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There was some good news for the students. I found someone to teach them how to read.
This was in the late ’80s, when I was just beginning to work with illiterate adults. I had no materials, no guidance, no mentors. Only a slowly growing group of students discovered my GED prep program and returned night after night, patiently and wearily waiting for me to find a way to teach them to read. I quickly realized that this challenge was beyond my untrained, intuitive approach.
But now I had a solution! An experienced reading tutor offered to work with two of her students. The problem is, I have to go to her library in another part of the city.
One of them, Nelson (student’s name has been changed to protect privacy), was a fierce man in his early 30s. He had a shaved head, gold earrings, and a stony, unsmiling face. The other, Joseph, was in his 60s, exhausted by the stress of caring for his aging father and sick grown daughter on an illiterate man’s salary. The two became friends. I was very happy to think that they were working with this experienced tutor. I expected them to share my excitement, but they just stared blankly back at me. I jumped up and down trying to explain the qualifications of this tutor, but what a stroke of luck! They didn’t budge. Finally, I asked, “Why aren’t you excited about this?”
Nelson glared at me furiously. Joseph finally said, “I can’t go there unless someone takes me there first.” It was at this moment that it became clear for the first time that the serious consequences of low literacy skills were being had. A able-bodied adult man who could not read directional signs could not even pursue a solution to his predicament.
In my 15 years of working with adults who cannot read, I have seen and heard countless examples of the limitations that low literacy skills place on adults. But while educators across the country lament the reading crisis and call for a balanced literacy icon to take charge, that discourse avoids the world of adult education altogether.
Two-thirds of American fourth graders can’t read at grade level? They will soon become adults who cannot read.
95% of 8th– Are there any scorers in Detroit who can’t read well? Same.
So what?
It is long past time for the adult education world to accept the evidence and catch up with the science of reading. Of course there are obstacles. Adults are not just less cute than children. Less money is allocated to their education, fewer teachers and schools are interested in them, and no one is writing books in the bank for them to read.there is no captain pants Or Dr. Seuss for adults to read in 1cent or 2n.d. grade level.
48 million adult Americans read below a third-grade level. In 2020, Forbes magazine reported that the epidemic of low literacy could cost the United States $2.2 trillion annually in lost health care, social services, and wages. Even worse, poor literacy skills are passed on to children. The biggest indicator of a child’s literacy fate is the mother’s reading level.
Economics aside, virtually everyone on both sides of the aisle wants adults to be able to read books. Clearly, this is an issue worth our attention. Naturally, you would expect the book wars, the push for evidence-backed methods, and the trivialization revolution of the past few decades to have an impact on the world of adult education, right?
You tell me. let’s see.
Imagine your spouse, parent, or neighbor can’t read..
You know about the science of reading. I listened to “Sold a Story”. You believe that Whole Language is a discredited theory and that balanced literacy is not an effective method of teaching reading comprehension.
You started looking for services. Check your library, literacy center or local authority website. I was happy to discover that many of these sites offer basic literacy services for adults. But if you click on the link, you’ll see the next layer. Phrases like “adult literacy classes” and “adult basic literacy” actually mean computer training, ESL, vocational certification, or GED classes. Great and essential programs, but what about the 48 million people who need to learn to read? Where can I find structured phonics programs for adults?
Some literacy centers make it clear that they do not serve readers under the age of four.th grade level. Others are less clear. In New York City, the Mayor’s Office’s website offers a variety of adult basic education links for adults who want to learn to read and write, but when you click to learn more, there are circular and even broken links. . The prestigious Adult Literacy Foundation names its core methodology for teaching reading “Whole Language.” This would be like a state-funded clinic listing phlebotomy as one of its services.
Back in the ’80s, under pressure from students in my program who were so desperate to learn to read and not drop out, I started asking around. How do you teach reading to adults? The reaction from education directors, foundation directors, teachers, and supporters was disappointing. “Are they retarded?” asked the adult education program director. “They probably need to try harder,” said one adult education program manager.
“We let students choose their own curriculum,” the local director of a community literacy program serving hundreds of students told me. I was confused. “So you’re teaching higher level students?” I said. “Can they read?”
“No, they can’t read,” she said. “But they’re adults, so they can choose what they want to work on.” By that time, I had been learning how to teach reading for a few years, and I was a literate college graduate. was still having a hard time understanding it. But the program expected less skilled readers to direct their own hero’s journeys.
Where can I find the materials?
My early group of adult students were so desperate to learn to read that they tolerated my clumsy early efforts. I shudder to remember what I put them through. Children’s books, random workbooks, the naive idea that teaching people how to vocalize will do the trick. Here’s what I know from years spent in the field:For most of these students, learning to decode very difficult.
Adults who never learn to read are often the most dyslexic, the least educated, and most affected by socio-economic factors. Some immigrants do not attend school at all or drop out after the second or third year.
If you grow up in the United States, most of you either drop out early or languish in special education classrooms for years.
They are now adults and typically lead lives with work (or job searches), families, and health issues. They have adult brains, are often tired, and stick to ineffective decoding strategies.
most popular strategy
Lacking decoding skills, most adults come up with strategies. First, memorize as many words as possible visually. Then use context to make inferences. Third, they stare impatiently at the word and wait for it to come to mind. Of course, it also has its own unique elegance. One student rewrote the word over and over again, sternly admonishing himself. come, get it” Many people will come up with a chaotic and seemingly panicked jumble of speculation.
What all the adult basic literacy students I’ve met have in common is a complete lack of awareness of reading code. No one has ever come into my program understanding that the sound is more relevant than the name of the letter, or that the sound itself is important.
As a group, these are case studies on the importance of direct instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.
As much or more than any other group, they need the best teaching methods.
So why are adult education programs almost completely lacking in evidence-backed basic literacy programs? Why insist on whole language principles? Specifics for teaching adults to read Why is Paolo Freire, who has not given any kind of strategy, always been loved?
Is it any wonder that it is impossible to retain students with basic reading and writing skills for more than a few months, so programs are not considered worth the trouble? See what they offer. Why stick around there?
I was lucky.
Guided by the tenacity of the first group of students, I discovered the concept of evidence-based methods for teaching children to read. I earned my certification and took the program back to my tutoring center. Over the years, I continued to tweak the curriculum to better serve both adult students and volunteer tutors, and eventually rewrote the entire thing so that volunteers could be trained to use it. , we have created a simple, scripted and structured phonics curriculum that best follows the evidence. of my ability.
The two men I mentioned joined my program too early to reap its full benefits. They were subject to the lower end of my expertise curve. But they learned. Nelson, a young man, never knew there was anything to reading other than memorizing every word, he said. He slowly and painstakingly learned to tap and blend the sounds of simple words. One day, trying not to laugh, he came over and told us that his uncle had left him a note. he will read it. Another time he told me he got lost and started reading road signs. His ex-wife, who was trying to help him over the phone, started yelling, “You can read!” He told me, “Words come out everywhere I go.” He was a wayward young man, he would often disappear for weeks on end, and when I asked him what he was doing, he slyly shook his head. One day he did not return.
Joseph also learned slowly. He later said that during his first year of tutoring he suffered from excruciating headaches. It was worth it. I hear the same thing from all of my students. “Why didn’t you teach us this when we were younger?”
If the number of children currently reading below elementary school level is true, then we are facing an even worse adult literacy crisis than we currently have. The calls for effective ways to teach children are loud and clear. But it’s also time to ring the bell for the refugees of our broken reading education system, the children who didn’t learn and still don’t read as adults.
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