Bill I just attended a workshop yesterday where one of the speakers, a Dr. Rick Pribyl with the Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, KS spoke to the audience as a side note about the topic of content teachers not knowing how to teach Reading. Dr. Pribyl teaches Senior English and AP courses, and he himself admits to never having had a Reading course. His solution was to first survey the 35 teachers in his school as to their interest in taking a course in reading or even taking the 12 credits in KS for Reading certification. He and 3 other colleagues then wrote a proposal to Kansas University to solicit help from their grant department for help in locating a grant that would fund the teachers payment of classes, transportation, but also babysitting costs. The grant department at KU now is researching and will write the final grant document. My point: there is a need for content area teachers to also know the fundamentals of reading to assist their students in the hard task of interpreting their textbooks. Content teachers feel the frustration of students who fail because they can't comprehend the text, but they don't know who to go to or how to help the students they teacher, because of the pressure to simply "cover" the material. By the way, all 35 teachers asked at Blue Valley Northwest HS wanted to take the Reading classes.
What do you think of these opinions - do you agree, partially agree, disagree? What is your school doing along these lines that has been successful? If your school isn't doing much but you wish it were, what are the impediments to this kind of progress that you are experiencing? So many questions - almost as many as my students ;-) Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org . Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive DeAnn Kaduce Central Middle School Kansas City, MO 64128 (816)418-2100, xt. 0605 _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
