Equity for All

I am sure many of us are familiar with the story of Dr. Ben Carson, famous neurosurgeon, Dr. Miles Munroe, well sought after international motivational speaker and the story of Teddy Stallard who became a medical doctor. What is common about their stories? They all encountered teachers who told them that they did not have the capacity to learn, they all had social problems that impacted their learning and they all were demoted to other classes because they were not performing at Grade level. However, they also encountered teachers who believed in them and nurtured their abilities. While initially they were not operating at the level of their classmates, later, with the requisite instructions and motivation from their significant others, i.e. their teachers and in the case of Ben Carson, his mother, they outperformed many of their classmates who were classified as having superior abilities. Are we "writing off" our students too early? Are we investigating all the possible reasons why theymight not be measuring up to the criteria set? Are we aware of our students' realities (their cultural and social realities) that adversely affect their learning? Sometimes nothing is wrong with them mentally. However if the other intervening conditions arenot fixed then those students will have a hard time learning. Recently I heard of a case where a father told his daughter not to pass the Grade Six Achievement Test because he had no money to send her to High school. What does this story teach us? Many of those we consider incapable of passing the G4LT have the cognitive ability to perform successfully but other variables are interveining. Could we do a little more probing and empathize more? Probably we would be able to elicit a potential doctor from the 'maze" A liitle about Teddy Stallard, the character I mentioned earlier. We can learn a lesson from this story. Teddy's mother to whom he was attached died. His grades started falling drastically. One of Teddy's teacher "got a certain perverse pleasure out of putting Xs next to the wrong answer and when she puts the Fs at the top of the paper she always did it with flair". Teddy encountered a new teacher, Miss Thompson, who was "not only a teacher but an agent of God". She helped her students but paid special attention to students like Teddy, who were trailing behind. Teddy left school. Some years later Miss Thompson received a letter. It read," Dear Miss Thompson, as of Today, I am Theodore Stallard M.D. I am getting married and i want you to sit where my mother would have sat, were she alive. You are the only family I have now. Dad died last year" (Source-A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for te Soul) There are some students who make us frustrated because it seems that they will never get it right. A little more patience, perhaps, a liitle more probing, perhaps,  to reveal the real reason for the delay, a little more compliment, perhaps, might  help. If the child has no mental problem, what else is causing the underperformance? Let us find out and address them. Maybe this will provide the answer to helping our students to achieve mastery on the G4LT and other cognitive tasks. Maureen

Maureen, thanks for highlighting the need for us to apprach our children with passion and compassion both of which I see as pre-requisites for the teacher who is going to impact children as learners and as persons. Often teachers are the only 'stable and predictable' persons children have in their lives.In regard to what school leaders and individual teachers can do, maybe we could just start by being more consistent and deliberate in the use of data that we have on our children - Grade 1 Grade 3 and all the other internal results that schools have; develop or use an existing reading profile which would track where children are at at various stages of their development - integrate the information from data into this; use e this to target the most appropriate intervention at the point/s where such is needed.We could also be more systematic in making our classrooms text rich - by acquiring fiction books for our children - there was the book box idea that was funded by DFID some years ago. Boxes of fiction books were placed in various schools, thus giving children access to more than they normally had. Perhaps this idea could be re-visited and funded by our private sector partners. (We also need to address what happens in the secondary sector - fiction/literature books are not on the Book Rental Scheme....(came across young woman who had only ever read 1 literature text in her entire seconday and teacher training life!) Oh the joy of reading a good story on your own in your own time... our final third need to experience this too. 

The indication is that a few of the one-third of students to which we refer are special education cases. In addition to other voices in the forum, I am also convinced that our children, generally, can master the GFLT if they are in situations that allow them, for example competent , caring teachers who:

•   understand and can use a variety of approaches that facilitate children's diverse needs.A history of the teaching of reading/literacy in Jamaica shows that we are getting closer to these kinds  of approaches, some of which have been documented in this forum.
• teach with their heart in addition to their head -create situations where children feel that they "can  do   it",  situations where they will want to work towards targets set by both themselves and their teachers.
• engage in Assessment Based Literacy Instruction (ABLI)- this will track progress in a very meaningful way. I have seen programmes carried out by literacy students and professionals which embrace the aspects like the ones mentiones and children excel in literacy - children who were taken out of main stream classes could measure up to their main stream counterparts after a matter of weeks of months depending on the specific situation. We will know when an intervention has worked if we monitor  through assessments like ABLI and some standardized assessments. Assessments that provide qualitative as well as quantitative data. From these data good instructional plans would be made.

This takes us back to the hands of the competent caring teacher.  Jossett Smikle

One way to help the “one third” of the students who consistently underperform in the G4LT is to make better use of the instructional time allotted to the teaching of reading and writing (Allington, 2006).   Based on my doctoral research which was conducted in 20009-2010 on the nationalized G4LT, I observed that a lot of valuable instructional time was ‘wasted’ due to disciplinary issues, lack of student preparation for classes, and the general disorganization in the daily routines within the school day.  While some students can thrive under these circumstances (for various reasons), other students are easily distracted by this and are shortchanged by the loss of instructional time.  In other words, more research needs to be conducted to quantify how much of the school day is actually spent teaching which should translate into improving the quality of the teaching time.  Another way to help the “one third” is to ensure that part of their literacy support includes the actual reading of text (Allington, 2006).  This is especially true for those in the Non mastery category who have failed all components of the G4LT.  Oftentimes the temptation is to drill these students on the basics by giving those pupils a lot of phonic lessons.  However, if they are not given the opportunity to transfer/apply these phonic skills into the actual reading of texts, they will consistently relate reading with the calling out of words as opposed to the ability to retrieve meaning and pleasure from books.