but I wasn’t reading books like this when I was seven.”

“He is really smart,” I said. He always was. He is the poster child for someone who should never, ever, have had a problem learning how to read. His school should be ashamed of itself for what it put the poor kid through, for allowing a very smart child to trick them into thinking he was really reading and for telling me it wasn’t possible that he had memorized all the books in his basket. “He would need to have an amazing memory to do that,” the principle had told me. Well, guess what? He does have an amazing memory and an amazing mind. He is in a talented and gifted school for a reason.

Now that I run a phonics-based reading program that Urban Baby has called “the best in the city,” I can tell you that lots of schools—both public and private—should be ashamed of themselves. Of course, some schools and teachers are doing a stellar job at teaching kids how to read. Some kids in those excellent schools will need a little extra help outside of school because, for some reason, they missed some of the key concepts that were presented. That is perfectly natural and normal and to be expected. But it is astonishing to me to witness firsthand how many children all across the city are not being taught the basic skills they need to know in order to read well. And how many schools are saying the problem lies with the child and not with them.

Recently, in just five weeks, I turned a kid who couldn’t read and whose reading specialist told me “definitely has a learning disability” into a kid who is learning to read so fast that even I am astonished. His reading specialist had told me not to teach him any vowels other than “a” and “i” because they would be confusing to him and not to teach him sight words because they would be over his head. (Can you imagine?) I ignored her and implemented my common sense program and the child’s reading ablity and confidence in school has soared.

I mean, you can’t teach a kid to read if you don’t teach him what he needs to know in order to be able to do so.

Already, I have saved two kids from undergoing psychoeducational evaluations because their reading ability has soared in a very short time. I was not able to save my own child from the pain and misery of an evaluation but at least I am now helping other families from having to live through what we lived through last year.

If your school is telling you that your child is not learning how to read because he has a problem, do not be so sure the problem lies with your child. Before you put your child through a grueling psychoeducational evaluation, before you begin treating you child differently and expecting less of him because the school is telling you something might be wrong with him, get somebody to teach him how to read.

You may be surprised to find the problem lies not with your child, but with your child’s kindergarten or first grade teacher.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do

(Dec. 18, 2007) I feel a little bit like a scientist who starts a drug trial and then finds the drug he is testing is so successful that he has to stop his experiment midstream in order to make sure that all the people involved are able to be helped by the drug he is testing. Some of you have said you wish I would stop interjecting current posts and get on with telling my Younger Son’s story. You want to know if he was evaluated and what the outcome was.

My plan for this blog is, indeed, to tell my Younger Son’s story in chrononological order. But I couldn’t write yesterday’s post without interjecting at least some of my present knowledge of how important basic phonics are in the early stages of learning how to read. I couldn’t in all good conscience keep from parents what I now know. So, sorry if that post was a bit muddled. I hope, however, that it was helpful.

All teachers should be required to go back to school for a refresher course on how kids really learn to read. And universities have to stop turning out teachers who think Whole Language works. And the chancellor and mayor should hire educational advisors who know what they are talking about. Because, as it is with medical doctors, the credo of all teachers should be “first do no harm.” And, as the reading expert who conducted the Lindamood-Bell interview said, “millions and millions of lives…have suffered harm in the process of (teachers and universities) trying to learn to do this.”
For the Lindamood Bell interview click on http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/lindamoodbell.htm