A Tale of Two Schools

I have never been in a school that is like Walton and Bearden Elementary and it made me realize what it's like for so many children and teachers out there.  I am used to being in schools that have libraries full of books as well as classrooms full of books and it was sad and eye opening to see these two schools and the daily struggles they face.  I think it's easy for many students to take reading for granted because they learned it so early on and once they learn it many don't even keep up with it while there are millions of students out there (like Tavares) who would give anything to learn to read and have books available to them.  One scene in the movie that really effected me was when the principal of Bearden elementary resigned.  This was a man that was at the school for years and basically deserted his own children and wife because he was at the school the entire day every day and year after year he felt he was getting nowhere.  He had the state on him because of low test scores but yet the state would not give them any funding and no matter how hard he and the teachers worked-there seemed to be no progress.  So after he gave it his all he felt like he had to move on.  It's sad that one person has to even work that hard every day every year and even more sad that there is no progress yet constant criticism.  This was a man who cared about his students and his staff but he became completely wiped out and had nothing left in him.  That must have upset the students and probably made him feel that all those years and work were for nothing.....

In the movie the two schools had different reading programs and different outcomes. Walton adapted reading mastery and Bearden had project read.  Walton students were moving forward and becoming very proficient in reading while Bearden students were falling even more behind.  It was interesting to see the two programs that I have never heard of before and see two very different results.  Both schools worked very hard to implement these programs but only Walton succeeded.  Walton teachers were trained in reading mastery while Bearden teachers had little or no training with Project Read.  Both schools also lacked books and comprehension material to go along with it. 

I would have to choose Reading Mastery as the program I would implement in my classroom because it seems so successful and the students seemed to be happy and engaged.  I also feel that I didn't get as good of a sense of what Project Read was about because it was so disorganized.  Reading Mastery  was a successful program that the teachers and students were happy with and the students did learn to read-it's proven it works.  The weakness with the program--but this was also mainly due to lack of funding-is that there weren't books available for the children to learn with as they learned the program.

I do feel that this program would be effective in an affluent area for kindergarten and first graders.  It teaches all the main components that children need to start off with--phonics-which includes sound and word recognition.  It would be great for K and 1st graders and then they could go into more advanced reading programs from there.