K.C. teachers get reading tools they need
Phonics is centerpiece of strategy for improving early reading

Something was missing. The teachers knew it. The students, parents and administrators knew it. And the latest rounds of reading tests for Kansas City public schools reflected it.

"Our kids are strong readers, but phonics scores were low," explained elementary school teacher Casey Klapmeyer. "On sight words and context clues, my students did well. On phonetic analysis, filling in the sounds they heard, they struggled."

The dilemma came as no surprise to the Kansas City Federation of Teachers. Last spring, building representatives from the AFT local met to share and discuss some of the concerns they heard in their schools. Topping the list for elementary teachers, building reps agreed, was early reading instruction. In grades three and higher, Kansas City teachers could rely on district-sponsored training offered in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Reading. These upper-grade "Questioning the Author" strategies, however, weren't designed or intended to give preK-2 teachers what they really needed--a sound, research-based plan of action for teaching phonics and decoding strategies to emerging readers.

"Most elementary teachers understand the need for a strong phonics component as part of a balanced program of reading instruction, but we lost that eight to 10 years ago when we switched to whole language," explains local president Judy Morgan. "One of our priorities this fall has been to show that the union supports inclusion of phonics--and to give teachers the tools they need to do it."

Enter ER&D.

The AFT's Educational Research and Dissemination program includes a beginning reading strand that focuses on research-based strategies for teaching letter-sound correspondence, word building and other skills that give students a strong start in reading. For Kansas City, it also served as the foundation for intensive training of instructional leaders from eight elementary schools over the summer--professional development the local offered members and nonmembers alike in partnership with the district and the national AFT.

Participants attended a full week of training at a local district resource center in June as well as follow-up training a few days before the start of the current school year. They learned the strategies for reading instruction, with ample time set aside for practice, and the research base that supported these methods.

The sessions "were really useful and purposeful," said participant Lisa Boyd, a second-grade teacher at Askew Elementary school. Summer school offered a perfect opportunity for participants to implement the June training sessions in a dry run, she said.

Many teachers in the system want to incorporate phonics-based components into their instruction but they simply were never trained to do it, says Klapmeyer. "As students, many of us went through elementary school in a whole language environment," and that emphasis on whole language--to the exclusion of critical phonics-based strategies--remained through teachers college and into the classroom.

"Nobody ever told us this before," teacher Daisy Cavallaro agreed. "This does help bring teachers up to date with what the research shows [and] it looks like a good fit" with training in reading instruction offered in the upper grades, she said.

All the participants returned to their schools this fall to practice the strategies they learned and become reading research facilitators--able to demonstrate and model the instructional strategies for colleagues. The AFT also will offer followup training in the fall to the facilitators, says Lovely Billups, ER&D co-director.

"We have 12 facilitators in eight schools how, and our plan is to be in 16 schools by the end of the 2000-2001 year."

The AFT/district training initiative also is generating support in the community, reports Morgan. "We announced this at a community forum [last April] and it got the most applause of anything discussed.... Phonics is definitely a connection to the community, as well as essential to strong reading instruction."

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001