Spring 2002

Teachers learn together; improve instructional practices

The days of Dick and Jane primers and Bluebird and Sparrow-level reading groups are over. As part of the '90s focus on solving the national crisis in education, U.S. literacy educators have engaged in particularly intense research and discussion about how children learn to read and how best to teach them.

Warner School faculty knew well--from observation and research--that some literacy practices were more promising than others. Finding ways to help educators share their knowledge, though, has been an ongoing challenge. In 1999, Joanne Larson, chair of the School's teaching and curriculum department, applied for and received several grants totaling more than $144,000 to address the problem. Larson directs the project that is now in its third year and funded by the federal Dwight D. Eisenhower Higher Education Professional Development Program, administered by the New York State Education Department. Project activities include a summer literacy institute, monthly sessions designed for teacher development and support, and an end-of-the-year conference.

The program evolved from an informal relationship that began four years earlier between the Warner School and a small group of educators from School 33. The elementary school, located in an economically depressed area in northeast Rochester, serves 1,300 pre-kindergarten through 5th-grade children. Ninety percent of the students are on welfare or poor enough to qualify for free school lunches. "The Warner School goal in the first year," explains Larson, "was to begin to change ideology and practice. But we found out very quickly that we had to form a community ourselves before we could start that process."

Larson says that teachers and teacher educators struggled the first year to find common ground. At first, the teachers and Larson seemed to have different agendas. The teachers were primarily interested in creating a forum to discuss current education issues and challenges. Larson admits that she was initially discouraged by what seemed to be a resistance to change. By the end of that first year, however, she discovered that participating teachers had changed some practices but didn't tell her until the end of the year. "They had to make the project their own," she says, "before they felt comfortable talking about their progress."

As the project evolved in year one, the model grew from a small group of educators who met to discuss ideology and change practice to three schools that emphasize ongoing professional development, and provide an environment where education research regularly takes place. Larson applied for more money and got it. Several teachers and a principal from School 28 and the Greece Central School District's West Ridge Elementary School joined the partnership.

In year two, the project developed further. Educators met monthly to discuss classroom implementation, to review student work, and to develop curriculum; they doubled the time spent in professional development compared with the first year. Project activities were aligned directly with the standards established for professional development schools by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Educators (NCATE), state and local performance standards, and the educational philosophy of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Lynn Gatto, a 2nd-grade teacher at School 28, is also a doctoral student at the Warner School and a regular participant in the literacy project. She explains the group's work as "learning to co-construct knowledge through talk." There is no one right way to teach, she insists. She points to the project's three "lead teachers." "Each of us has a very different approach to the way we teach literacy but we're all effective," says Gatto. She believes that the key to their success is to move away from a skills-based focus to one that uses "real text" for "real purposes" in the classroom. Project teachers, for example, might encourage students to analyze the techniques used by a popular children's author and use some in their own writing, rather than to copy definitions from a dictionary.
Through the seven-day summer institute and annual daylong conference, exceptional lead teachers and subject experts shared best practices and curriculum ideas. Dan Osborn, a 2nd- and 3rd-grade teacher at Victor Primary School, taught inclusion in the context of literacy instruction. Mary Rita Maier, a teacher at Parkland Elementary School in Greece, taught elementary literacy methods. Beginning with the summer of 2002, Lynn Gatto will teach elementary science methods.

A willingness to experiment began to emerge as project activity increased and the resulting pleasure of discovery was evident. Teachers conducted an author study of Vivian Gussen Paley, a nationally known writer of two books about education--White Teacher and You Can't Say You Can't Play--to experience the author-study process as learners themselves. Lynn Gatto secured funding to bring Paley to School 28 where the author followed up with several days of classroom visits observing, giving readings, and making suggestions.

Together, urban and suburban teachers debated their classroom similarities and differences. Attitudes changed. Some teachers questioned whether techniques that worked in rural and suburban areas could work as well with city kids. After one particularly skeptical teacher successfully introduced a suburban-developed writing technique to her city class, she became a "retroactive" believer. "I knew it would work like this," she said. "Suburban kids are no different than urban kids."

Recognizing and appreciating cultural differences was another by-product of group dialogue. After reading What No Bedtime Story Means by Shirley Brice Heath, a discussion among several teachers demonstrated "a growing awareness of culturally different ways of thinking and talking about literature," says Larson. Their dialogue was transcribed.

Teacher #1: ". . . [In] the Latino community the narrative starts at the end of the story and then comes back around. In the Black community it does all this analogous stuff.

Teacher #2: “And you think it's [that] they're off task...but it's actually a different whole perspective on language."

Teacher #3: “And I'm thinking they're not staying on task."

Teacher #4: "Me too. I've always gone there. Like 'what are you doing?' "

"There is no doubt that their teaching practices are changing," says Larson. "We've moved from a skills-oriented to a meaning-oriented (literacy instruction) model. Many of us have developed a better understanding of student language practices."

During this third year, the group is considering the Writing and Reading Workshop approach developed by educators Donald Graves, Nancy Atwell, and Lucy Calkins. Maryrita Maier, a 22-year classroom veteran, has successfully used the method. Experience has convinced Maier that kids learn to read and write by reading and writing. The nearly 6,000 books she keeps in her classroom and the minimum of 90 minutes a day her students spend writing and reading their work to classmates and their teacher attests to the strength of her beliefs. The way she models authorship herself by developing stories aloud and recording them on a flip chart with her class every day, incorporating their suggestions and listening to their criticism, proves that writing can be a collaborative and social process. The children respond.

Joanne Larson draws a word picture of Maier's classroom in her article "Co-Authoring Classroom Texts: Shifting Participant Roles in Writing Activity" (Research in the Teaching of English, Volume 34, May 2000):

Students produced reams of complex texts that went far beyond what is commonly expected in first grade classrooms. . . . Maier's students wrote lengthy chapter books, songs, poems, and memoirs, and published these on a monthly basis at the much-celebrated Author's Tea. At the last. . . tea of the year, students read their published stories in the school auditorium to invited guests. Each student received a bound parcel containing every story he or she had written during the year. On top of the parcel was a button that read "I'm a published author!"

With more than three years left in the project, Larson knows exactly what she hopes to accomplish in the end. She wants all the project participants to be teaching like lead teachers. She wants them to understand how children learn, particularly how they learn literacy. She intends to produce advocates for the education professions who have a strong research base.

Then they will have tools they can use "to fight for what they know is best." When asked whether she believes that theory needs to form the basis for practice, she answers without hesitation. "In my mind, practice is theory."

>>back to main news page