Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a “pre-celebration” to boost their confidence, then take their exam.
For years, schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues. As reading scores tumbled over the past decade, parents, scholars and literacy advocates pushed for teaching methods that align with decades of research about how kids learn to read — largely by sounding out words.
But also our society doesn’t value education very much. Teachers don’t make good money, so many people who would be good at it go into other jobs. One of my recent jobs had like 3 ex-teachers in software. They were making like double for half the work. That’s great for them, but do we really need more tech setups that much?
Just sound it out was one of my least favorite things to be told as a child. That’s not how English works. Take Pacific Ocean for instance, literally every C in those two words is pronounced differently. And more importantly knowing how a word is pronounced is not going to give you any fucking understanding of what it means.
How is it hubris to say that not every student learns the same way? For real? No it’s hubris to say that everybody should have to learn the same way and you’re fucked if you don’t learn well.
Because it doesn’t seem like you’ve read the article nor have any real expertise in education, but you’re making grand pronouncements anyway.
“People learn in different ways” may be true, but is irrelevant to the point that some ways of teaching reading are ineffective or even counter-productive
Nobody said phonics is a perfect method, but against evidence showing it does substantially better at getting kids to learn how to read, you rocked up to contribute what amounts to “This is bullshit, because I didn’t like it as a kid.” We aren’t discussing how private tutors work, but how to get the public school system to get the best results in aggregate.
Every kid learns differently, sure. But we can’t even staff schools at adequate levels to hold decent group instruction, much less provide tailored education for each student, so your reply about everything being wrong until every every child has their unique idiosyncrasies accounted for comes across as a bit daft in the context of the discussion.
Yeah that was a huge fuck up.
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ goes into detail.
But also our society doesn’t value education very much. Teachers don’t make good money, so many people who would be good at it go into other jobs. One of my recent jobs had like 3 ex-teachers in software. They were making like double for half the work. That’s great for them, but do we really need more tech setups that much?
Just sound it out was one of my least favorite things to be told as a child. That’s not how English works. Take Pacific Ocean for instance, literally every C in those two words is pronounced differently. And more importantly knowing how a word is pronounced is not going to give you any fucking understanding of what it means.
It’s certainly better than “look at the pictures and guess”.
Go read (or listen to) the article. People who have studied this more than either of us have weighed in.
Until the answer is “every student learns differently“ the answer will always be wrong.
That’s an amazing degree of hubris. Get out of here lol
How is it hubris to say that not every student learns the same way? For real? No it’s hubris to say that everybody should have to learn the same way and you’re fucked if you don’t learn well.
Because it doesn’t seem like you’ve read the article nor have any real expertise in education, but you’re making grand pronouncements anyway.
“People learn in different ways” may be true, but is irrelevant to the point that some ways of teaching reading are ineffective or even counter-productive
So you made an assumption and then instead of just asking me about it decided to be an asshole? Wow…
Nobody said phonics is a perfect method, but against evidence showing it does substantially better at getting kids to learn how to read, you rocked up to contribute what amounts to “This is bullshit, because I didn’t like it as a kid.” We aren’t discussing how private tutors work, but how to get the public school system to get the best results in aggregate.
Every kid learns differently, sure. But we can’t even staff schools at adequate levels to hold decent group instruction, much less provide tailored education for each student, so your reply about everything being wrong until every every child has their unique idiosyncrasies accounted for comes across as a bit daft in the context of the discussion.
More of an inference that an assumption, really. But go on. Did you read the article? Do you have any expertise on the subject?