“If I you believe you can, then you will.”

I’m not sure if I’ve just heard this several times or if it’s acutally a ‘coined’ phrase that someone created. Regardless, it may actually be more of a school of thought or as I see it a virtue that has guided my literacy education. It’s a virtue that I wish all students, if not already familiar with, should be encouraged to follow. Teachers are educators of all academia as well as morals and historically always have been. Fights on the playground are prime examples of everyday lessons in morality. How I came to the understanding of how this virtue has shaped my role as an educator of literacy is in direct correlation to how I interact with my class each day.

This ‘rose colored glasses’ view of how learning occurs began prior to elementary school in preschool. I distinctly remember Mrs. Brown at the Hansel and Gretel Preschool just a short mile from home. I have memories of cut and paste, but I hold a few memories of reading; as well. I cut and pasted my letters and found pictures in magazines and proudly walked out everyday at noon with some new creation that showed off my preschool progress. Lucky for me my brother had not been born yet, although, I had sneaky suspicions that something was up when I felt like I was being smoothed over by being able to choose the color of carpet for my new room. In my parents attempt to transition me from only child, youngest in my extended family, and the thought that there wasn’t anyone in the world except me, they asked me what color I’d like-I chose bright shag yellow!(It’s a mistake they did not repeat again). In any case, I also remember receiving a report from my teacher that I was not doing my work well enough-such a tattle tale she was! I had to ‘apply myself’ more. Then came the first of the same ‘old’ speech from my parents. If I try hard enough then I can do it! This seemed to be a constant theme for my parents-although like any other speech it became more polished over the years. The point is that without me realizing then what was going on they were laying the groundwork for many years to come. Also, as a professional teacher I also realize that preschool should be a requirement for all students because children are ready for this beginning literacy involvement earlier than when kindergarten begins.

It also provided the basis for my elementary years that were predominantly phonics based. Kindergarten sure was a lot of fun with giant blow up letter people that surrounded my classsroom. The proud Mr. H and all the fun that came with him-including Hairy Heads of grass that grew their hair back, unlike my Barbie dolls. The phonics fun continued with macaroni necklaces and lots of moms; including mine who came in to help any of us at the small work tables when letters like Y and all those crazy vowels just didn’t seem to stick in my head as well as my Elmer’s glue did. Although, the fun seemed to become a little more like work when those new characters Dick, Jane and Spot arrived on the scene. Suddenly, I had to put all those letters to work and they just didn’t seem to initially work for me. I didn’t understand why my teacher was so picky! I had to read them in a certain order and she wanted me to read them faster and faster. Being inately stubborn I wanted to do all of this in my own time, but that’s when I noticed that some of my friends seemed to be reading them just a wee bit faster. Again, the ‘old’ speeches. This is when competition seemed to enter my life. If Tara, Sara, and Erin could do it then I knew I could too. Although, what I didn’t realize was that it was slightly more natural for them and I had to go to the small table to practice even more-

”Hey, what’s everybody doing outside?” “I think I need to be there too because that sure is a lot more fun and by the way what happened to Mrs. A and Doodle D?”

That’s right, I was struggling with the beginning applications of letters and sounds. It took some time, but with encouragement I managed to put it all together. Grade school continued this way, just when I thought I had it all down pat my teacher would throw some curve ball in there like comprehension. The trouble with becoming a reader using strictly phonics based material is that there’s no real plot to the Dick and Jane stories. It was always real easy to figure out that after Spot was done with his ‘Run, run, run’ he would come back for a ‘Pat, pat, pat’. Elementary school did present some terrific opportunities for creative writing in Miss Armin’s third grade class. I was even published with my ‘tale’ of How The Skunk Got His Stripe in the school wide newsletter. In a competition driven town like Loudonville this was quite accomplished. As background, for that little dig you would have to know how the PTA at my school was like a well oiled political machine. Parent involvement was never an an issue and rest assured I now know some of the frustrations of parents who want to help a little too much. In any case, my writing was my reprieve from reading and so were the cursive lessons! Oh how I loved the finality and accomplishment of creating stories with beautiful polished cursive!(Whatever floats your boat!) At this point, Carnival book orders arrived and I believe this was the first time that I realized the expanse of genres available to read. It seemed like a whole new world beyond the basal and even then I yearned for interesting literature in my classroom. Yet, the basal prevailed! My mom encouraged me to read Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Great, and Ralph and the Motorcycle. The covers intrigued me, but the words did not. Mostly because I was looking for the pictures to explain the story and suddenly they disapeared. Although, I had a friend, Katy, who loved to read. Funny, how friends can inspire more so than parents and teachers. She seemed to read what looked like books the size of the Bible and she enjoyed it! I tried and tried, but never seemed to get beyond the second character introduction, buy then it became too much to keep track of. At least I had the opportunity to write. And as hindsight is, I realize know that all the writing I was doing was promoting my literacy advancement. Then fifth grade came along(let’s just skip fourth for the sake of my reputation being soured as the only child with braces!) and Mrs. Cushing sparked a renewed interest in being able to read well. She was always up to something and it usually involved heat, fire, ice and all of the substances that makes Science such a crazy and interesting subject. I quickly found out that in order to participate in the experiments I had to have done my homework and read about why we were actually doing insane things like getting a hard boiled to go down the neck of a soda bottle without it disintegrating into lots of little pieces! I not only had to read the experiment, but then I had to answer questions and make connections for the theory behind this phenonemon. Mrs. Lawton had my best interest in mind, but she wanted me to undreline nouns and verbs in sentences and then circle the adverbs. What was she thinking? And when was the clock going to turn to eleven so I could go next door?

