Bubbles Makes a Home Visit
A Work of Science Fiction
FOR A PREQUEL to this story see…
FOR TODAY’S STORY read on…
“They’re ordering me to replace the primary grade reading curriculum,” Superintendent Goldenrod said, a look of disgust on his face. “They’re doing it. Good Lord, the school year just started.”
“It’s a political ploy in an election year,” Bubbles said.
“They’re working with an attorney from the Heritage Foundation to see about their authority to give the order.”
Goldenrod took a deep breath and removed his glasses. He clenched his teeth, his jaw muscles powerfully pulsing. He kept twirling an ink pen with his fingers in a whole body response to the thoughts that must be coursing through his mind.
“We followed the process to the letter,” Bubbles said. “A local Board cannot overturn a decision of a curriculum committee duly employed to make these decisions.”
“Does it matter? This Board is looking to me to do their bidding.”
“There’s nothing you can do this academic year,” Bubbles said. “You can’t unwind the curriculum once it unfolds. Teachers won’t let you do it. You’ve got teachers taking a look at the curriculum just as the new law requires. You make the argument that you can’t hijack a task force already responding to legal mandates.”
“I need your help, Bubbles. They could fire me.”
“You’ve got strong support among the teachers,” Bubbles reminded him. “That’s because you respect them. Don’t waste the authority you’ve earned with a knee jerk reaction. You remember what Sam says.”
“Sam says a lot of things.”
“You can’t sound your way out of American history. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”
*****
It was another child, another second grader, a black child from a small population of African Americans in a white working-class and Mexican neighborhood in the outskirts of the district. His experience with Mrs. Moody and her student, Cassie, still resonated for Bubbles. He’d checked in with Mrs. Moody and was glad to hear that Cassie had forgotten all about the guilt she’d felt about relishing the pictures in the books she read with her little brother, just three years old. The pictures weren’t insidious viruses doing damage to her brother’s orthographic processor.
Fortunately, Cassie’s mother had called the Superintendent rather than the Board to help her work through that bout with dyslexia. This boy’s mother had approached a Board member, a loud and obnoxious Board member who had recently been broadcast on local news talking about dyslexia with the zeal of a partisan, warning primary teachers to make peace with phonics.
This boy’s mother called the Board member because a second grade teacher had placed the blame for her son’s failure to thrive in reading on his first grade teacher. According to the mother, who had riled up the Board member, who had riled up the other Board members, the teacher said her boy had dyslexia, and his first grade teacher had taught him using the three cue method of how to fake reading.
“I have to ask,” Goldenrod said. “Could there be something to it?”
“Could the boy be dyslexic? Yes. But not likely. We could have him assessed, but it would be expensive to get a credible diagnosis, one that could withstand a legal review. I’m not sure there would be any real benefit.”
“What about this three cue method? Two of the loudest Board members make it sound like educational malpractice.”
“Oh, no. That I can tell you. It’s a sensible, practical, effective approach that works with kids who learned naturally and those who need one-on-one attention. Only in the eyes of those with a phonics first in isolation fetish are these cueing systems a problem. After all, one of the three cues is phonics.”
Bubbles suggested that he make a home visit to talk with the mother, the father, and the son, and then meet with the Board president and the Superintendent.
Mrs. and Mr. Smith agreed to meet Bubbles on Friday morning in their home. Teachers had a day of professional development so Jacob would be home; Bubbles would have the opportunity to talk first with the parents, then with their son.
*****
Bubbles had driven through the neighborhood before. The houses were small squares with tar roofs, weathered and peeling vinyl siding, with small front yards and the occasional car up on blocks in the driveway. He parked on the curb and knocked on the door. In short order he was sitting on a sofa with Mrs. Smith, drinking a nice cup of coffee.
A quiet young woman with obvious love and concern for her son, Mrs. Smith told Bubbles about a boy who was slow to learn to talk and was afraid to start kindergarten. He had been slow in learning to read, but he didn’t dislike reading in first grade.
