THINK LITERACY: The five elements and more

Reading got the wars. Writing got the leftovers. Cramming standards into an already overloaded curriculum has left almost no room for students to actually write. 

A conversation with Dr. Andy Johnson

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

You're on the Cheryl Lacey Show, where curiosity meets courage, and that's exactly what our conversations are like every time we get together, and it's terrific to have your company. And one person's company you're going to thoroughly enjoy now is Dr. Andy Johnson, Professor of Literacy, is quite a whiz. Andy, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. Now, Andy, you're a literacy expert, a professor of literacy, and you wouldn't believe how many times people ask me what literacy is, or what is literacy. Let's start there.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

They all interact together and one informs the other.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

We tend not to say thinking too often when we do think about literacy, and we tend to think more about the mechanical component, but this thinking without it is problematic and there's thereby goes the lack of understanding and comprehension.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

People forget about the thinking part. Vygotsky said that writing our language is a tool of thought. Our thought influences our language, and our language influences our thought. Writing changes the way we think. Likewise, with reading, it involves cognition thinking. It's not simply responding like a rat in a Skinner page. It is thinking.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Now, Andy, just on that, we tend to often refer to literacy problems specific to reading. However, I get very concerned, as do many of my colleagues, that we don't have enough emphasis on writing. Is that because measuring reading has become so much easier, number one?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

We tend to emphasize what can be measured. And we tend to emphasize in education what can be sold. And that's one of the reasons why we don't emphasize writing as much. You can't sell all these nifty little writing projects and writing programs, and you can't measure writing the way you allegedly measure reading. You really can't. And I published a book a couple years ago called Being and Becoming Teachers of Writing. And it takes everyone through the five-step process. How can you learn to write if you've never been taught the process? We need to teach children of all ages how to generate ideas, how to organize ideas, how to edit, how to revise, how to publish, how to get feedback. These are all the five steps in the process.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Now it's interesting, isn't it? You talk about the different processes, and interestingly, you've immediately said this is what we need children to learn. It sounds to me as though we need to begin with our educators if it's not happening already, and this clearly is something that you do in your universities. Where have we failed in the teaching of teachers regarding writing?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Oh well, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the United States, they try to standards their way to good teachers. Meaning that if we just cram enough standards into the required curriculum for teachers, we'll get a better product. And we've got so many standards crammed into the curriculum that there is very little time for writing. There is almost no standards related to writing. And I suspect that a lot of people don't know how to write, who wrote the standards, don't understand the process. One of the things I emphasize in my book is that teachers of writers must be writers themselves, teachers of writing. It doesn't have to be big, but to understand the process, you have to teach. A finished teaching product is like 10 or 15 years down the line. We must recognize the importance of continued professional development. Teacher's license is just your beginner's permit. Once you get that teaching license and you're in the classroom, teaching is a complex endeavor. It's an intellectual endeavor at its highest state. And that's what makes it so interesting. And here's the thing: we want creative and intelligent teachers in our classroom. We want the best and the brightest. But we don't allow them to be creative or intelligent. Here in America, we say, here's the curriculum. Follow the directions with fidelity. Number one, the publishers don't know the kids are who they're teaching, and they're assuming that one size fits all, but that does not enable a teacher to be creative and intelligent. When I started this teaching years ago, 40 years ago, I was able to create and design curriculum, and it was a marvelous thing to be able to do that. I was able to use my creativity and intelligence.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And now you're saying that's not possible because of these demands. On the other hand, what I recall as a child, if we go all the way back, is that there was a balance between the two. And I'm wondering whether or not we're on this constant pendulum swing between what is or isn't the right thing to do or what's best and what's wrong or right. I remember learning how to read John and Betty, I think it's Dick and Jane in the United States, or it might be called something else, these old readers, and my brother would come home with his John and Betty book, John Can Jump, Betty Can Jump, etc. And I memorized that. Certainly I couldn't uh decode the words. I could recognise the words, but I wasn't decoding. I didn't have uh the all of the other elements associated with reading intact. But that memorisation was invaluable for me because I walked in the door with great confidence and I was a reader very soon after starting school, an independent reader. Now we talk about memorization being a problem, but therein is an example of its value. Have we failed to be critically reflective of all of these offerings such that we're not to your point giving teachers the authority and autonomy to be creative with their own philosophy and therefore accountable to it. So they can and if it's not working for a number of students or all the students, there's room for change. So that's where that professional development still keeps going because they own the professional development they require, again, rather than being the top-down demand.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

