Melanie’s Blog

   mhammer

February 10, 2008 @ 7:08 am

Melanie,
I agree with you that teachers need to use a combination of approaches when teaching children. One program or approach will not meet the varying needs or the different learning styles of every child found in a classroom. Teachers use to have a voice…when did all that change? People need to start listening to teachers if we are to truly educate children in our country. We have children’s best interest at heart, rather than the companies producing all these programs, whose only interst is in making money.

   crothstein

February 10, 2008 @ 8:32 am

Hi Melanie,
The term Whole Language is a blast from the past! I am afraid even to use the words now! I used to love to teach that way though. It was so much fun to draw from anything in the world. It was very constructivist because it was meaningful. And it was an exciting time to be a teacher. You could but very creative. But research did show that children were missing the phonemic part when learning to read if it was ignored. Good readers picked up reading holistically- poor readers needed it broken into phonetic pieces. But I think you have it the treasure trove of reading pedagogy if you do both. And as a Speech and Language Pathologist, I know the phonetic is important part(from my speech training) and the whole word is important as well (from my language training).
But basically, the lesson for all of us is like Rhina says, Teaching is POLITICAL. And if we stand meekly by, someone is going to grab the soapbox, demean us and dictate our job for us. And the ones to suffer are our students.

   Jen Park

February 10, 2008 @ 3:35 pm

Melanie,
I think you’re right. There is no one way of doing something, especially when we work with such a diverse population. Whole language may be beneficial to some whereas phonics is to others. We are all individuals who learn in our distinct ways. I think, like you said, you have to have a balance in what and how you teach. You can’t rely solely on one type of instruction, material, etc. I know so many of my students cannot generalize from one setting to the next and I kind of liked reading that even general education students have that difficulty at times. That’s a problem that I think Fulton County will see this year. We just switched over to a hands-on math program that challenges students to think outside the box. I think this is wonderful but I worry how they will perform when CRCT’s come up in spring and the format is circle in your answer. So here’s the catch 22. Do you teach them for testing, THANKS for nothing NCLB, or do you teach them for inquiry? I guess like the reading debate, there needs to be a balance in every subject and every approach to teaching.

   dawntaylor05

February 11, 2008 @ 6:28 pm

Melanie,

I laughed when you mentioned your morning message and then asked the children to do it on paper and they looked as though they had never seen it!! I have had the same experiences with my own class. You’re right, balance is the answer. I particularly enjoy the “hands-on”, creative activities that I develop for my second graders, but the reality is that if they can’t do it on a pencil and paper task, then I haven’t taught it to mastery! Someday, people in charge will ask students to create projects and evaluate them based upon their creativity and content knowledge. Yeah right, if you can’t “bubble” the answer, it’s not important! We know that young children need “hands-on” learning activities to develop concepts. We know that a 2 hour, silent test is not developmentally appropriate, but we’re only the teachers, what do we know?

   Brandi Holmes

February 14, 2008 @ 7:38 pm

Melanie,
How right you are! I feel that for far too long educators voices have gone unheard and we are the voice with the most knowledge. WE are in the classrooms everyday with these students teaching them, working with them, assessing them, and why don’t we know what is best for them? It is just as Gatto states in the book I’m reading, Dumbing Us Down, “We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing: my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press–a decade-long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right; their “solutions” are expensive and self-serving and always involve further centralization. We’ve seen the results. It’s time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family.” (p.34)