Chapter 12: Achievement-Related Self-Perceptions and Reading Development: Can Reading Recovery Recover Self-Concept?

“Your child is too thick to teach!” Imagine being a parent and hearing your child’s teacher say that to you. These words were used by a teacher to tell a parent about her son’s problems with reading. Of course, she already knew her son was struggling with reading, that’s why she wanted to meet the teacher. When the boy’s mother asked the school principal for a change of teacher, he exclaimed, “What would you know, you’re only a parent!” This story was told in a letter to the editor of the New Zealand magazine North & South (Evans, 2001, p. 14). The letter describes the frustrations experienced by this boy’s parents as they tried to overcome the obstacles of teachers and specialists in trying to get appropriate reading instruction for their son. The negative emotional impact of reading failure on both the boy and his family permeates the letter.