And that was what was called a look-say approach. And by the way, within the field of literacy instruction, within the scholarly field, there hasn't been a pendulum swing. We've been fairly consistent. The look-say approach was initially done at the turn of the last century, and it was the idea that you memorize words and you use these letter patterns to recognize similar words. And that's very similar to what orthographic mapping is today. But here's the thing: children are not standardized products, they do not learn the same way. So there are a teacher should have a variety of research-based tools in their teaching toolbox. And I tell my undergraduates, if you understand the theories and principles behind literacy learning and these strategies, you can adopt and adapt. But what happens is people think it's just a series of skills. You teach teachers how to do this and how to do that and how to do that without understanding. There you go, that thinking part again. Teachers need to be able to think, to understand, not simply to respond to a situation and apply a strategy mindlessly. But within the scholarly field of literacy, there hasn't been the pendulum swing. That term was made up by the media. There never was a reading war. Yes, there is a natural coming together of differing philosophies, differing theories of reading, which is good. There are always going to be differing theoretical perspectives, and that disagreement leads to this creative attention where we continue to evolve. We must be able to agree with each other, disagree with each other as scholars and have respectful academic discourse. That's how we evolve our thinking by hearing the ideas of others. Nowadays, with the science of reading, teachers have been silenced. They're afraid to speak out. Here in America, professors are afraid to speak out. They are afraid that their job is going to be in jeopardy. And for goodness sake, you go to my social posts, and people that disagree with me, it's like I'm speaking blasphemy sometimes. They react very negatively. They don't want to hear differing ideas. And I have been blocked from web pages and sites, from people like The Readingly, because what I have to say doesn't follow in alignment with their official thought.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

No, it's the passion that's coming out, which is fantastic, and that's what I've always loved about you and your work, and so I'm thrilled to bits to have you on the show. It's Andrew, it's quite extraordinary, isn't it, that we want to have this narrative where we say schools are places where children can reach their full potential and they can flourish, and yet we have teachers running around in fear. It's such a contradiction, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yes. And our goal as literacy teachers is to enable each and every child to achieve their full literacy potential.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

And that literacy potential is certainly the fundamental and foundational requirement for any other interest or need in terms of subject matter and understanding comprehension skill acquisition and application. It's impossible not to study science if you don't know how to read a science text and comprehend it effectively, nor write about what you've been studying.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

But think about how you and I use literacy in the real world. We aren't preparing students for the next grade. We're preparing them to live in a democratic society. And in a democratic society, you're able to use writing to create your meaning and express your ideas. You're able to use reading to understand reading to solve to understand. So when we think about what we teach and how we teach, we need to really think about the things in this curriculum that are just absolute nonsense. One of the standards in our Minnesota curriculum here is things like you'll understand the plot narrative or be able. They are things totally unrelated to how we use reading and writing in the real world. That's the big idea. That's the goal. Not to get scores on some cockamami test. The goal is to be able to write and to read and to think and to speak. That is our goal. And everything that we do should lead up to that goal. And we forget it. We get all wrapped up about test scores as if they mean anything.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Andy, you've just spoken about test scores, which is a conversation that we're going to talk about next, because again, we've got the pendulum swinging around how we assess students, which also leads to how we assess educators. And it's another Pandora's box. So I've no doubt that you're going to be able to share that with us. Andy, it's been great having you on the show. Delighted that we've finally made this happen. And I'm looking forward to having you back in a few weeks to get us started about test scores, another serious issue that our education sectors are dealing with. Thank you, Andy. Andy uh Johnson from Minnesota and the United States talking about literacy and leading us to the next conversation that we'll be having with him, which is around test scores and how we actually determine whether someone is succeeding or not, be it the educators or students.