Is This Country Hooked on Phonics?

I love finding out what people think about the state of affairs in education. Over and over again, I meet people who are disgusted with the top ad nauseam testing and consequent labels put on our young.

One father, an ex-UAL pilot who got laid off, told me that he thinks this country is 'Hooked on Phonics" and cannot think. I was shocked at his comment for he hit the nail on the head.

After 12 years of NCLB and now the Duncan/Obama agenda, nothing has changed. In fact, it has gotten worse.

If we are not careful, we will have a nation of BORGS living in an Orwellian world.

Greeting from Program Chair for 2010 NCTE Convention

Greetings from the Program Chair

Hele mai e ho’olaule’a                  Come celebrate

E ná hoa kumu                              O fellow teachers

E a’o mai kákou                            Let us learn together

Indeed, let us learn together with our fellow teachers and celebrate NCTE’s 100^th Convention in sunny Orlando ready to learn and renew ourselves with warmth, openness, and love.

Use this 100^th Convention of NCTE to (1) reflect conscientiously upon our practice, (2) examine judiciously the many, difficult issues before us as we help students learn in the 21^st and into the 22^nd century, as well as (3) consider vigilantly the consequences of our actions upon our students, our profession, and the greater society. Every action we take has a ripple effect, and everything we do matters.

My hope is those who attend NCTE’s 2010 Convention recognize the vital need for us as teachers to advocate for ourselves, where to reach out for support, and how to use what you learn to educate the larger society.

We can no longer shut our classroom doors to others. Instead, we need to welcome others into our classrooms so that they can see first-hand the many variables we must orchestrate moment-to-moment in order to meet the academic, psychological, social, emotional, and physical needs of our students. We teachers must advocate for students, parents/guardians, and ourselves for we are in the best position to do so. If we don’t embrace and act upon this huge responsibility, not only will our students suffer from the consequences of ill-conceived, theoretically and pedagogically unsound policies and mandates imposed on us from those far away from the classroom, but so will we.

Now is the time to engage in the exciting process of reinventing education, for we must. Thus, I call upon you to use what you learn at this 100^th NCTE Convention to inform others and help the greater society embrace what we all know: Schools by their very nature should not be factories where students are die pressed and turned out like widgets, all alike. This factory approach so prevalent in our schools and embedded in our society kills the joy of learning. Without purpose and joy, school becomes drudgery, and very little learning takes place.

In order to thrive in the 21^st and into the 22^nd century, our students don’t need more high stakes testing, mandates, impositions, and sanctions from those far away from the classroom.  Instead students need teachers to be their best professional selves—through kid watching, through kid listening, through trusting in and expanding their own experiences and knowledge. Classrooms need to be places of purpose and joy. Without purpose and joy, learning is stifled.

Lastly, as you attend sessions, workshops, other events, and listen to keynote speakers, Dr. Otto Santa Anna, Erin Gruwell, and T.A. Barron please take to heart our kuleana (duty/responsibility) to do no harm to those entrusted into our care, to maintain our commitment to our students, our ethics and our profession, to resist dreadful policies and help develop better ones, and to remember for all times the following…

‘O ka ‘Ōlelo ke Ka‘ā o ka Mauli

Language is the fiber that binds us to our cultural identity

http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/khuok/

He ho’omau i ke aloha a mahalo  ka ‘ike ku’una o ka láhui, me ka ‘imi

‘ana i mau ala hou e pili ai me ka ‘ike o ná láhui a kuana’ike é a’e.

Sustain respect for the integrity of one’s own cultural knowledge  

and provide meaningful opportunities to make new connections

 among other knowledge systems.

http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/pub/NHMO.pdf

I ka ‘ōlelo no ke ola, i ka ‘ōlelo nō ka make.

Words can heal; words can destroy

http://www.ahapunanaleo.org/olelohawaii/ohana/ohana_olelonoeau.html

I ku mau mau (Stand up together),

Yvonne Siu-Runyan

President-Elect, National Council Teachers of English

—

NO, Mr Firedman, you are wrong!

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

WORD

An unpublshed letter to the NY Times

Thomas Friedman asserts that American education has declined, our test scores are low, and that we must therefore demand more of our students.

This is all wrong. American students from well-funded schools who come from high-income families outscore nearly all other countries on international tests. Only our children in high-poverty schools score below the international average. Our scores look low because the US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (25%, compared to Denmark's 3%). American education has been successful; the problem is poverty.

The solution is not to blame students for being lazy (our elders said this about us). The solution is to protect children from the damaging effects of poverty: better nutrition (Susan Ohanian suggests the motto "No Child Left Unfed"), excellent health care for all children, and universal access to reading material. - Stephen Krashen