“ What I believe about literacy learning and how I came to believe it.”

I came to love reading and writing at a very young age. When I was young I was always outside playing like any other normal child, but as soon as it would become dark or chilly I would be in the house with a book in my hand in my favorite corner. My parents always encouraged me to read because it would help increase my knowledge about the world around me and it would help me use my imagination more than a TV would ever do. My brother and I were always at home because our parents were always working and since we were not allowed to leave the house while they weren’t there, we would pick up a book because we were easily bored with the TV.

My brother, while in 1st grade was also classified as dyslexic. My brother was always having problems reading and was easily frustrated when it came to reading. He would give up on a whim when it came to reading at school. While in school, he had an excellent reading teacher who followed him to middle school as an after school job. His frustrations helped me realize that I wanted to be able to help children to learn how to read whether they had problems or not. His reading teacher showed me the dedication and willingness to help a child succeed and feel good about himself and his reading. I always knew that I wanted to be an educator, but I was inspired by her to become more than just an educator.

After middle school, I did my best to help him out as much as possible to succeed in school. In high school, he had many problems in his classes and was not receiving any services or extra help after school and my parents were also at work all the time. My father, which whom we lived with, had to be transferred to Charlotte during the middle of my senior year and his freshmen year. We decided to be responsible and stay at the house. This is when my brother needed me to help him most. I think he survived because not only did we support each other, but he had someone who believed in him. My brother graduated, not with the highest marks, but with a feeling of completion and successfulness.

I have always believed the saying that all children can learn to read. All children can learn to read, but it is the job of the teacher to find out which way the child learns best so that we can accommodate their needs to make them feel successful. All children can learn if given the opportunity to show their full potential and learn at the best of their ability. Children do not learn at the same rate or the same way. What works with one child may not work with another child. As educators, we must not push any child into reading, but develop a child’s sense of love for reading, so that the reading process can be as natural as eating lunch or taking a bath.

This is my third year of teaching in a low academic performing school. I must say that under the circumstances of the school that I love to be there with those children. They need someone who is going to be at the school and wants to teach them how to read, write, do math, and other subject areas, not someone there for a pay check. Those children need a person who is dedicated to come to school everyday to teach the ways we read, what to do when they come to a word they don’t know, and etc. I have loved every minute in my classroom because everyday is a new learning experience. Remembering the experiences that my brother had with reading it made me think and remember that I wanted the transition of these second grade students from emergent readers to independent readers to be as smooth as possible.

One experience that was an eye opener to me was last year after we came back from our Christmas vacation. While in my reading group of my middle readers who were not yet on grade level, one of my children just took off. I chose a book that I thought we would really have to work through. I thought this might provide a challenge to most of them, but yet still provide them with the correct reading level and interest level that was needed. One of my little boys who had come to my class very low at the beginning was making a slow yet, smooth transition from an early emergent reader to an emergent reader. In this group, we were taking our picturewalk through the book and without reading the story first or even taking a picturewalk, he looked at the text and started to read very fluently. My eyes looked at him and welded up with tears. I could say nothing to him, but what a great reader he was becoming and how proud of him I was of reading those two pages by himself. The words just flowed from his mouth so natural and that is how he read the entire book. After that, his reading did nothing but improve and when he left second grade, he was on grade level. I was so inspired by his new growth that I made sure that every guided reading lesson was excellent because I wanted to make sure that all of my low readers were going to be successful and feel the same way he did that day. I don’t take all of the credit for his growth because I know the Title 1 teacher and his mom worked very hard with him and we were always getting together discussing strategies and improvements. I think it was the dedication of all three people working together that helped this child become successful. He is still making excellent progress in third grade.

