You are not the one who failed

My favorite students are those who are failures. They come to me with no hope left. No matter what's been tried—Reading Recovery, resource help, extra teacher time, learning centers—they still aren't reading and they have accepted the fact that it's their fault. Here they are again, going through reading assessments that spotlight their weaknesses, with another stranger who will eventually give up. No wonder they have bad attitudes.

The first thing I tell a new student after I assess her is that I know she can learn to read. It's just that no one has taught her yet. "It's not your fault that you learn differently," I say. "I WILL teach you to read. And if I can't, it's MY fault, not yours, and I will help your parents find someone who can. But I don't plan to fail and I will teach you." I love the look of puzzled surprise I get after I say that. They may not believe me, but they are intrigued. No one has ever said it's not their fault, and whether they can verbalize it or not, they believe it is.

I want my lessons to always feel a little too easy for a student like this, and I tell them so. I compare learning to read to building a house. "When you build a house, where do you start?" I ask. The bottom, they reply. "And if there are holes in the bottom, what happens to the house you are building?" It falls. "There are holes in the foundation of your house. We are going WAY back to fix those holes and then we will keep going up. And with every brick, you will be a better reader."

And so we go back to short a and a few consonants like s, f, r, and m that blend easily into that a, along with t and p to put at the end. Soon they are reading sat and fat and maybe even map. And then I can say, "Now you can read. The rest is just learning more sounds." That's usually enough to get them back for a second session.

Sometimes a student will ask, "Why didn't my teacher teach me?" I always emphasize that it's not the teacher's fault either; no one taught him how to teach students like this. And until we change how the universities teach reading methodology, there will continue to be failures.

I love the failures. But I wait for the day when there aren't any because the schools are able to hire teachers who can teach children who learn in all different kinds of ways. Though there will always be kids who need one-on-one help, we can significantly reduce that number with proper teacher training. It's time to look at who the real failures are and address that problem. There are holes in the foundation of our teacher training programs. We need to go back to the bottom and fix them.

I may love the failures, but they don't love failing. And they are not really the ones who are failing.