Literacy: The Fundamental Skill
When I first sat down to write this blog, I thought about what I wanted to say and why I have the authority to say it. I share a bunch on lifestyle topics but never about my background in literacy (yet), so I thought about wanting to explain to you my experiences in teaching, my Master’s Degree in Special Education, how I’ve worked directly with too many kids to count over a decade on language, reading, spelling, writing and how to reckon with the real-life impacts of those challenges.
But as I started typing, I was immediately smacked back into my evolved reality of our educational system: the privileges I myself enjoyed on my path to these achievements, and academic and emotional struggles of “school” that so many children, adolescents and adults endure. I cannot unsee the burdens and debts that come with chasing the letters to follow or precede our names. While there are many facets of privilege and access, there is one skill that truly precedes all of the rest… one skill that sets us on different tracks in life from the very start… and I bet you can guess what it is.
Does this disregard the fact that professionals need specialized training in their fields? Of course not. This is an acknowledgement of the immense, entrenched rift that exists (and one that I’m not sure how fully we grasp as a society) in regards to “achievement”, to college degrees, to subsequent career growth and societal contribution – simply because of how one’s brain develops in the area of READING in particular.
The Importance of Reading
Why reading? It is one of the very first things we learn to DO in school that we receive feedback on. It’s a precursor skill to so much of our education, and it’s nearly omnipresent in all learning after a certain grade-level. Reading ability is not an indicator of intelligence…and yet in our society it is a determining factor in so many aspects of life from education and income to violence and physical health.
Reading is something we’re all expected to do, and yet, reading is not natural for humans…it is a highly complex skill that humans have created and acquired, one that uses many different facets of our brain. Brain science now shows us just how many areas of the brain light up when we read a single word… and it’s way more intense than anyone realized. Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader Come Home, describes a “five-ring” circus in our brains with neural pathways that must be developed for everyone in basically the same way. What we now know is that some brains need MUCH more repetition, deeper practice, multi-sensory engagement in order to build those pathways and ALL brains benefit from a structured and sequential approach to literacy that includes a heavy emphasis on phonics.
Recognizing and Addressing the Shortcomings in Literary Instruction
We must make swift moves in education to address the shortcomings in literacy instruction, as we know there is an inordinate impact on LIFE on those for whom skilled reading is difficult.
I learned to read easily, as many of us do. I never really had to think about it. But then, I was trained as an early literacy tutor and expressive language teacher at a specialized school that is world-renowned for reaching and teaching kids with reading disabilities. I worked with high school students with dyslexia, auditory processing disorder — it changed me forever.
I came to humbly appreciate the grit, the tremendous effort that it takes some of us to learn how to read and write. What I realize now is that the strategies I learned there are for EVERYONE. This approach cannot be limited to specialized schools… especially since we know that so. many. American. children. are not reading or writing proficiently.
The “Code”
I also realized that I myself was missing *the code*. YUP. I was never taught these sound patterns and I discovered a whole other world of the English language as I learned how to teach it to my students. What was interesting to me was that my brain made sense of it for me (lucky me!) but for some brains – that is just NOT going to happen on its own. We now know through brain science how reading develops, and we have to reckon with the fact that so much of what we understood about literacy development was wrong – so how do we move forward?
There are no easy answers… but there are strategies. There are fundamental building blocks that we all need, and that may need to go back and fill in. It starts with sound recognition and manipulation… playing with the sounds in words and hearing how they change, or learning to change them ourselves. This is phonemic awareness and it’s a critical precursor to skilled reading. As we realized that we can map all of our 44 sounds into a system, a code… we must be taught explicitly how to do this. English is not the most complicated language in the world but it does have 26 letters, 44 phonemes and 150 different letter combinations that represent those phonemes. How do we learn them all? Systematically, sequentially, and explicitly. This means everyone… not just the “struggling readers” or children diagnosed with dyslexia or reading disabilities. Research now proves this.
And as we learn this code, we continue to develop our oral language comprehension through learning about the world, growing our vocabulary, listening to books and stories that are far beyond our decoding abilities, and by being taught the structure of language. When we sink into language - something we use every single day, all day - we become more aware of the patterns, the similarities, the differences, the MEANING of it all.
Keep Learning
I think learning about this stuff creates a richer life experience, it enhances our written and expressive language, helps us understand all of the places our language draws from, and helps English feel a little less RANDOM (and it is pretty silly at times).
I have been sharing more on the strategies and the specifics of the structure of English, so–
if you yourself ever struggled with this stuff…
if you have a child you’re homeschooling or supporting with literacy, or…
if you’re a curious human/word-nerd like me…
Follow along with me @christina.rothstein on IG and learn something new! I have compiled some of my recent reels for short video content on some of the phonics patterns that we can all benefit from knowing and sharing. And more to come!
Click below to check out some of my short videos on Literacy Skills:
