Trust teachers to reach students in individualized ways

It was with alarm that I read Naomi Martin and Mandy McLaren’s “The word of the day is ‘complacent.’ ” I believe that activists across the literacy debate hold the same goal in mind: more students empowered to read fluently. However, we find ourselves in a moment where rhetoric reigns supreme. As such, we must take note that certain advocates for structured literacy, a phonics-based approach, have declared that they are the true defenders of vulnerable students, and the Globe article perpetuated this rhetoric.

I want to emphasize that both advocates for more structured literacy and advocates for integrated literacy (which prioritizes individualized and differentiated instruction) have the interests of the most vulnerable students in mind.

For those of us not ready to buy the irresistible promise that structured literacy has sold — one being packaged and resold by legislators across the country — let me explain our position by quoting the great reading researcher Catherine Compton-Lilly and her coauthors in their recent article in The Reading Teacher, a journal of the International Literacy Association: “We do not advocate for a particular approach to teaching reading; instead, we center children, arguing that how you teach reading must be determined by who you are teaching. Anything else is flawed. Reading is a ‘complex, multidimensional cognitive process situated in and mediated by social and cultural practices.’ ”

I would like to see more articles that center the knowledge and expertise of teachers and model for our community the trust we ought to endow in our teachers. I am an advocate of integrated literacy because it’s my firmest conviction that learning results will always depend on teachers’ knowledge of the needs and interests of their individual students.

ZIVA R. HASSENFELD Newton The writer is the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor of Education at Brandeis University.