Hundreds of teachers zero in on reading during Salem trainings

When Jennifer Throndsen asked a group of local elementary school teachers how they were trained to teach reading, there was a common response: “Poorly.”

Throndsen is one of the trainers who spent three days in Salem schools last week to fix that. She works for CORE Learning, a training organization that focuses on helping teachers understand how students learn to read.

Salem-Keizer School District leaders took the unusual step of canceling school for most of the week for the lessons, leaving 15,000 students at home. Their teachers and classroom assistants spent the time undergoing intensive training focused on reading and literacy. 

Kindergarten through third grade educators went through CORE training, while other employees had various other courses depending on their specific job.

The aim was to get all elementary school educators across the district on the same page, filling in information many teachers said they hadn’t been taught before. It’s a crucial area for improvement in local schools, where three in four third graders tested last spring couldn’t read at grade level.

Salem Reporter sat in on a portion of the training on Wednesday, Jan. 28, in the Chavez Elementary School library, and spoke with Throndsen and participating educators during a break.

Throndsen was formerly the director of teaching and learning for Utah’s public school system. She said school districts usually have her come in to teach about 30 people, often focusing on principals, teacher mentors or reading specialists. She’d never seen a district undertake anything on the scale of Salem-Keizer, she said.

Despite the importance of literacy, she said many teachers across the country still receive little training on what research shows about how students actually learn to read. While about 5% of kids can learn reading spontaneously by being exposed to books, the vast majority need explicit instruction in phonics and related skills to learn.

“I think people think reading should be easy,” she said.

Teachers talking over their lunches recounted their own college educations. Many said they received little or no explicit instruction about how to teach reading. Some were told what not to do or told they should design their own curriculum, but without direction about how to do so or what to look for.

Kara Dickey, a former teacher mentor who now teaches second and third grade at Keizer Elementary, described the training as “really good, serious” professional development.

She has a master’s degree in reading instruction and said much of the material covered overlapped with her schooling. But she said it’s information every teacher needs — and too often doesn’t have time to get.

“No teacher wakes up in the morning and thinks, ‘I’m going to be a crappy teacher today,’” she said.

But she and others talked about the escalating demands on teachers which leave them little to no time for extra training. Several said this year, they’ve had students in their classes who speak neither English nor Spanish and are relying on Google Translate to communicate. 

Dickey is teaching a blended class and has to make her lessons work for both second and third graders, adding to the time she needs to prepare.

”It’s hard to have the time to sit down and process what is best practice,” she said. “A lot of us do what we’ve known.”

Throndsen talked to the group about specific ways students may show they’re struggling with one aspect of reading. Some students can understand the meaning of a passage from context, but struggle to sound out new words. Others may be able to pronounce and read individual words, but can’t summarize or explain what they’ve read. That can particularly be a problem for bilingual students who are less likely to have a basic English vocabulary before they begin school. 

And she said it’s on teachers to do better teaching students to read. She urged teachers to focus on what they can control, while acknowledging that support from parents, family income and many other factors can make it harder for students to learn.

“It is an us problem,” she told the group. “At the end of the day it’s what you do in the classroom that matters.”

Correction: This article originally misstated which teachers received CORE training. It is teachers of kindergarten through third grade, not second. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.

Contact Managing Editor Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

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