Before I knew what happened junior high school began and I was shuffling classes and book, lockers, boys, friends, hair and everything else that preoccupies teenage minds. This seemed to be a breaking point for the mundane circling and underlining, but it did not get any easier. Now there were fat textbooks that contained miscellaneous information and none of it seemed to relate to anything else. Again, just as things had beocome simple again I was required to work even harder. As I mentioned before I’m a little stubborn and I remember several converstations with my parents over how my homework had to be done and if I did not they would know. Funny, how parents always seem to know even before you do about what’s going on? I mean, didn’t they have other things to worry about? Unfortunately, at the time, they did not have anything else to do except be in my ‘business’. And so it went, the more work that was assigned the more I had to figure out a way to do it all. Typically teenager of course I had no time to listen to how my parents thought I should juggle extra activities and homework. I firmly belived that’s how kids become so intersted in sports; generally there is no reading involved with hitting the ball across the net! As the textbooks became more involved so did the amount I had to understand about what I was reading and then be accountable for how much of this unrelatable information I could store in my head without any ‘real life’ purpose. Finally, the teacher I hold accountable for a sincere interest in history came along and began to help me find purpose for all this reading. He explained things and made sure that I understood them when I was finished and what was so amazing is that he actually let me discuss some of this mumbo jumbo with other classmates! We had peer interaction and discussion that brought more meaning than ever before. I began to feel like I had real ownership for my work. It really mattered what I knew because once again competition drove me to know more than the soul next to me. Unfortunately, this did not always happen, but at least I found purpose which in turn created motiviation for reading. He made me believe that intelligence existed in me. Which, of course, to my parents content also made me realize that they were right. The more I tried the better I got.

High school brought on a whole new meaning to everything. As I left the confines of being a big fish in a little pond in the junior high school I entered into what seemed like the never ending battle of high school. This is where things really got tough. It wasn’t like a few words of encouragement were going to help me here. It took two years and a summer of tutoring to get through geometry and I still don’t have any concept of why I memorized all those theorems just in order to pass the Regents exam. Which brings me to the word that describes high school in a nutshell. TESTS. Classroom test, Regents exams, and the dreaded SAT. I had no real purpose except to get through all of them and the never ending demands for my parents to do well on them. Once again, my parents seemed to know what I was doing everyday before I even got home. I know it wasn’t my own brother tattling on me(he would have if he could have but he was five years behind me) so it must be those nosy teachers! I began to trudge through all the complexities of high school with the motivation of performing well on a test. I found little motivation and no purpose for learning. Mrs. Horowitz(can you imagine the nicknames?) attempted to introduce the classics. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Pearl. Her intentions weren’t all lost, but again the comprehension seemed to invade my interest in the stories. While she was busy discussing why the author chose particular words to describe a character I was still stuck on who the heck she was talking about and why in the world how the character interacted with some other unknown character had anything to really do with the story. I now realize that I had finally broken free of the basal, but I couldn’t enjoy this new freedom to explore all of this new literature. Then, as I mentioned before came the end of year exams, the Regents, that really put me to the test. It wasn’t simply a matter of pass or fail and there were so many new goals to strive for. Like how in the world can all of my friends read all of these books in no time at all and have all this free time to party? How was I going to accomplish that? And how was I ever going to take that dreaded SAT? I was sure it was going to be a test of all the homework questions I never did and all the math that I so conveniently got my dad to do for me. I should remark that I was forever coming in to school with some new way of solving algebraic equations because my father would finally just start writing on the paper after three hours of trying to get me to do it-yeah dad! In any case, my parents luckily understood that I was not a genious and I needed some extra help if I was ever going to be accepted into a college. So, I took the SAT preparation course along with all of my friends on Saturday mornings. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why in the world they needed help with this thing.They never need any extra help or have to redo any assignments. It taught me two things, that in the land of competition you can always strive for better, no matter how much knowledge you have and that it must be a really hard test if Liz the magical math wizard needed to be there! I was terrified. So terrified that the first time I took the PSAT I forgot my middle name-crazy, but true. So, I took it a total of three times. Finally, came up with a decent score and started writing like a madwoman to every college in the Peterson’s guide that would accept my range of score.

Then, came all of the college visits and the dreams of being far from home on my own. I dreamed that if I got through high school then I must have learned all I needed to know because the rumors that had been passed on to me about college mostly revolved around partying. Truth of the matter is I ended up going to college and staying on campus at the College of Saint Rose in Albany which was a short ten minute drive into the city from the suburbs and just about two miles from my father’s office. Oh, how I dreaded the thought of actually seeing my parents while I was trying to have a good time, but they respected my space and college became the turning point in my views of how literacy really occurs. Dr. Maggie Kirwin finally put it all in perspective during a methods class in my sophomore year. I learned more that year than ever before. I had purpose for learning and the motivation to do it. I wanted to be the best teacher I could be and I desired to make learning as enjoyable and purposeful for every student I was preparing to teach. I finally found out that what I had experienced in my years up to that point were the two dominant philosophies of teaching. Those being the phonics and whole languge approaches to language acquisition. Phonics as I related earlier was my base and then during high school I was introduced to whole language-at least finally I realized the purpose for all that reading and writing. I vowed at that point to never let my students be in the dark of why they were doing what they were doing and to strive for every student to find enjoyment and success in their endeavors.

She also introduced me to the acutal theory based name for what my parents and teachers over the years had tried to instill in my education. It was the Self Fulfilling Prophecy. If you believe you can, then you will. It drives me to this day and I can only hope that every student I touch will believe this too.