“Now I’m wondering if he liked it because he wasn’t being taught to read the words,” she said. “His teacher told me he needed to look at the pictures to help him, but I never thought those pictures were hurting him.”
“Let me make an assessment of his reading and tell you my opinion. Books suitable for first grade usually have pictures, for very good reasons, and children do enjoy them. I really don’t think you have anything to worry about regarding the pictures.”
“His new teacher told me if he reads books with pictures that help him guess the words, it’s hurting his learning,” said Mrs. Smith. “Why would she say that?”
“Teachers care about their students. They don’t all do things the same way, and that’s a good thing because children don’t all do things the same way. It is important to make sure Jacob can read to the level of his potential when he finishes second grade,” Bubbles said. “Let’s come back to this question after I talk with him. Is that all right?”
He was sitting on a sofa in a living room of a small house very near a railroad track, like, twenty-five feet. A freight train rolled by, going clickety clack, I think I can, I think I can. “By the way, I appreciate your agreeing to let me visit with you and your son.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Smith replied. “He’s all I care about. My husband, too. I’m sorry he can’t be here. He got a call out in the middle of the night and had to go in to the plant, union rules. My friends, my family, everybody’s telling me Jacob should be reading by now. He’s in the second grade.”
Bubbles sipped his coffee, Tasters’ Choice.
“Yes, that is a reasonable expectation. Many children are off to the races by then. But some blossom a little later. Tell me, what concerns has his teacher raised with you?”
“She said he can’t read nonsense words. I don’t know why he needs to learn to read nonsense words, but she said he will never be able to read real words until he can read nonsense words. She said Jacob might be dyslexic, she said they passed a law making it illegal for schools to ignore dyslexia, but I don’t know anything about it. I just want my boy to read. What is going to happen to him if he can’t read?”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Where’s Jacob?”
*****
Bubbles rarely made home visits any more, though this visit was unlike those he made when he was in his early years in the profession as a regular classroom teacher. He wanted to know his students in their home environment, to hear and see the child interact with parents and siblings, to sit at their kitchen table. It was important for him to see each child in his classroom through the filter of the child at home. The first few weeks of school were time intensive, but the impact of the entire year rested on these visits.
Mrs. Smith left the room to get her son. It took a few minutes, but soon enough Jacob came down the hallway, a skinny, tall child with bright eyes and an alert manner. His mother introduced him to Bubbles.
“Why did you come here?” Jacob asked Bubbles, sitting down in a chair at the kitchen table. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”
“What has your mother told you?” Bubbles asked.
“She didn’t tell me nothin’,” Jacob replied. “She just said there’s something wrong with my reading, and I didn’t even know there was something wrong with my reading.”
“Well, do you like to read?” Bubbles asked.
“I don’t even know what reading is,” Jacob said. “I guess last year in first grade, I thought I was reading. But my teacher this year says I was just looking at the pictures and making stories up. Can you answer a question for me?”
“I can try,” said Bubbles.
“What ‘xactly is people doing when they’re reading?”
“That’s a good question. What do you think they’re doing?”
“Now would I ask if I knew? My mama says there could be something wrong with me, something in my brain. But I don’t feel sick. It has to do with reading. I wish I knew what it was. She’s awful worried. My daddy, too.”
“Have you ever watched anyone reading?”
“Yes.”
“What do you see?” asked Bubbles.
“My daddy reads the paper. I know it’s the paper because he asks me to go outside and get it for him sometimes. He takes it and rattles it around and gets it so that it’s covering his face and then he just sits there. He don’t move. He don’t talk. He tells me to be quiet if I talk. What is he doing that’s so important that he can’t stop to talk to me?”
“I see. What about kindergarten? Did you see anyone reading?”
“Yes, I did. My teacher sat on a chair holding a book in her hands, looking at it like my daddy looked at the paper, but she talked. Seemed like something in that book was telling her a story, and she was telling it to us. I didn’t understand ‘xactly what she was doing.”
