Reposted with the permmission of the author, Jill Stewart.
[part 8]
 Not far away, at Los Feliz Elementary, in a first-grade ESL classroom, 
teacher Patricia Franco Simonowski uses a traditional reading approach with 
heavy homework and lots of repetition. Simonowski is one of the apparently 
few 
teachers who has read Honig's reading framework in detail. She keeps it in 
her 
classroom, where she periodically pulls it out and pores over it in disgust.
 "I don't think many teachers have actually benefitted from reading this 
thing," says Simonowski, pointing to a page of the framework. "I tried out 
these concepts, and I see this framework for what it is: a jobs program for 
tutors, reading consultants and child psychiatrists. Give me a child who has 
been taught simple discipline at home, and I will use what we all know about 
teaching reading to give you a child who can read and write fluently." She 
has 
taught fifth and sixth grades at other Los Angeles schools, and she has seen 
dozens of non-reading older kids--all victims, she believes, of overzealous 
whole language concepts. For older children, Simonowski says--and most 
educators agree--it is already too late. "It's pitiful out there, and I blame 
the experts and the textbook companies who make big bucks every time 
California 
figures out a whole new way to teach reading."
 Asked about the state's new reform plan, Simonowski dismisses Eastin 
and Honig with a wave of her hand. "Teachers and kids," she says, "have 
become 
sitting ducks."
 Eastin and Honig appear to be aware that teachers like Patty 
Simonowski, Patty Abarca and Janet Davis feel twice bitten and remain wary of 
any new state-driven ideas. But the two leaders--one the ultimate government 
insider, the other now a respected outsider--are upbeat about the state's 
plan 
and its eventual acceptance in the classroom. This time, they say, the state 
is 
going forward with its eyes open, fully informed, research in hand.
 "The new plan," says Honig, "is a huge improvement over what's been 
done for the last several years."
 One can only hope that he's right. Because that, of course, is what the 
visionaries said the last time. 
[End]
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* 6 fears 7 'cause 7 8 9 !
--- Maximus 2.01wb
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