English educator John Bartholomew just completed his first visit to the Delta, and he said it was a welcome chance to exchange ideas.
Bartholomew, who is based in London, led a team assessing the progress of the Cornerstone literacy initiative in the Greenwood Public Schools. The Greenwood district and five others just implemented Cornerstone this year.
Members of the team were Althea McLin of Jackson; Edna Varner of Chattanooga, Tenn.; Louise Beste of Trenton, N.J.; and Elizabeth Peters of Talladega, Ala. They spent a week at each of the two participating schools, Threadgill Elementary and Williams Elementary.
The group was to prepare reports on the local Cornerstone effort and suggestions for how it could improve. The goal was not to be critical but to share ideas, Bartholomew said.
Bartholomew worked as a teacher, an elementary school principal and an administrator before retiring. He said he was sought as a Cornerstone reviewer because of his expertise in literacy.
Cornerstone advocates teaching elementary students to be critical thinkers as they learn to read and write. This might sound like a lofty goal, but it can be done, Bartholomew said.
However, he added, it requires "going far beyond the basic skills of literacy" to a deeper kind of learning.
"The skill of a teacher is to ask the right questions and present the right models," he said.
The Greenwood schools are headed in that direction, although they are "still feeling their way" this early in the four-year initiative, he said.
The strategies stressed by Cornerstone have been required in Great Britain for a few years, Bartholomew said. Instructors there learn an intensive, continuous method of teaching, as opposed to just giving students worksheets and sitting at a desk as they complete them, he said.
"It's a massive change in the methodology and quality of what children do," he said.
Eddie Allen, assistant principal at Threadgill, and David Taylor, principal at Williams, said the reviewers had some helpful suggestions about books and instructional techniques.
American schools have some advantages over Great Britain in implementing a literacy initiative, Bartholomew said. For example, only an hour a day is devoted to literacy there, whereas Greenwood schools spend at least two hours a day on it.
American schools also have good ideas about classroom atmosphere and how a comfortable setting can improve learning, he said.
"We have a lot to learn about learning environments," he said.
Next summer, a team from Greenwood will travel to Great Britain, at Cornerstone's expense, to observe how its philosophies are implemented in schools there. That group will include the Williams and Threadgill principals; each school's two Cornerstone "coaches"; Janice Ford, the district's "critical friend," or Cornerstone liaison; and Barbara Corbett, the curriculum director.
Greenwood educators also will have the chance to serve on teams that evaluate other Cornerstone sites.
