Teacher Education & Professional Development
In This Article:
- Adolescent Literacy Essentials
- A New Sense of Urgency
- Priorities for Adolescent Literacy
- Assessment & Interventions
- Teacher Education & Professional Development
- Reading & Writing in the Content Areas
- About the Author
As decades of research have made clear, well-trained teachers can help students of all ages to learn to decode written text, improve their reading fluency, build their vocabulary, improve their reading comprehension, and overcome specific reading disabilities.
However, few middle or high school educators ever receive more than a token amount of training in literacy instruction, and few see themselves as teachers of reading and writing at all. Instead, at the secondary level, most teachers tend to regard themselves as teachers of subject areas, such as biology, American history, or algebra. Even English teachers — who might be assumed to be responsible for reading and writing instruction-tend to define themselves first and foremost as teachers of literature.
Further, most of the nation's reading specialists are employed in elementary schools. Many secondary schools lack even a single teacher or staff member with significant training or experience in reading instruction, or they rely on one or two reading specialists to do the job of eight or ten.
If they are to provide effective instruction to the millions of American adolescents who read far below grade level, secondary schools will require far greater numbers of reading specialists, particularly in schools where assessments reveal that many students need English language instruction, treatment for disabilities, or other specialized services.
Finally, while not every teacher can be expected to do the job of a reading specialist, all teachers should be trained in certain essentials of literacy instruction, and all teachers should be expected to support students' overall literacy development. In particular, all teachers should learn how to provide effective vocabulary instruction; all teachers should learn how to provide instruction in reading comprehension strategies that can help students make sense of difficult texts; all teachers should learn how to design reading and writing assignments that are likely to motivate students who lack engagement in school activities; and all teachers should learn how to teach the reading and writing skills that are distinct to their own content areas.
