Cover of the 4th grade DIBELS Benchmark Assessment
(from lovetoteach.org)

The 95 Percent Group’s mission statement (from 95percentgroup.com)

Voyager Passport – a reading intervention program for struggling students
(from store.voyagersopris.com/)

These are all programs that have been designed to better the educational experiences of children – more specifically with learning how to read. I have personal experience with all of these. The three years that I taught fourth grade at a Title I school were during the era of No Child Left Behind. During my first year of teaching, we used the DIBELS assessment  – which assessed reading skills very well. However, it didn’t supply strategies for teaching students to do better. In my second year of teaching, we used the Voyager program, which focused on the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, letter-sound recognition, word reading, sight words, and vocabulary. (How many fourth-graders – nine and ten years old – do you know want to practice letter sounds?) My third – and final – year of teaching switched it up again: 30-minute reading intervention sessions with scripted lessons from the 95 Percent Group and Orton Gillingham. 

How did anyone expect students to progress from grade to grade if the delivery of instruction (which was directed and mandatory) changed from year to year? There seemed to be no continuity between grades for the students. Why did no one think about the child while designing these programs? Or the fact that each child learns differently and will not respond to a scripted lesson the same as his or her neighbor? 

I loved being in the elementary classroom. I loved witnessing those “light bulb moments.” I loved being able to encourage my students to learn through discovery (when allowed by administration). I hated being told to put my students in identical boxes. I hated being given a script for my lesson plans. I hated being told (basically) to teach “to the test.” I’ve since moved on to becoming a children’s librarian (although not officially – red tape and all that) and teaching at the community college level. My out-of-the-box thinking is now encouraged and applauded instead of stifled and denounced. My husband has his wife back, my kids have a smiling mom, and I have lost many pounds of stress.

All that being said, I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I am not, nor was I ever really, a “gamer.” I find no joy in sitting in front of a square with images bombarding my senses that I have a slow reaction time to deal with and little to no hand-eye coordination with the game controller. However, when I finished reading Gee’s article “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” I wanted to do a happy dance and fist bump someone; alas, with social distancing, the fist bump was not possible and with the mechanic fixing my car sitting behind the sales counter, the dancing wasn’t going to happen either.  

If you are a teacher, you know that Gardner and Bloom play a significant role in education. Those highly academic words such as pedagogy, schema, scaffolding, and differentiated instruction (among others) infiltrate our daily lives. While I can hold a scholarly conversation with my neighboring academic, I prefer to speak plainly and in terms that my nonacademic neighbor on the other side can understand.

Gee’s article makes sense and is easy for noneducators to understand. It makes me wonder if his intended audience was parents and other noneducators – regardless that the article was published in an academic journal. It also makes me wonder if a colleague also read it before conducting a workshop I attended. The workshop title? Leveling Up with Badges. It was a 2-hour workshop on how to convert assignments to levels within the classroom (aka game) and grades to badges. While it was interesting to hear how it worked in the classes he taught (Intro to Psychology, Psychological Development, and Forensic Psychology), my traditionalist mind struggled with the changeover and extra work it would take for me to understand and create my own “game.”

I’m not sure how I would apply the principles of the game to myself in this one-class-at-a-time online learning environment that I find myself in. I do know that if I could go back to teaching elementary school in a (perfect) world where I’m not required to follow a script, I would certainly make every attempt to implement the learning principles that Gee discusses in my classroom. 

I fully believe that if children are encouraged to learn through self-interest and discovery (problem solving, inquiry, critical thinking), more children would feel successful and proud of their accomplishments.