In the mid 1990s, I taught English to 7-15 year olds in a school for Romanian speakers in Cahul, Moldova.
The teaching environment was basic: bare classrooms, wooden desks, chalkboards. Resources were scarce, waste was minimal; a far-cry from the majority of schools I’ve worked in since.
I wonder to what extent this early experience in my teaching career is responsible for my ongoing struggles with the throw-away mentality in education today? I need to be clear that I am not interested in hoarding unnecessarily, or creating spaces filled with clutter, and I accept there is ‘a time to keep and a time to throw away’. But you don’t have to look far in our western society to witness valuable resources being wasted: I have raided skips outside schools, rescuing rejected books which still had life to give.
Sadly, however, it is not only useful books and materials that are discarded from our schools. Whole methodologies, no longer fashionable or of-the-moment, risk being mercilessly chucked away with little effort made to salvage any remaining worth. The teaching of phonics met this fate, falling by the wayside for much of the 1900s, as fresh, new ideas took hold. Now many Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) supporters are calling for the Reading Recovery (RR) programme to be scrapped, arguing that Marie Clay’s methodology and her decades of research have become obsolete.
And, yet, I strongly believe there are many positive lessons Marie Clay still has to teach us – not least her persistent emphasis on the development of self-monitoring behaviours, which equip children to grow in their independence as readers and writers. I, for one, am very grateful for the insights I received through my own RR training, which continue to enhance my current practice.
You see, in my dreams for the future, SSP and RR get married, have babies and live happily ever after.
I wonder to what extent this early experience in my teaching career is responsible for my ongoing struggles with the throw-away mentality in education today? I need to be clear that I am not interested in hoarding unnecessarily, or creating spaces filled with clutter, and I accept there is ‘a time to keep and a time to throw away’. But you don’t have to look far in our western society to witness valuable resources being wasted: I have raided skips outside schools, rescuing rejected books which still had life to give.
Sadly, however, it is not only useful books and materials that are discarded from our schools. Whole methodologies, no longer fashionable or of-the-moment, risk being mercilessly chucked away with little effort made to salvage any remaining worth. The teaching of phonics met this fate, falling by the wayside for much of the 1900s, as fresh, new ideas took hold. Now many Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) supporters are calling for the Reading Recovery (RR) programme to be scrapped, arguing that Marie Clay’s methodology and her decades of research have become obsolete.
And, yet, I strongly believe there are many positive lessons Marie Clay still has to teach us – not least her persistent emphasis on the development of self-monitoring behaviours, which equip children to grow in their independence as readers and writers. I, for one, am very grateful for the insights I received through my own RR training, which continue to enhance my current practice.
You see, in my dreams for the future, SSP and RR get married, have babies and live happily ever after.