![\"Chuck](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Chuck-Sandy192.jpg\")
Chuck Sandy<\/h2>\nChuck Sandy<\/h2>\nI had a tough time in Mrs. Collard\u2019s 2nd<\/sup> grade reading class. Though already a reader with books of my own at home, the skill-based phonics worksheets we were doing in class made no sense to me. Still I struggled along. After one particularly tough day with the worksheets, Mrs. Collard called my mother in to explain that she\u2019d be moving me from the top reading group, the Bluebirds, down to the bottom group, The Sparrows, because I didn\u2019t \u201cget it.\u201d I was devastated, but my mother was just confused. \u201cHow could that be? He loves books,\u201d my mother exclaimed. \u201cMaybe so,\u201d said Mrs. Collard, \u201cbut he can\u2019t read. Look how poorly he did on these worksheets\u201d. And so my mother looked. Then to Mrs. Collard she said, \u201cbut this isn\u2019t reading. This is nonsense\u201d and to me \u201ccome on, let\u2019s go\u201d and she took me to the public library and got me a library card. \u201cNow this,\u201d she said, leading me through that room full of books, \u201cthis is reading. You can choose up to six books to take home. I\u2019ll be back in an hour.\u201d I went on to eventually read almost every book in that library and came to feel more at home there among books then I ever felt in school.<\/p>\n I tell you this story not just because it\u2019s what launched me into my own work in education, but also to show that even back in 1967 when I was in 2nd<\/sup> grade, schools were busy turning reading instruction into a school subject and by doing so needlessly complicating the whole process. People like my mother recognized this, but the general public became increasingly convinced that the teaching of reading was a science best left to specialists and that education was in crisis because test scores showed that literacy rates were on the decline. No one much ever stopped to consider that this crisis<\/em> might have originated in the increasingly complicated instruction. Before too long this complicated instruction had became so ingrained in schools that it was almost heresy to call it nonsense.<\/p>\n Fortunately, by the time I got to grad school and later started working in education myself, there were a few researchers brave enough to call out the nonsense. That day in 2nd<\/sup> grade and my years in the library made the work of Kenneth “we learn to read by reading” Goodman<\/a>, Frank “reading without nonsense” Smith<\/a>, Tracy “natural approach” Terrell<\/a>, and Stephen “comprehension hypothesis” Krashen<\/a> really resonate with me. In fact, reading their work changed my life \u2013 especially the work of Krashen. Not only were these researchers unafraid of calling nonsense nonsense, they also had increasingly massive amounts of data to prove it was nonsense. They were (and are) my heroes. I\u2019ll leave it to you to read the research, and I\u2019ll tell you where it led me.<\/p>\n Steeped in all this, determined never to be a Mrs. Collard, and fresh from reading Krashen and Terrell\u2019s The Natural Approach<\/em><\/a>, I found myself in Tokyo in 1984, newly hired by a college to put together an English Language program and given the freedom to pretty much do whatever I wanted. What I wanted in those pre-internet days was for the school to subscribe to multiple copies of fifty different magazines on a wide range of topics and buy a few thousand paperback books. In addition to building a library of interesting books students could borrow, my idea was for each of the twenty of so teachers I worked with to walk into class each day with a basket full of books and magazines, spread them out and say \u201cfind something good to read.\u201d What I wanted to do was to run an almost pure free voluntary reading program in which everyone would have lots of time to read lots of interesting things and learn how to talk about the interesting things they read.<\/p>\n I worked for a few weeks on my plan and submitted it to my director of studies.<\/p>\n \u201cHow will we know that students are reading,\u201d the director of studies asked?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see them reading,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n \u201cHow will we know they\u2019re understanding what they read,\u201d he asked?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll ask them,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about testing?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cWe won\u2019t have any tests,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll have to think this over and discuss it with others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A few days later he came back and said something like \u201cthere are some who think that maybe you\u2019re not ready to run a program, Mr. Sandy, but if you can prove that all this might be useful, I\u2019m willing to listen\u201d.<\/p>\n Happily, that was the year Stephen Krashen himself was one of the plenary speakers at the Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT) conference in Tokyo, and so not only did I give my DOS a copy of The Natural Approach, I invited him to join me at JALT to hear Dr. Krashen speak, and he did. After Stephen\u2019s first plenary, my director of Studies leaned over and said, \u201cthat man makes good sense, and he\u2019s funny, too\u201d. By the end of the conference, he was so impressed by Stephen Krashen\u2019s work that I not only got to keep my job but also got the money I needed to buy all those books and magazines, then went on to run that program for a couple of years, and learned much more than I can say here doing it. Thank you Stephen.<\/p>\n It\u2019s now almost 50 years since I was in 2nd<\/sup> grade with Mrs. Collard, and more than 30 years since Stephen Krashen\u2019s job-saving plenaries at JALT. It\u2019s therefore sad to have to say that not only does the nonsense about reading instruction continue. It\u2019s even sadder to have to say that it\u2019s gotten worse. In this era of big data, high stakes testing, adaptive learning, and all that nonsense, the nonsense has become dangerous.<\/p>\n It\u2019s therefore wonderful to be able to say that Stephen Krashen is still out there calling nonsense\u00a0nonsense and providing the data to prove it\u2019s nonsense. In all this time he\u2019s never gone off message, even once. Thank goodness. Today, there\u2019s much more at stake than just reading programs and somebody\u2019s job as you\u2019ll note in this interview with Stephen in Education Week Teacher titled \u201cStephen Krashen: Children Need Food, Health Care, and Books: Not New Standards and Tests\u201d that I hope you\u2019ll take a few minute to read:<\/p>\n Children Need Food, Heath Care & Books: Not New Standards and Tests<\/a><\/p>\n These are the stakes. The lives of our children are at risk and the solutions, as ever, actually are quite simple. Will people ever listen? Let\u2019s hope so.<\/p>\n Get iTDi certified in teaching academic language with Stephen Krashen.\u00a0<\/strong>Join Stephen Krashen for his iTDi Advanced Course THE Path to Academic English<\/a>. Live sessions with Dr. Krashen begin February 7th. All classes are recorded.<\/p>\n Chuck Sandy I had a tough time in Mrs. Collard\u2019s 2nd grade reading class. Though already a reader with books of my own at home, the skill-based phonics worksheets we were doing in class made no sense to me. Still I struggled along. After one particularly tough day with the worksheets, Mrs. Collard called my … Continue reading How Stephen Krashen Saved My Job & Why He Still Wants to Save your Children<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-krashen-issue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Krashen_banner_2\"](\"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Krashen_banner_2.png\")
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