Yucaipa professor hikes 300 miles to push literacy

Spotting philosophy instructor Chris Biffle on the road this summer, one might have thought he looked more like a vagabond than a man on a serious mission to save public schools.

In fact, he was both. The Crafton Hills College professor and CTA member took to the open road on a 300-mile march from San Bernardino to Sacramento to protest the dwindling funds for education, promote literacy, and talk to librarians and anyone else who would listen to his cause. Biffle was joined along the way at times by small groups of students - including some from Student CTA.

Back in Yucaipa, Biffle reflects, "It was a deeply rewarding trip. We met a lot of people along the way who are deeply concerned about education."

From the early planning days back in January, Biffle had called the march a "children's rights movement" that would call attention to the condition of California education from kindergarten through college.

At the same time, Biffle decided to use the march as a bully pulpit for improving literacy in the state.

Together, he and his student companions walked 10 miles a day, from library to library, to talk about budget issues, literacy, and techniques to improve literacy proficiency in children.

Among the techniques they talked most about was a literacy program Biffle has created over the past few years.

The SuperSpeed Sight Word Project, which is also available for free on his website [http://www.powerteachers.com/], offers a list of 300 words along with a number of games that can be used to teach the words.

The list, Biffle says, includes 65 percent of all words students read. If these words are not mastered by the end of third grade, students' chances of reading proficiently are crippled.

"It's an incredibly cost-effective way to get kids motivated," Biffle says, noting that the various games that accompany the word list spur children on.

During their weeks on the road, the motley crew showed up at 50 different libraries to demonstrate the game, "and not a single librarian turned it down," says Biffle.

Like other knowledgeable educators, Biffle is shocked by statistics showing that one in five Americans is functionally illiterate as are 50 percent of prison inmates. While far from a complete solution, he maintains, mastering the 300 sight words by the third grade will increase a child's reading proficiency.

Biffle was so committed to his campaign that he and his students did the march on a shoestring - sleeping in the homes and yards of CTA and Student CTA members, eating meals of tuna fish, peanut butter and jelly, and graham crackers, and minding their pennies and quarters along the way. The hikers divided their 20-day march into four legs, walking from San Bernardino to Los Angeles; Escondido to San Diego; San Jose to San Francisco; and Merced to Sacramento.

For Chris Baltz, one of Biffle's former students who is now a graduate student at San Francisco State University, the march grew from a summer lark to a cause.

"I got excited because of the cause itself," says Baltz. As a younger student, he struggled with school. It wasn't until he took Biffle's course at college that he discovered the joy of reading. Now he hopes to go into education as a profession.

"Hopefully, one day I'll become a professor, but with these budget cuts, things are pretty dismal."

"The thing that impressed me the most was the incredible goodness and generosity of people," says Biffle. "But we also saw a lot of frustration. Every person we talked to was depressed about the state of the state. There was a general sadness. Just like teachers, librarians were frazzled and at the end of their rope."

Nevertheless, on a clear summer day, hiking out on the open road, talking to anyone who would listen, offering a free program to libraries, the merry vagabonds - as they came to call themselves - could at least feel they were making a difference.