1) What were your first experiences as a teacher of reading? Discuss the students, and situations, you encountered. My first year of teaching it was 1992 and I was in New Orleans at Adolph Meyer Elementary, now called Harriet Tubman Elementary. I was fresh off the Iowa farm and very very naieve. I had 32 second grade students at the most but dropped under 30 before the year was up. They were mostly African-American and the school was across the street from the Algiers Naval Station. They had just adopted a new math curriculum and I got the teachers manual at the end of the year....I don't remember ever seeing a reading textbook at all....in fact....I can't really remember teaching reading. I had science, math, and social studies texts but that was it. The one thing I did get was a box full of scholastic books for my age level....again, not sure why. I read a lot of books to kids and had them read to me. All my college training went right out the window. The one think I began to incorporate was writing workshop, I left at the end of that year because Hurricane Andrew was enough to chase me home.
2) What did you do in response to your first attempts at teaching reading? I think I really began teaching reading in 1993 when I started at my current school. I was teaching kindergarten and we had a great Houghton Mifflen series that was just all about literature. We read great books each day and worked on some phonics. Whole language was all the craze and I was reading anything and everything I could get my hands on by Ken and Yetta Goodman. I had a copy of the Whole Language Catalog that was my "bible". Since I was the only kindergarten teacher and our early childhood program was down the road from the main school I couldn't rely on anyone else. I'm still reading anything I can get my hands on to keep me up to date in reading practices and thank goodness the internet makes that so easy. 3) How did these first experiences, and your background as a reader, shape who you are as an educator today? All these experiences have made teaching reading a little easier, more fun, and less drill and practice. I've been able to pick and choose from the experts to incorporate into my techniques and slowly move away from the scripted text of our reading texts. I can pinpoint the areas where many readers struggle and I'm much quicker at coming up with a plan of attack. I am much more confident today and what I like best of all is that I can readily help other teachers. I love to hear, "They told me to come ask you." and I can whip out a resource or give an idea. 4) Open response to the reading I had great teacher training at that time in the mid 80's but it would have not been enough to deal with the intense reading structures of today. My training back then was very social based, music, movement, arts and crafts, bulletin boards, things I don't have much time for now due to "time" sets on instructional time. In retrospect I don't think college can really ever prepare you for you own classroom, not even student teaching can. You just have to dive into the trenches and go on some gut instinct and keep reading. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