“Do you know your letters?”
“Sure I do—most of ‘em.”
“Do you know the sounds they make?”
“I know they don’t make sounds. They just sit there just like my daddy. My teacher said sometimes letters go out for a walk, and one of them talks, but the other one has to be quiet, and I ain’t never seen any letters out for a walk, and I damn sure haven’t heard any of them talking. Oops sorry. I promised my mama I wouldn’t use bad words.”
“Oh, that’s ok,” said Bubbles. “I don’t believe in bad words. There are bad people, but words are just words—usually. But I like that you listen to your mama. She loves you very much. I can tell.”
“Now they’re telling me I got something wrong with me because I don’t know anything about silent letters going out for a walk.”
Bubbles took a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote the letters ‘nan’ in the left hand corner of the page.
“What does this say?”
“That’s what I mean,” said Jacob. “It don’t say nothing. That first letter, it’s the letter N, and I know my teacher tells me it says ‘nuh,’ but that’s not saying something. That’s crazy. Is my brain sick?”
“Actually, your brain is working very well, young man. Let’s try this. The letter N does not speak. You’re absolutely right. I’m going to use a special word and you tell me if it makes sense. The letter N represents a sound. It can’t say anything. When I see N, I make the sound ‘n.’”
“It’s no use,” sighed Jacob. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What difference does it make.”
“That’s because I’m not very good at explaining these things,” Bubbles said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me. I’m the problem.”
“No, you ain’t a problem. You’re a nice man. I wish you could be my teacher.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you to say so,” Bubbles replied.
“I was doing ok in first grade,” Jacob said. “I was starting to think I understood what reading was. But now my teacher says I’m reading the pictures and making up a story. Now it’s all what does this letter say, what does that letter say, what makes this letter keep its mouth shut. There ain’t no more pictures for me.”
*****
“Does Jacob have dyslexia?” Mrs. Smith asked in a fearful tone of voice.
“I don’t believe he does,” said Bubbles. “But I do think he could use some individual attention.”
“He doesn’t want to try,” she said. “Maybe he was reading the pictures.”
“Reading is all about pictures, Bubbles said. “Letters are tiny pictures. It’s just that they are pictures that stand for sounds. Let me ask you this. Have you ever experienced having a word at the tip of your tongue?”
“Sure. Hasn’t everyone?”
“When you can’t put your finger on a word but you know full well what it means, what is your mind looking for? A sound—the first sound of the word. When we read, we’re constantly looking for the next word, the word at the tip of the tongue. Something, round, red, juicy, full of seeds, we put it on hamburgers—if we’re reading and we see the letter ‘t,’ the word pops into our mind: tomato. Jacob is confused about reading. He will likely need some instruction in phonics, but all the phonics in the world won’t help him until he understands the goal of reading—to make sense of letters as cues for word meanings.”
Bubbles told Mrs. Smith that the district could provide Jacob with a Reading Recovery teacher. There were still such teachers working in the schools, but they were no longer assigned to a home school. They travelled across the district and met one-on-one with students like Jacob. Bubbles told her about the parent outreach strategy these specialist teachers used as well: They provided sessions for parents to teach parents some basic ideas about how to help at home.
Before he left he took a leveled book from his briefcase and walked Mrs. Smith through the experience of using the three cueing systems. He told her in layman’s terms how learners are taught to use pictures not as replacements for words, but as cues to activate the meaning of words that lead to the tip of the tongue experience. From the picture learners return their gaze to the letters, particularly the first letter of the word in question, which helps them retrieve the exact word as the writer spelled it out.
He had more work to do to make sure Jacob would get the help he needed. His next step would be to arrange a meeting with Mrs. Smith, Dr. Goldenrod, the Board president, and Jacob before the Board pulled the plug on the reading curriculum and replaced it with one designed as though dyslexia were the typical rather than the rare case.