All the posts on this blog ask intriguing questions, offer unique insights, and demonstrate the enormity of the vocabulary gap, but after reading all the prompts and the comments, I kept asking myself one question: so now what?
In Molly’s post titled “Making it Meaningful?” she asked, “What can we do as an educational community to encourage this (referring to parents’ spoken vocabulary) in our students’ homes?” This post got me thinking, what can we do? Is it about encouraging parents to talk to their children more? Do I need to focus on my locus of control and just do more positive talking in my classroom? But then again, I’m a secondary teacher, and Risley and Hart clearly state that the first three years are the most important. Maybe I should just quit teaching high school and become a professional baby-conversationalist (originally called "Baby-Talkers" until I realized how that sounds...)? I could go into a few homes every day, talk to infants up through 2-year olds, all while providing affirmations to these children?
In Molly’s post titled “Making it Meaningful?” she asked, “What can we do as an educational community to encourage this (referring to parents’ spoken vocabulary) in our students’ homes?” This post got me thinking, what can we do? Is it about encouraging parents to talk to their children more? Do I need to focus on my locus of control and just do more positive talking in my classroom? But then again, I’m a secondary teacher, and Risley and Hart clearly state that the first three years are the most important. Maybe I should just quit teaching high school and become a professional baby-conversationalist (originally called "Baby-Talkers" until I realized how that sounds...)? I could go into a few homes every day, talk to infants up through 2-year olds, all while providing affirmations to these children?
As I battle this question, I look at some data from Chapter 9 titled, “Intervention to Equalize Early Experience.” In particular, there is a section that poses this question: How Many Hours of Intervention Are Needed?
In other words, all other factors aside, how many hours of intervention are needed to keep the vocabulary of the average welfare child equal to that of the average working-class child? The answers are, to be honest, scary:
- The welfare children would need to receive 63,000 words per week of additional language experience. In total, these children would require 41 hours per week of out-of-home experience where they hear 2,100 words per hour (the same as is heard in a professional home)!
- What about affirmations? To keep the welfare kids at par with the working-class kids in terms of confidence, they would need more than 1,110 more instances of affirmative feedback per week. In total, these children would need 26 more hours per week of experiencing affirmations to equal that of the working-class child!
Okay, enough writing. Let me pose a few questions for you to consider. Maybe I was not so far off when I contemplated retirement from teaching and creating a business of baby-conversing? Is that a realistic option: giving welfare children an additional 41 hours per week of vocabulary experience? What about 26 hours per week of affirmations? How would you train someone to keep a child engaged in 41 hours of EXTRA conversation each week? Let’s be honest – giving 26 hours of affirmations to a child every week would be impossible, wouldn’t it? Is this the answer? If not, what can we do?
Risley and Hart do comment on this , but I’m not going to share their opinion until later…
Austin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post; I'm really glad you shared because it helped me take my own thoughts from my previous post to the next level.
I'm still amazed at the statistics about parents' spoken vocabularies. We KNOW (some) kids are behind. We KNOW (some) parents are behind. What continues to astonish me are the calculations you mentioned. Forty one extra hours of conversation a week, and twenty six hours of affirmative feedback! When writing my own post, I was feeling hopeful but concerned. I know how hard our Pre-K teachers work. I've wondered where this leaves me as a middle school teacher. I posed questions about how the educational community set in with the hope our discussion would pose some talk about solutions. Now, I can’t imagine where we can even begin. How are Pre-K teachers supposed to make up for these 41 hours a week? How should elementary schools continue?
I'm still completing my own reading of "Meaningful Differences", and your post has motivated me more so because I'm anxious to learn Risley and Hart's solutions. I find myself asking the same questions as you. How realistic are these options? The role of the educator will certainly be key, but your calculations show us that it's going to take a lot more work from many more individuals and community groups. Despite knowing this, is it really unrealistic for me to believe we can provide opportunity?
Molly Grant
Today in class, we watched an interview between Anderson Cooper and Geoff Canada that discussed Canada's success in his experimental "Harlem Children's Zone" schools. Although the entire interview was incredible, one particular part of it stuck out: the new parent educational classes, which taught parents--who may otherwise never know--about the importance of reading books to their children, keeping books in the home, etc. I've often thought communities should invest in more programs such as this. I think we are all here because we believe not only that our students want to succeed, but that their parents want them to succeed as well. Later in the video, Anderson Cooper said, "$5,000 a child? Isn't that a lot of money?" Geoff responded, "No. I don't think people realize how much more it costs us to fail these kids."
ReplyDeleteHe's right. Our society, on a whole, is largely retroactive. We try to fix problems after they've already gotten too bad. In a push towards progressive education, let's also think about educating the parents and teaching them how to get their kids ready for school.
This might be slightly off topic, but I saw an infomercial last night for the Baby Einstein, Your Baby Can Read programs on television. Partially because I'm a sucker for informercials and partially because we've been discussing the vocabulary gap, I stayed tuned.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how incorporating this type of technology would affect the study. I have never been a fan of using the television as a babysitter, but I wonder what would happen if households with lagging vocab counts supplemented their interactions with their children with some sort of technological substitute. Would the exposure to the vocabulary alone be enough? Is the genuine human interaction and connection directly correlated with the vocabulary development?
Beka, your reply is really thought-provoking! While I haven't read the book (and am certainly not a baby-conversation expert), I think there are two issues at hand here: the sheer amount of words to which a child is exposed, and the ability to use these words in conversation. While I think that technology could definitely help with the first issue by supplementing what a child hears and learns, I think that these children definitely lack practice in interacting with others as well. One thing I notice teaching very young children is that they are dying to have someone talk to them. Their parents often shut down their questions, tell them to be quiet, and do not engage with them in conversation. As a result, many of my kindergarten students don't really know HOW to have a conversation--how people respond to each others' questions, how to react when someone asks you something, how to listen, etc. I know that BCPSS is trying to work on this skill by having Pre-K and K teachers have "conversation stations" in their classroom, where students actually practice having conversations with an adult during centers. But as so many posts on this blog have mentioned, all of this seems like drops in the bucket compared to the tons of hours that we might need to really close this gap.
ReplyDeleteI think that your question is definitely one to be explored...while technology can really only address one part of the issue, I think that it would definitely be a start. Not as effective as professional baby-conversationalists, but perhaps more economically feasible?
I think something that we can do that Lydia and Beka touched on is at home intervention. I don't think that we should every give up on the concept that Welfare children can have homes that foster language development. Essentially, the question I seek to explore is what can we do to improve the homes of our students so that they are effective. I think we can start by engaging and creating programs that support and recognize parents. Something as simple as logging discussions with your child and working up to a certain number of minutes might inspire more talking. However, this will only be effective if we remember that it is important not to forget that we have to TEACH parents how to talk to their children and how to develop this language. These types of programs might not work for all parents, but if they are built in a culturally responsive manner I truly believe that they will engage some families, especially after it is communicated how important talking to your child is.
ReplyDelete