Let’s help our children now
Over many years, I have written letters to the editor and My Views that have run in The Santa Fe New Mexican. All of them have had the subject of children and education, especially concerning reading.
In all those many, many years, I have never had a response of any kind, good or bad, from any of the people who have the power to make decisions about our children’s education, yet my opinions and suggestions come from working with first- and second-graders after school for 18 years. It was a reading-based program at the Boys and Girls Club on Alto Street before the move to Zona Del Sol. I was given the incredible opportunity to develop a program that stressed individual attention to the needs of each child. In that time, I worked with hundreds of children.
I tell you this because I want to have credibility behind the rest of what I want to suggest.
I have been watching the statistics of how well the children in Santa Fe (and all of New Mexico) are reading. Frankly, after 18 years I see little difference. Those with the control have made changes and some, such as a slightly improved graduation rate, are good changes and some are not. But the problem is that the things that most need to improve have not changed.
The underlying problem was broadly covered in a recent article by Robert Nott (“‘I thought it was too late,’ ” Nov. 20) when he wrote about the literacy situation for adults here. Many of these people are parents of the children who are struggling with reading. Parents are the foundation for developing good readers. These adults need much available help.
In the schools, we need more good teachers and they need much more freedom to innovate.
They need smaller classes so there can be more individual attention. They need to concentrate on making learning fun. A good teacher knows how to do that. Slash the testing even further than has been done.
Principals are the deciding factor for every school in our community. This can be good and bad.
Many school districts have a central organization that makes decisions for all schools. I’m not in favor of that method.
We can’t keep talking about retention — keeping children back a grade when they are not doing as well as other students. We need many more tutoring programs if the children are not getting what they need in regular classes. Do this and we won’t need to talk about retention, which often leads to dropouts.
I’ve written in length about pre-K not terribly long ago (“Plan ahead for Santa Fe preschool,” My View, Oct. 15). The bottom line is that we need it but the first thing we need is a “business plan” in great detail about how to fund it, structure it and obtain the correct teachers. Pre-K is not kindergarten.
I am now working with a rather new organization that will do some of the hard work of tutoring and mentoring children already passed on to the third grade but who cannot read at grade level. This is really a last chance for them. In third grade, they are now studying subjects and must know how to read and understand content.
The organization I’m helping is MATCH New Mexico and their mission is to match as many top college students as possible with third-graders in a planned tutoring/mentoring program. The younger students connect very well with the college-age students. Reading is the goal but also within the context of helping develop the whole child.
Our future is in the hands of our children. Let’s help them now.