What to Do Until the Reading Specialist Comes

Extract

In an earlier issue (Vol.4 No.2) Michael Christie told us about the reading program he was using at Mi lingimbi. In this issue he outlines “a number of teaching techniques which are both simple to implement and congruent with what (little) we know about learning styles in Aboriginal children.”

Nothing is more depressing for a teacher than to hear about other teachers’ fabulous successes while feeling incapable of replicating them. Enthusiasm for other people’s programs begins to wear thin in the cold light of your own circumstances. What exactly can be done to achieve reading without tears at your school? There are so many ideas and theories in the teaching of reading, we are at a loss as to which of them to choose. And teaching Aboriginal children to read is an even more difficult task for two main reasons. Firstly, they come from a culture where reading is not a part of everyday life, so there is a lot of reading which we take for granted and which they don’t understand. Secondly, we know only a very little about the ways in which Aboriginal children learn. If we think carefully, we can see that our past failures have only taught us that white teaching methods are by and large simply unsuitable for Aboriginal children. This paper is essentially an attempt to rectify this in the field of reading.