"Conversations LIVE!" with Cyrus Webb  

 

(Author Anthony Pedriana will be a guest on Conversations LIVE! Radio on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 @ 7p.m. CST (8p.m. EST/5p.m. PT). Listen to the interview live @ this link:  http://tinyurl.com/oqwdox )

Tony, first of all, congratulations on your book LEAVING JOHNNY BEHIND. It is a powerful tool for us to use in understanding where we are in the fight against illiteracy and how we can make progress moving forward. Before we talk about the book, though, I want to talk about your own passion for education. When did you realize that you had an interest in helping others succeed?
I guess I began to feel that passion when I was an undergrad student in the 60's, a time of war and social upheaval. It was the decade of Woodstock and the Vietnam War. But it was also the time during which we passed the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts. It was amazing to me that a country supposedly founded on democratic principles had to pass laws guaranteeing equal rights to everybody. We had essentially lived a lie for nearly 200 years. If I was going to do my part to address those social inequalities, what better place to start than in an urban environment where I could help others get the education that would give them the best chance to participate in the American dream.

Has reading always been a part of your life, and if so, is it something that your family enjoyed as well?
I was born to lower middle class parents, neither of whom had a high school diploma. They were avid newspaper readers but we didn't have many books around the house. But that all changed when I was around ten and began asking for them. My younger brothers followed in that same tradition. That is one thing they never denied us.

As an educator, I know you saw up close and person the results of not having the proper tools needed to be one's best. What surprised you the most about your time in the classroom?
I spent my entire career in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the country. Pretty much every day brought one surprise or another, usually the result of poverty and all its associated ills. After awhile, they weren't really surprises anymore. Bad things happened to our kids all the time. Reading ability offered the best chance for them to escape this tragic cycle.


And so the real surprise came when I discovered a disconnect between what science had identified as the best methods to teach kids to read and the training I had received prior to and throughout most of my career. It took awhile, but I eventually discovered that Schools of Education didn't teach reading science. That was a real shocker. How could we do right by kids if there was nothing to verify the effectiveness of the methods we used.

ABC News released a poll earlier this year, Tony, that said that 16% of Americans ages 16 and up are not able to read and write well. Are you surprised that with all of our advancements as a nation that literacy is still something we are falling behind in?
We may have made a lot of advancements, but we are now a nation in decline. There are many causes for that, but the figure you just quoted points to a major contributor. It's not just illiteracy any more; it's also low literacy that has led to school failure for so many and thereby compromised our status as a world power...

 

Read the entire interview here: http://authorstaketen.blogspot.com/2009/09/take-ten-author-anthony-pedriana.html