Bergman praises the district for the strides it has made -- it's now in the forefront nationally with regard to phonemic awareness -- but he says the committee report was still "a compromise" because the district's representatives were pro-whole language." We had to let everyone put something in the report they could be happy with before everyone put up barbed-wire fences around their position," he laments.
Clearly, Bergman doesn't think phonemic awareness is anything to compromise on -- particularly not for that bottom 20 percent. "When we say that phonemic awareness is a necessary skill for reading," he says, "we mean necessary. Not that it's nice. Not that it makes it more convenient. It's a necessary skill. You don't have legs, you don't walk. You don't have phonemic awareness, you don't learn to read."
If Bergman has changed the way HISD teaches reading and the programs it offers, Hunter seems somewhat reluctant to admit it. Asked what effect he's had, she pauses for a few moments, then says firmly, "He was a very active member of the PEER committee."
The Texas Reading Institute is a no-frills operation. Tucked into a corporate office park in west Houston, it is equipped with simple tables and privacy dividers, and is cluttered with paper and instructional materials. Two small rooms can be used for diagnostic testing or tutorials. During the school year, TRI has only ten or twelve students on a regular basis. One of them is Gregg Clement, the institute's "miracle child."
Gregg, 16, sits across from his tutor, Eleanor Boyce. Gregg easily reads a passage about the many uses of salt from a book called Getting the Main Idea. Then Eleanor helps him to visualize the information -- an essential component of comprehension. "When you see all this salt," she asks, "what color would the salt be?"
Gregg pauses for a few seconds. His face doesn't move; his pronounced, pale brow doesn't furrow. It's as if every spare bit of energy is focused on the question at hand. Finally, he answers, "Probably, like, white."
Gregg's dyslexia is so severe, and his aural comprehension so slow, he could easily be mistaken for mentally deficient. He also has vision problems and attention deficit disorder. But when Gregg would lose his place reading, or substitute in words that weren't on the page, his teachers told the Clements he was "using his imagination." When Gregg reached middle school his mother, Dorothy, decided that Gregg might do better if she home-schooled him. But in eighth grade, Gregg stopped reading altogether. He simply refused to pick up a book.
That's when the Clements discovered Gregg's dyslexia. The testing TRI performed, Clement says, was "the most perfect picture of Gregg we ever saw. It was like a word portrait of Gregg." It explained why Gregg could answer oral questions in class but did not understand jokes. It explained why sometimes he zeroed in on insignificant information. And it explained why he couldn't read.
At first Gregg had only 15 hours of instruction at the institute -- about an hour every two weeks. The sessions doubled as training for Dorothy, who then worked with Gregg at home. The reading program Bergman uses most, Phono-Graphix, has workbooks designed for parents to use with their kids at home. By the end of one year, Gregg's basic reading grade level had gone from 4.7 to 8.9. One of the first advanced books he read was The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. "It felt like I was in the story," he says after another long pause. "Like I was Robinson Crusoe." Now he is on a maintenance program, working primarily on visualization and comprehension.
"There's a kid who would have fallen through the cracks," Bergman says of Gregg. "No one knew what to do with him. What [special help] he might have qualified for would not have been a bona fide effort to bring up his reading."
But if Bergman has his way, the next Gregg Clement to come along will get the help he needs -- in school. Last week, TRI conducted its first Phono-Graphix teacher training in HISD, at Stevenson Elementary. Another elementary school, Carillo, has already asked to host the next training session.
Bergman is especially excited about Stevenson, because it is 97 percent Hispanic, and he wants Phono-Graphix to reach minority children, not just those whose parents have the time and money to come to his institute. At Stevenson, principal Mary Cherbonnier hopes the program will help that bottom 20 percent of students -- kids she calls, simply, "nonreaders."
Bergman hopes so too. Still, he knows he has to be careful. He has learned over the years that combating the district is counterproductive. Because of site-based decision-making, Cherbonnier can choose which programs she uses at her school, thus providing a way for Bergman to sneak in under the radar. "This is the first time we've gone into HISD," he says. He lays a finger to his lips as if tiptoeing past a sentinel standing guard. "Shhh," he says, his eyes twinkling. "Shhh.
