Nationally Acclaimed Reading Specialist Inspires West Chester Teachers

"Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they wrote in hydraulics.”
"Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.”
"Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest precedent.”

Roger Farr addresses district teachers.

Those excerpts from student essays – taken from a general data base and not from the West Chester Area School District – had one thing in common: The students writing them were not thinking about or understanding what they wrote. In addition, they may have relied upon a computer spell check program to substitute a correct word for a misspelled one.

The misrepresentations that resulted are just one example of what Roger Farr finds wrong with much of education today.

Farr – the Chancellor’s Professor of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a specialist in the teaching and assessment of language – spent a day with the district’s teachers in early September, leading an inservice session that concentrated on the teaching of reading. In the process, Farr touched on testing methods and what’s wrong with how educators teach and use testing results today.

A high-energy and inspiring speaker, he mesmerized the district’s elementary and secondary school teachers in separate talks that were peppered with moving stories of children who succeeded despite major obstacles in their lives and their schooling.
Speaking to elementary school teachers, Farr began with the message that writing and reading go hand-in-hand.

"It is impossible to have children write too much,” he said, adding, “It’s amazing what kids can do when they learn to write. Reading is all about learning to write.”
Farr told the teachers that he himself has designed more multiple choice tests “than anyone in the country,” including the nationally normed Iowa tests. While he found nothing wrong with these multiple choice tests, Farr did have problems with the way in which they are used and the reliance on multiple choice testing at the exclusion of writing in this country.

"We get beat internationally by countries all over the world (in test results),” he said. "We give far more multiple choice tests than anywhere in the world. …. Other countries write.

"You give me kids who can write an answer, and I’ll give you kids who can pick an answer,” he added in support of the need to stress writing in schools.

Farr also warned teachers to “watch for the signs of mindless acceptance,” meaning students who simply “regurgitate” what they have read. The result is frequently what he called “fake reading,” or repeating words and facts that have been read without thinking about or understanding them.

He provided the teachers with four levels of reading, beginning with “struggling decoders,” and proceeding through “non-thinking word callers,” “responding readers,” and critical evaluative readers.” The “non-thinking word callers” he defined as students who “will memorize the stuff on the page” and pass the test but retain nothing.

"If you can’t tell the story, you don't remember,” he said.

Farr then provided the teachers with his three-level technique for helping students learn: Modeling, or “showing” instead of simply “telling;” coaching, or encouraging a student to figure out what he or she does not understand; and then reflecting upon what is learned or read.

Farr applied this technique to what would otherwise be a “story hour” session of straight reading to students. Instead, Farr gave an example of a teacher reading a story in sections and stopping periodically to ask students key questions. “What comes next?” “What are you thinking?” were among the questions, all of which encouraged the students to think about the story, interpret what was happening, and project what might come next. Farr pointed out that the students who followed that process would remember the story.

"I’m not talking about teaching thinking,” Farr said of the process being followed. "I’m talking about getting out of the way and allowing them (students) to think.”

A life-long educator, Farr said he knew what he’d say if students asked, “If you had your life to live over again, what would you be?”

"I’d tell them in a New York minute, I’d be a teacher,” he said. “I know why I’m a teacher. It’s to help a child lead a better life.”

Farr has a B.S. in education, an M.S. in English education, and an Ed.D in language education and educational psychology from the State University of New York. He joined the Indiana University faculty in 1967 and was selected as a Chancellor’s Professor in 1994. Since 1983, he has directed the University’s Center for Innovation in Assessment.

The President of the International Reading Association from 1979-80, he received the Association’s William S. Gary Award for outstanding lifetime contributions to the teaching of reading in 1984. In 1986, he was elected to the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame, and in 1988, he was selected by the association as the Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading.

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