Essay: Bring reading research to the trenches

Summary

Connection: This short essay is an emotional plea from an urban educator to translate research into a form that is usable in schools. Research on reading and writing skills needs to move out of the laboratory and into the schools, which have a pressing need for answers about effective practice, especially for disadvantaged or learning-disabled students, but also for many “normal” and able students. Research on learning problems is not just a theoretical exercise! Thousands of children, together with their parents and teachers, look to researchers and educators for guidance in helping students who have difficulties with reading and other important skills. Fortunately several chapters in this book reflect exactly this kind of effort – to create knowledge about reading problems and instruction that can positively affect school practice and improve instruction for children with diverse kinds of reading problems.

The Editors

I am a teacher and reading consultant. My colleague Esther Sands and I work in the classrooms of New York City inner-city areas. We work for an organization called Reading Reform Foundation of New York, which was founded by teachers to train teachers in the classroom.

Our organization sends trainers, when invited by principals or district superintendents, into sixty public school classrooms twice a week all year long to help teachers apply what they have learned from us in courses taken the previous summer in the teaching of reading, writing, and spelling.