A morning with Mike Schmoker

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a professional development session with hundreds of educators from across the state of Arizona. Our session leader was Mike Schmoker. 

Mike Schmoker is an Arizona native and has spent his educational career as a football coach, an English teacher and a school administrator. He has authored five books as well as published many articles in educational journals and magazines. Mr. Schmoker believes that we, as a state and a nation, must shift our efforts back to the "basics" of education before we will truly be successful with any other initiative or reform.

 Below is a shocking example of what he means by the "basics."
At the beginning of his session Mr. Schmoker asked one very simple question to our group, "when you walk into a Reading classroom on your campus what do you typically see?" This room full of educators came up with a variety of answers to his question ranging from students identifying the characters in a story, to students summarizing a passage to student creating a visual to support a presentation. One answer that was absent was...READING. Not one person in the room said they typically saw teachers or students engaged in any type of meaningful reading. It seems as though, at least in our experiences, that the focus was more on the elements of literature, writing a response or decorating a poster rather than actually reading.

If you would like to hear more from or about Mike Schmoker you can visit www.mikeschmoker.com