[Music]
[Applause]
what if new teacher preparation programs
and ongoing professional development
used incarcerated youth as thought
partners to help navigate the challenges
of teaching reading now some of you may
be thinking that's a far-fetched idea
others perhaps may be thinking crime
when you think about incarcerated youth
but after working decades as a principal
and with incarcerated youth and
examining public education through the
perspective of incarcerated youth I am
convinced the teaching of reading in a
way that utilizes incarcerated youth
experiences with school failures and
reading problems could be our best hope
to keep more students in school but let
me be transparent I haven't always
believed this after graduated from
college with a bachelor's degree in
physical education
I took a teaching position teaching
physical education at a juvenile
correctional facility my aspiration was
to pursue a career in sports management
and teaching was just going to be a
stopgap while I enjoy teaching physical
education I also coach the basketball
team and taking graduate classes in the
evening towards earning a degree in
sports management my aspiration was
challenged by an experience that remains
very personal you see on days that the
school principal was away from the
school building the assistant principal
would take over and he would often ask
me to a
system and on those days I kept an eye
on teachers student behaviors
instructional activities and the
interactions between students and
teachers but what I observed in the
classrooms was not the physically strong
athletic course or fearless boys from
our physical education classes instead I
saw the same boys who were so
pathetically uneducated to the point of
they were fearful of the classroom now
mostly black boys they could not read or
write some of them could not spell their
first or last name some of them did not
know their letters or sounds some could
not tell time some in fact did not even
know if you ask them their date of birth
and this was a painful reality for me
this was a reality check for me in fact
it was so disruptive to me that it made
me make one of the biggest decisions of
my life to replace my original career
goal of sports management with the new
goal Education administration I wanted
to be a principal I wanted to be a
principal through their educational
challenges and despair my students had
convinced me or at least inspired me to
care more about them to think about what
was really happening in schools and at
the very least to figure out what was
happening with reading instruction and
so I went on back to school for
education administration now exactly ten
years after leaving my teaching position
at the juvenile correctional
and subsequently working as a high
school and middle school health and
physical education teacher assistant
principal and high school principal I
took over as principal of a local public
school inside the Philadelphia prison
system now the Philadelphia prison
system at that time was the fifth
largest urban County Jail system in the
United States it has six major
correctional facilities on its property
and over 9,000 adult inmates among the
thousands of adult inmates who were
detained in or sentenced to the
Philadelphia prison system annually 250
of them were my new students juveniles
between the ages of 13 and 17 they were
being tried as adults in this position I
saw the same set of currents as I have
seen throughout my career as an educator
especially in my earlier career at the
juvenile correctional facility and that
was students who cannot read now this
time it was not only juveniles but
adults just consider this one adult male
in me who I didn't know at the time but
was 55 years old at the time as I was
moving from the minimum-security side of
this particular Correctional Facility to
the maximum security side I took a
shortcut through the medical services
unit and out of nowhere it seemed this
frantic adult in me approached me saying
mr. principal mr. principal I need your
help I'm still in the Hooked on Phonics
class and I want to get my GED now I
could see
in here the pain in his voice but I
could also see the anger and frustration
in his facial expression so I paused I
could see that he was tired and very
frustrated with carrying the burden of a
lifetime of illiteracy consider yet
another student a juvenile 16 years old
who when I was on his cell block he
approached me calmly but yet boldly and
said mister Pelzer I'm going to quit
school I said son why would you quit
school
he said because I'm 16 years old and I'm
still reading on the first grade level
now these two incarcerated individuals
had two things in common
one they clearly understood their
educational plight through their reading
levels but two they knew to express that
concern to the principal the one person
who should be able to help them turn
around their circumstance now there is
no hard evidence that prison officials
used reading scores to determine the
number of bears they need and I've
worked with many wardens and prison
commissioners and at no time did they
ever ask me for reading data to support
the number of bears they need but there
is an undeniable connection between
literacy and incarceration in fact
literacy stats and data and empirical
studies confirm this connection of
low-level literacy and involvement in
the juvenile justice system for example
85 percent of the juveniles who
interface with the juvenile justice
system
are fundamentally illiterate 40% of
