Why Johnny Can’t Read

Johnny can’t read because Johnny doesn’t read. You learn to read by reading. Just like Gertrude Stein said, “Writing is writing.” Reading is reading. In my forty years of teaching, I learned that there is a very close relationship between reading and writing.

When I first began teaching in 1967, I had no ideas at all about how to teach reading. I put all of my sixth grade students into the sixth grade level reading book even though most of them were several grade levels below the sixth grade level. We read the stories aloud together, and answered questions on what we read. I had the students check out library books and make book reports about once a week. Reading class was a time to catch up for me while most of the kids were reading quietly.

Before my second year at Willows, I visited a job core center where they were teaching reading using The Sullivan Reading Program that started kids at their reading level and took them up step by step. They told the students who were inner city delinquents; “You are not a man if you don’t know how to read.” I watched tough looking black kids reading quietly and answering question from their reading cards. The instructors at the center told me that the program was very effective.

My second year in Willows, the principal took away my history class and had me teach a period of health. At one point in my new health class, I had to teach first aid. Since one of the old time sixth grade teachers had a first aid certificate, I arranged to teach his fourth period social studies class for two weeks while he did the first aid for me. Mr. Gannon let me know that his was an A class and not very bright. The classes at Sycamore were ability grouped from sixth grade on. The brightest kids were in the D sections and thought they already knew all there was to learn. The lowest kids were grouped in the A classes and called themselves “the dummies.” “I don’t allow no talking in my class. If a kid gets out of line have him take a lap around the field and leave me his name,” Gannon told me.

My first day in his class, I watched the students silently turn the pages of the chapter that they were assigned. After a half hour or so when I figured most of the kids had read the assignment, I tried to get a little discussion going asking questions about what they had read. No one could answer a single question. I discovered that they couldn’t read the sixth grade history text and had been conditioned to just sit in the classroom and turn the pages.

“At least we can teach them to read,” I told the other new teachers and explained how the Sullivan Reading Program that I saw at the Job Corps Center last summer started a student at his reading level and took him up grade by grade in a very short time. After looking at the program, four of the new teachers and myself agreed to give up our prep. periods to teach the program to the non-reading A level students. I presented our proposal to Mr. Limpkey. He looked at it and in a couple days let us know that there wasn’t money in the budget to pay for the materials. That’s one of the main reasons that I left Willows after my second year.

At Nice School a couple years later, I started working with a principal, Fritz, was very big on individualization. With his support, I tested the reading level of my sixth grade students and placed them in books at their reading level. With the kids reading from second to tenth grade levels, I had them write reading summaries in order to evaluate their reading. To write a good summary I taught them that they had to start with the main idea of the story and then write a couple paragraphs giving the detail. The lower level readers could barely write a summary, so I always made them write two drafts. I corrected the first draft, sometimes rewriting nearly every word and had them copy it. I found that their writing improved as they learned to copy proper writing. Their reading improved also.

Several years later when I was teaching sixth grade at Mountain View Middle School, during a faculty meeting I told my fellow teachers that it was a disgraceful how we let so many of our students go on to high school still unable to read. One of them, Mrs. Drake, told me to put my money where my mouth was and teach remedial reading as my elective.

So, I gave up my video filming elective and began teaching a remedial reading class. There I was with twenty-eight plus students who were all reading at least two grades below the sixth grade level. I tested them and place them in books at their reading level. First, I ordered discarded reading texts from the district library. I had the students write one summary a week from the district text. They wrote a rough draft, which I corrected, and they then copied it for their second draft. Next, they would read a high interest low level book and write a book report. Again, they wrote a first and second draft. The rest of the week would be free reading in Scope Magazines, comic books or books that they brought from home.

I tested the students once every six weeks. Almost every student who made a real effort would move up one grade level in six weeks. There were a few students in each class who wouldn’t put out the effort and their reading level didn’t improve, but for the most my students left the class reading at or above grade level. The whole secret was to get them to read, and to enjoy reading. Of course, as their reading skills improved, their writing skills improved also.

After my third year teaching the remedial reading elective, the district decided to have a full time remedial reading teacher at our site. Our principal asked if I would like to be the site remedial reading teacher.

I told her, “Sure, if they let me teach remedial reading in the way that I have been teaching it.”

Later, I was informed that the district wanted to take the phonics, or skilled-based approach. I learned that in this approach you start with the basic parts of words and move towards reading as a whole. “Lessons begin with sounding out first letters followed by combinations of letters. Sight vocabulary, or easily recognizable words, is emphasized, and students are encouraged to hone their skills on short “basal” (or basic) reading passages and through numerous skills exercises, each with only one correct answer.”

I had spent a little time with the “phonics approach” in the district mandated spelling program. I found that at the sixth grade level this approach was deadly boring. Most students hated working with phonics and sounding out letters. And in my years of teaching I found that students learn best what the love doing. If you can teach a kid to love reading, you can teach him to read.