On that note I am a strong advocate for parents participating in their child’s education. It is a must for a parent to be involved in school with their child to make sure not only that the child is doing what they are suppose to be doing, but the teacher and staff are available and accommodating the child in the best way possible. To build a strong foundation for a child to become a better student in school starts at home. Children should be read to at home and be provided with enough material to be able to look at print so that when they enter school this isn’t a new thing to them. It will provide them with enough exposure to get started successfully. If children do not have books at home or aren’t being read to at home, this hurts them when they start school and they are starting at a disadvantage than other children whose parents have already exposed them to these materials. We as educators, teachers and parents, need to set the child up for success and not failure and doing everything in our power to make sure that this happens. For example, at our school a lot of the children that enter our school in Kindergarten have had no exposure to books or print of any kind. They come to school not being read to because of the lack of books at home or not even knowing how to hold a book. These children are already behind other children who have had books at home. This has even carried up to the grade I teach (2nd grade). I still have parents who do not have books at home and when books are sent home , they are not taken care of or lost. We must work together when it comes to teaching children how important it is to learn and know how to read. Everyone must be able to read to succeed.

As for writing, this subject was something I have always loved to do, but I was never very successful with. Even though I tried my best, I was not getting the best grade. I always felt like a failure or became very embarrassed when it came to writing. In school I was always taught the correct way to form sentences, but I was never taught the writing process or how to put a paragraph together. I kind of taught my self later on down the road, but it was very difficult when it came to writing reports or term papers, even in college. I am always very nervous when we had to take the North Carolina Writing Tests, in 4th, 7th, and 10th grade. I always passed these, but was always disappointed because it was never the score that I thought I should have gotten. I vowed to myself that when I began to teach writing in my classroom that I would teach them how to write, not just sentences but how to put it all together.

My first year of teaching was rather difficult when it came to teaching writing. There was no set guide lines or ways they wanted writing to be taught. I was always a little bit nervous because I didn’t want these children to become frustrated with it like I always became. I taught my children following the Standard Course of Study, but always had it in the back of my mind that I was not doing something right. Last year we received training from a program called Write From the Beginning. I was very excited about teaching writing after being trained by this. My children excelled in writing and became some of the best second grade writers last year. This program started you off by learning simple techniques on how to teach brainstorming with these maps which I think children need before being able to write. This helps them be able to collect their thoughts and put them down on paper even before they start to actually write their paragraphs. After that we taught them how to use their maps to turn their thoughts into sentences and then into paragraphs. Our children’s writing at our school as a whole last year was great. I can even see with my kids this year the transition was much smoother than it was when we first started using this program. Children are ready to write instead of moaning and groaning about it. How exciting!!

This would bring up another important point that brought me around to my love for reading and writing and the importance of it in the school. While attending worthwhile workshops and other training sessions, I gained a greater knowledge about how to teach the subjects and how to better get and keep the child’s attention and interest so that I can be an effective teacher. It is so important that teachers keep up to date with the new methods and technologies of teaching subjects like writing and reading. Workshops have truly enhanced a lot of my teaching and given me ideas that I use in my classroom, taught me other strategies to use with my struggling readers, and etc. It is also important that things we learn in our workshops can be transmitted through to the parents. I have used things from workshops to train some of my parents on how to do things at home. I learned some strategies from the Southern Reading Conference last year and a class that I took last semester and these strategies were then shown and demonstrated to my parents during conferences at school. I could see the children coming in and modeling and showing me what they were learning from their parents. It was very inspiring to see the children coming in and showing others who weren’t doing this at home.

My love for reading and writing has grown over the years because of not only its importance in society and the fact that you can’t be with out, but for the reason that it opens up communication lines between people and it makes the children think and use their imaginations. Without showing my parents what strategies they could be using at home with their children, some of them would still be looking for ways to help their children. My children have also learned how to pick up a book and read instead of always picking up the video games or turning on the TV, not saying that they always do this. Reading and writing has also helped them develop a sense of communication so that they can write notes and stories and express themselves freely and understandably. I have helped develop and install a love for learning reading and writing, which has helped make my love for these areas greater.