juvenile offenders who are at a 10th
grade level which means they are about
15 to 16 years old read below 4th grade
level and according to the United States
Department of Justice the link between
academic failure violence delinquency
and crime is welded in reading failure
now we are failing to reach teach and
engage thousands of children every day
by third grade they should be making the
transition from learning to read to
reading to learn now I'm not the only
one who believes this others agree with
that reading instruction and at the very
least helping teachers who struggle with
teaching reading need to improve
teachers principals college officials
government officials all agree with me
for example an elementary school
principal in the Bronx in 2016 told a
CNN reporter that she had been she had
spent the past 10 years trying to find
ways to help our teachers teach reading
she also indicated that it was the
teacher preparation programs that
weren't going a good job former US
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also
indicated in an open letter to college
presidents that teacher preparation
programs weren't rigorous enough nor
were they keeping up with the times a
group of college Dean's got together and
did a study to lean low teacher
preparedness and low-performing public
schools and
in that study they found that only 39%
of the included elementary education
teacher preparation programs taught
their undergraduate students all five
components of reading phonics phonemic
awareness comprehension fluency
vocabulary development South Carolina in
Florida and other states are tackling
this problem head-on they are requiring
and mandating in some instances that
teachers be trained in reading
instruction or receive certification in
reading instruction in order to teach in
the schools and the state of Louisiana
they even go beyond those measures we're
all aspiring and new teachers must
complete a year-long residency before
entering the profession to demonstrate
proficiency in reading data setting
assessments running classrooms working
with parents and managing student
behaviors now you may agree with me but
I strongly believe if we increase and
improve reading instruction and help
teachers who struggle with teacher
reading we will increase the graduation
rate we will decrease the dropout rate
we may even displace some of the many
excuses that we place on external
factors such as poverty students home
lives and other factors parenting and
focus on reading instruction we may even
disrupt the school to Prison Pipeline
theory by shifting the focus away from
discipline policies as the reason folks
are going to jail to reading the
instruction as the reason folks are
going into jail and we could
affect the lives of black children and
their families by eliminating the
student achievement gap which as we all
know is an ever persisting problem that
seems the only of that black children
now we have a lot of work to do
I believe the desire to express reading
problems and school failures is common
among incarcerated youth and there is an
extraordinary number of incarcerated
youth around the world the United
Nations Children's Fund estimates that
there is more than 1 million
incarcerated youth around the globe
according to juvenile justice system
records the United States incarcerate
smore of his youth than any other
country in the world and on any given
day fifty to sixty thousand young people
are locked up in juvenile jails and
prisons and so that's why I want to
spread my idea that is reading
instruction and helping teachers who
struggle with teaching reading that must
improve but accomplishing this goal
requires implementing changes within the
university base teacher preparation
programs and so here's my paradox as
they go about their training and
curricula and research practices we use
incarcerated youth as thought partners
to help them navigate the challenges of
teaching reading these you have a keen
insight and awareness of their own
reading challenges and problems and can
explain to you the trials and
tribulations and they can strengthen
teachers understanding
of where to raise the instructional ball
and if this idea spreads training and
curriculum for aspiring teachers and
seasoned educators would include them
visiting correctional facilities and
speaking directly to incarcerated youth
to learn about their school experiences
they would address the literacy issues
that incarcerated youth face they would
understand the experiences that led
incarcerated youth to jail they would
gain an awareness of the student-teacher
interactions that did not Forge strong
student-teacher relationships and they
will complete fieldwork field study to
address educational bias against black
children and the low level reading
strategies and resources use that keep
these children lagging far behind not
surprisingly black children are
incarcerated at five times the rate of
other children
partnering with incarcerated youth in
the process of teacher preparation will
accentuate the national conversation
about reading instruction it will
inspire intentionality and urgency for
reading practices and it would offer
professional learning to all educators
of all levels that is steeped in a new
unconventional perspective
that of incarcerated youth so I ask you
in your own lives to find a way to be
part of the action of improving reading
instruction and when you think about
reading instruction think about
incarcerated youth thank you