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April 26, 2006
Balanced Literacy?
A is for Apple, B is for Brawl, is an article that you might want to take a look at. While many of us are not located in the New York City school districts, literacy is a problem that effects all of us, since the students we teach arrive from many different locations. The basic premise is the same: whole language ideology vs. phonics. What I continually do not understand is why they have to be pitted against each other. As an ESL teacher, I don’t need the studies done at Yale to validate my teaching philosophy regarding language. The best approach is to utilize both ideologies in a way that gives pre-literate students the tools to understand how we string letters together in English, as well as what words actually mean in various contexts. In fact, the real problem lies in myopic pedagogies. And, of course, there are other problems as well. What kinds of books are available to these children? Are they just those that the dominant society has decided children need to read, or do they have a few selections that are culturally specific (not to mention DIVERSE)? Do they have their copy of Afrotina and the Three Bears? This book is definitely important; it places young African American students in the center of the American fairytale. What about Uncle Nachos Hat? Not only is this book relative to Latino/a children, but it is a bilingual text that does double duty: it gives students whose first language is Spanish an opportunity to be exposed to words in English in a non-threatening, non-assimilative way. Do they have any selections written in non-standard varieties of English? And what about this ECLAS test, that will *determine* which children need “special services”. Dare we hazard a guess as to which children (aka African American and Latino/as) will qualify for these “services”? It seems to me that the one lesson this country needs above all others is one that teaches mutual respect and cooperation. Maybe then we can achieve real balance.
Curious about ECLAS? Check out this blog ...
Posted by dvaldesd at April 26, 2006 09:58 AM