ABSTRACT
A veteran Michigan teacher I know attended a mandatory workshop recently to learn about Reading Mastery, a Direct-Instruction- based approach to reading instruction that her district was adopting. Several days of training to implement scripted reading lessons focused on low-level skills, and the use of finger snaps to mark the call-and-response rhythm of the lessons persuaded her that the time had come for her to retire. She had no taste for the prescriptive, mind-numbing lessons that failed to treat her as a knowledgeable professional with nearly 40 years of teaching experience and did not respect her students as the thoughtful, intelligent people that they were.
