Christina Nosek still remembers the overwhelming freedom she was granted when she first started teaching reading in PAUSD elementary schools in the early 2000s.
“When I first came to the district — and this is specific to elementary school, I can’t speak to secondary — you basically did whatever you wanted,” Nosek said.
For years, Palo Alto’s elementary school teachers were left to piece together their own literacy instruction, pulling resources from various programs without a standardized curriculum. It wasn’t until 2021 that the district adopted Benchmark, its first formal, district-wide literacy program.
Benchmark emphasizes building context behind scenarios described in books through a step-by-step program. District Reading Specialist Rachel Milliken-Weitzman said the standardized curriculum has made it much easier for her to screen for areas where students are struggling.
“Because we follow a very clear scope and sequence, it’s really easy for me to figure out exactly what they don’t (know),” Milliken-Weitzman said.
Benchmark isn’t the first widespread literacy program that PAUSD used. Previous initiatives included the unofficially adopted Units of Study.
The Units of Study was a looser curriculum emphasizing responsive teaching in small groups and one-on-one settings, in contrast to the step-by-step curriculum Benchmark provides.
According to Milliken-Weitzman, the Units of Study allowed students to have more freedom in their reading journey due to its emphasis on individualized learning.
Nosek said the adoption of the Units of Study began as a grassroots effort from the teachers.
“A few teachers started using the Units of Study from (Columbia University’s) Teachers College,” Nosek said. “I was actually one of those teachers. It was something to use, and it came highly recommended, so we loved it. We had the training in it. Then the district invited some trainers from Teachers College to come for a summer training. Teachers could opt in to take it or not. Over the course of the next school year, people at the district offered to purchase just the Units for the schools.”
Nosek also said a few PAUSD elementary schools had direct instruction from Teachers College staff.
“A few schools became what they call Teachers College Project schools, where Teachers College trainers (and) staff developers would come and work with us twice a year in our classrooms, doing professional development in our classrooms to help support us in implementing writing and reading workshops,” Nosek said.
“There were some great things about the program that we used to use. One of them was that it gave kids a lot of choice and a lot of time to pick up books and follow their passion,” Milliken-Weitzman said.
However, implementing the Units of Study led to some difficulties. Milliken-Weitzman said the open-endedness of the approach led many teachers to have difficulty figuring out how to help students in certain scenarios.
“There were kids who didn’t get it or that were struggling, (and some of) the teachers didn’t really know what to do,” Milliken-Weitzman said.
Nosek said the Units of Study was designed as a living curriculum that required training from the Teachers College to keep up with frequent updates.
“The Teachers College is a think tank constantly updating their practices based on what they learn about literacy instruction,” Nosek said.
Another criticism against the Units of Study was its incorporation of the “three cueing” method which teaches children to use context clues to determine the meaning of words. This approach is part of an ongoing debate on effective reading methods, with critics arguing phonics should be heavily emphasized while proponents of balanced literacy argue phonics is not the sole priority during the reading process.
“If a little kid keeps mistaking the word ‘horse’ for ‘pony,’ it doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re reading, or they don’t know how to read,” Nosek said. “It means we need to support that child in relying more on the letters that are printed on the page, rather than just their meaning and background knowledge. ”
AP English Language & Composition teacher Kindel Launer said acquiring these reading processes require repurposing a circuit from the language part of the brain.
“We’re bringing information in from our eyes, and we learn to map sound to that image that we see, like an ‘L’ or a ‘P’ or an ‘H’ or an ‘A,’” “That’s the repurposing of the circuitry. In English, or languages that aren’t tonal. We also learn to map sounds to letters,” Launer said.
Launer said only a subset of the population can read intuitively, meaning they can read based on any strategy taught.
“About 25% of us can kind of naturally repurpose that circuitry without really thinking about it,” Launer said. “And there’s about 50% of us who need some instruction and some guide that helps the brain repurpose that circuitry. And then the other 25% need a particular type of instruction to repurpose that circuitry. ”
For the people who do not, Launer said phonics are necessary for them to understand the fundamentals.
“There are languages like English, which are opaque, where sounds don’t map to letters the same way all the time,” Launer said. “Depending on the context or how the word is put together, the sound and letter don’t necessarily map. ”
Milliken-Weitzman agreed and said phonemic awareness is a critical skill for children.
“Kids struggle with segmenting,” Milliken-Weitzman said. “If I’m looking at the letters, and I can go, ‘buh-at.’ Take each piece apart. If they struggle with that, then they’re really going to struggle with decoding.”
Ultimately, Nosek said improving literacy curriculum requires balancing different learning approaches and needs.
“Literacy is a balance of teaching phonics and teaching kids to love and appreciate reading,” Nosek said. “You need both to be a skilled reader.”
