Hooked On Phonics Worked For Me!

I am a deeply flawed human being. Perhaps moreso than most. A stunningly incomplete list of things I'm bad at would have to include:

1. Opening boxes
2. Remembering birthdays and utilizing this information to act in the socially prescribed manner
3. Coaching youth basketball
4. Maintaining relationships past the 6-week mark
5. Not eating burritos

That said, I am very good at this:

1. Reading comprehension

I've got it all. I can visualize, clarify, ask questions, make predictions, confirm predictions, ascertain cause-and-effect, delineate fact and opinion, and make connections of the text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world variety. I used this skill throughout my elementary and high school years. It came in mighty handy as undergraduate plowing through the Great Books, which had not yet been translated into multiple learning modality format, or the ubiquitous PowerPoint. So well-versed am I in the area of reading comprehension that I am actually qualified to teach young people how to better read and comprehend. Usually, I am paid to do this, although not last month.

Because I possess this skill, leaders and curriculum designers of regional Masters programs need not scaffold the presentation of instruction quite so heavily. If you assign a book, or say, a single chapter therein, I can be expected to read it and understand. If you have information about various styles of conflict and methods of resolution, you can provide me with this material in advance, knowing I will have sufficiently read in order to analyze and discuss. If there is structural or course design knowledge that needs to be imparted, rest assured that I am capable of reading to learn, because my learning to read days ended sometime in the late 1980s. In general, this is a beneficial development, because it allows class time to be focused, purposeful, and directed toward such things as synthesis and application. It means your mandatory Saturday sessions can be directed toward something greater than basic fact-acquisition that I completed not long after being handed the print-out, but long before any of you had finished speaking.

You should embrace this, and make use of my skill.

Or, you could just keep reading your PowerPoints to me, while I follow along with print-outs in hand, transmitting every teenaged-derived visual signal that I am currently unengaged, unappreciative, and more or less disgusted.