Teresa Kay Newman is an educator and band director.
She recently took on the issue of reading comprehension in the classroom, noting how powerless she feels as a teacher to change the tides of illiteracy in the US
The music teacher said students of all ages struggle because they can’t really read.
“This is for anyone who still thinks I’m lying, that kids in grades that need to know how to read and recognize the first seven letters of their alphabet really struggle with these two concepts,” she began in her post on TikTok.
“I have kids who struggle to put xylophone bars back on the instrument, even though they are big to small and in alphabetical order,” she revealed. “They struggle in music class because they can’t read.”
Newman shares the various ways in which not knowing how to read carries over to other subjects, such as music.
“The most basic concept they need to know … to function in music classes is the first seven letters of their alphabet,” she explained, but the kids in her classes don’t seem to grasp that information well.
She speaks directly to people who find it hard to believe that middle school kids are struggling to read, saying, “Give it back to the kids who are [in] kindergarten, first, second grade, [and] third grade, when you have children’s piano teachers who also say they have problems with children not being able to tell you what letter is next in the alphabet.’
“It’s a problem,” Newman said.
According to the National Institute of Literacy, about 40% of US students cannot read at a basic level. That number jumps significantly more when considering low-income students: About 70% of low-income 4th graders can’t read at a basic level, and 54% of US adults have below 6th-grade literacy class.
Illiteracy is a problem that affects every aspect of our society, including the economy, costing taxpayers about $20 billion a year. Between 46% and 51% of adults earn well below the poverty line because they cannot read.
Literacy is a social justice issue affected by the many structural inequities in the United States. There is a direct relationship between children’s vocabulary skills and the economic background they come from.
By the age of three, there is a 30 million word gap between the richest children and the poorest children in our country. 34% of children entering kindergarten do not have the basic language skills they need to learn to read.
Newman asked the question she assumed many people were thinking, “How does this happen?” The answer she gave was disheartening.
“This is because many times teachers are forced to move them to the next grade level. We are forced to give them scores above 50,” she said. “That’s because every time we have a kid who doesn’t understand the words on the page, we have to feed them the curriculum and the material in such a way that they don’t have to read.”
She touched on how teachers are essentially forced to move children up to the next grade despite their low reading comprehension.
“The administrator basically tells me, ‘You’ve got to do this and you’ve got to get these numbers, or you’ve got to get the kids to a certain point where they’re all playing instruments and they’re all performing at a certain level.’ You just don’t have a choice,” she shares.
“As much as I want to fix every kid who doesn’t know their alphabet in my class by the time they’re in seventh or eighth grade, by the time they’re sixth graders in my class, I don’t have time to teach them the alphabet.
Teachers seem to be fighting a losing battle.
Most teachers across the country are fighting a battle they can’t seem to win. They put their lives on the line every day for an income that barely qualifies as a living wage.
It would be easy to place the blame on teachers themselves for seemingly not doing their job as educators, but to adopt this line of thinking would be to ignore the larger issues facing teachers.
It is clear that the structure of our education system as a whole is not working to educate or prepare children for their future and that in itself is the real failure.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on the news and entertainment team at YourTango. It covers social issues, pop culture analysis and everything related to the entertainment industry.
