NEGLECT IN EDUCATION REFORM

JULITA B. AMURAO

Motivating students to read may be the best thing we do for them as teachers. Students collectively strive to read different reading materials . So far so good. Our students are reading with more energy and excitement, and they seem genuinely interested in achieving the goal. Students must have read more books oftentimes. Robert Tierney articulated this idea of doing more reading activities to harness their mental aptitude and less testing.

“It is suggested therefore moving toward conversations and notes rather than checklists, rubrics, and more formal evaluations, which seem to distance the student from what she/he is doing, has done, or might do.”

When students share about the books they are reading, there is a direct connection to the “might do,” which is too-often overlooked in schools. Students who are given time and permission to consider what they might do next, in terms of reading and learning, take charge of their own learning in new and authentic ways. Scripted assessments leave little room for students to think about what next steps they might want to take.

We rarely even ask students what they want to explore, read about, discover. Rather, next steps are clearly defined for all students. This contradicts everything we know about the uniqueness of individual learners. Yet our primary measurement tools seek to package learning results in the same box for all students.

Getting students to talk about what they are reading, learning, doing, discovering, etc. is an essential first step toward reform that can actually make a difference for our students Every new plastic-wrapped reform bundle or online data collection system is bound to fall short if students don’t see the value in what they are doing.

They seem to voice a collective “What is this?” each time we impose a new reform fad. There is nothing faddish about the question, “What are you reading?” My own un-scientific theory, which I share often with students, is this: Avid readers are successful. Avid readers “get it.” They understand the world and its issues more clearly because they have lived vicariously through the lives of the characters in the books they read. And this is a good thing. Motivating students to read may be the best thing we do for them as teachers. It is unlikely that a lesson, lecture, assignment, or unit will remain with them after they leave our classrooms. However, a love of reading can be a life changer, concurs that students simply need encouragement: “Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so.

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The author is Master Teacher I at Francisco G. Nepomuceno Memorial High School, Division of Angeles City