COLUMN: Think Again – Something good is happening in Evergreen

If students don’t learn how to read in school, not much else that happens there is going to matter.

This might be a harsh way of putting it, but it’s the truth. Being unable to read makes it nearly impossible to function in society. Reading is foundational to everything, even mathematics.

Thus, everyone should pay close attention to what is happening in Evergreen School Division. That school division, which includes Interlake communities such as Gimli, Arborg, and Winnipeg Beach, has completely overhauled its approach to reading instruction.

Instead of plodding along with costly and ineffective programs based on the widely discredited whole language approach, Evergreen is going back to the basics with a structured literacy program. Simply put, they are bringing back phonics.

Direct and explicit phonics instruction simply means that students learn how to sound out the letters in words. Instead of having students guess the meaning of words based on illustrations and other context clues, teachers are encouraged to help students sound out words as they read them.

Evergreen schools are already seeing significant signs of success. A research firm hired to evaluate Evergreen’s new program found that in the first year of implementation, five per cent more kindergarten to Grade 6 students were reading at grade level compared to the previous year.

None of this is surprising. The evidence for structured literacy instruction has been hiding in plain sight for decades. Back in the 1960s, Dr. Jeanne Chall, the former director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory, conducted extensive research into various strategies for teaching reading. She found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows that students need to learn phonics in a structured and systematic way.

Modern-day advocates of phonics have taken to calling phonics instruction the “Science of Reading” approach because the evidence overwhelmingly supports its effectiveness. While there’s legitimate room for debate about many issues in education, the debate about reading instruction has long been decisively settled.

Unfortunately, Evergreen seems to be largely on its own. Manitoba’s Department of Education doesn’t mandate phonics instruction in public schools, and, in fact, it even tries to stay out of this debate entirely. If the NDP government wants to make a difference for students, implementing universal phonics instruction in every school would be an obvious way to do it.

At the recent Manitoba School Boards Association (MSBA) convention, Evergreen trustees were finally successful in putting forward an emergency motion calling on the MSBA to lobby faculties of education to ensure that all teacher candidates learn about systematic instruction in phonics.

It’s a travesty that the most effective method of reading instruction is not even taught in education faculties. If prospective teachers don’t learn about the importance of phonics, they are going to have a difficult time helping their future students to learn how to read.

Imagine what could happen if all Manitoba students were provided with systematic and explicit reading instruction beginning in Grade 1. When students become strong readers at an early age, they are capable of learning even more when they get older. Success breeds success in school.

Incidentally, reading isn’t the only area where Evergreen outperforms its peers. The province just released results from the Grade 12 provincial math exams. Evergreen students scored the highest in the province, with an average of 81.5 per cent. Manitoba’s overall average was 62.4 per cent. Clearly, something good is happening in Evergreen schools.

Evergreen School Division should be praised for following the evidence on reading instruction. Now it is time for the rest of the province to get on board.

All students deserve to learn how to read.

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.