Read Aloud.

I think I’ve learned a lot this semester about educating young students, especially in developing their literacy. Of course, that’s not hard considering I knew absolutely nothing about emergent literacy before this class! It’s easy for me to say, “Yeah, that makes sense. It’s so obvious!” or “Teachers should do this and this, etc, etc, etc” because I haven’t been in a classroom, or in my case, a library. I’m thinking in ideals here. However, reading everyone else’s blogs has given my a sort of vicarious experience in teaching emergent literacy learners. I’m a literacy peeping Tom and these blogs are my window! (OK that was a little creepy, but anyways…). More on the community of learners later. I feel like this class has given be a basis for teaching and an understanding of emergent literacy that I wouldn’t have gotten if I wasn’t required to take this class : ) I’ll be able to take what I’ve learned and apply it in my library. As far as my evolution as a blogger is concerned, I don’t really know. I was never a blogger before, but I was an English major, so unfortunately I’m a little wordy. So maybe blogging doesn’t come as natural to me as say, a paper on homoeroticism in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (oh yeah, I went there in a paper), I think it is an amazing way to reflect on one’s learning and one’s practice. Blogging is a place where you can vent, brag, ask for help, or just reflect on the awesomeness of little kids, and there is a whole community of readers out there who is ready to listen (figuratively), advise, and agree. Even if I’m not the best blogger, I like how I can reflect on my learning, ask questions, and not have to worry whether that sentence was a run on is very liberating. Furthermore, people can comment on my ramblings, which I find very helpful since I don’t have a classroom/library of my own yet.

The best part about this blogging experience was being part of a community of learners and teachers. I think Blair put it best in her blog: “I had no idea how many contacts I would make, how much support I would receive, how much I would learn about others and how blogging would connect me to teachers all over the world… professional learning communities on a totally different, laid back, personal level.” Blogging is non-threatening. I feel like I can put a question out there, and someone, somewhere will have the answer. This particular blog connected with my classmates, but blogging in general connects me to people around the world! It’s nice reading about a teacher’s success story with a struggling student, and, let’s be honest, sometimes it’s just relieving to read about a teacher who has the same problems as you do. Misery loves company after all. Fortunately, there’s a whole world out there to help you out.

I’m just going to go point-by-point in this blog. I apologize if I ramble… : )

First of all, I loved the Anna Plan. I liked how it was based on early literacy research and formatted to be flexible and inclusive. Most of all, I thought it was very important that the reading teachers reserved a day to collaborate with teachers. Not only are the teachers involved during the week in the reading program, but they also have a specific, guaranteed time to meet with the reading teachers. This ensures that there will be a congruency between literacy instruction in the classroom and in the reading room. As we have discussed many times in class, congruency is very important, and I hadn’t thought about students being taught different methods in school. Also, this designated planning period is great because I think one of the reasons teachers don’t work together is because they don’t have time! The Friday planning period allowed the teachers to sit down and plan with a reading instructor while continuing to provide the students with literacy instruction. Everybody wins with the Anna Plan!

No Child Left Behind – I’m going to try really hard to not go on and on about how much I hate NCLB (or at least how it is implemented). First of all, I hate how the NRP defined reading as alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. Obviously, those three things are very important to literacy instruction, but, as Barone and Mallett write, that definition is incredibly limited. I think there were two main reasons why the NRP decided to define reading in such a restricted way. One, I’m going to bet that many of the politicians on the NRP were not educators. I can see how a person who was not trained as an educator, especially one not trained in how to teach reading, would see reading in such restrictive terms. Before I took education classes, I probably would have thought of reading in that way, but now I know there are many more important factors that influence how children learn to read. Two, alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension can be easily tested, and we all know how much NCLB emphasizes testing. It’s kinda hard to test for home experiences and exposure to print.

I think teachers are overwhelmed by the expectations that NCLB puts on them. They are trained to teach one way, yet are expected to generate results that do not utilize that training. With the threat of being fired hanging over their heads, it’s no wonder why so many teachers give up and teach to the test. I know when I was high school, we had to take the Standards of Learning tests (aka SOLs – shit out of luck, anyone?). Each year we would test in different subjects, and the teachers formed their lessons based on those SOL standards. Instead of teaching to their students’ needs or basing their lessons on state teaching standards (which are generally more inclusive and better designed that SOL standards), the teachers taught to the test. The exception was the year I took AP US history. 11th grade was the history SOL, but since we had a much more important test to focus on, my teacher never mentioned SOLs. Fortunately, AP tests require students to think critically about their knowledge and apply it in new ways rather than simply mark A, B, C, or D. So all year, I had been taught to think about history critically and to make connections and consider mulitple causes, and then they put the SOL in front of me. The SOL only required me to spout facts, and it conveniently provided me with multiple choice answers that were easily handled. However, I was initially shocked by the simplicity and shallowness of the SOL tests, and then I probably finished it in 20 minutes.

Finally, I just want to say that teachers don’t have to teach to the test to have their students be successful on the NCLB mandated tests. In fact, I bet the schools that don’t teach to the test have the best chances of fulfilling that ridiculous NCLB requirement of improving upon scores every year (hello! each year has different students, it’s not fair to compare them!!!). Programs like the Anna Plan help struggling students become confident, competent readers that will carry on from year to year. Those students will be able to build on their skills and improve every year. However, those poor struggling students who have phonics and comprehension rammed down their throats aren’t going to be as confident or as competent as their Anna Plan peers. Those kids are more likely to forget their memorized skills over summer break, which means teachers have to start over the next year; and, let’s face it, most teachers don’t take the time to find out what their students remember.  Literacy instruction is about so much more than test scores, and I hope someone in the government figures that out soon.

In the video we watched for class, the workshop leader said that never once in her children’s education did their teachers ask her about her children. I think parents and teachers are very similar. Neither one likes for an outsider to tell them how to raise or teach their children. A parent would probably be offended if their kid’s teacher told them they should probably read *this* kind of book to their kid and maybe give them carrot sticks instead of jelly beans for snack time. Likewise, a teacher might be offended it a parent said, “Look, I don’t think you’re teaching my child the right way. They learn better this way…” But I think it’s very important for parents and teachers to communicate. Parents know their children in the home setting: how they interact with family members, pets, and friend, how they deal with emotions, and what they learn. Teachers know their students in the school setting: how they interact with teachers, students, and other authority figures, how they deal with emotions, and what they learn in school. By combining this dual-knowledge, I think teachers and parents can take a more powerful and effective role in their children’s/students’ education, both at home and in school.

The connection between home and school is one that we have discussed many times (often heatedly!) in class, so I thought it was helpful to read articles directly looking at the relationship between home and school literacy practices.

I found Orellana, Monkman, and MacGillivray’s article fascinating. It was really interesting, and really informative, to see the ways parents and teachers described literary success. I thought it was ironic that the article pointed out that its studies disproved the claim that most immigrant families live in a present-minded context (6). Certainly, immigrant families like the ones participating in the study have to focus a lot of attention to the present. So much of their lives revolves around when/where they can work, how long they have to work, and when/how/if they and their children will eat. Those things are certainly worries of the present, but like the article says, immigrant families didn’t really focus on those kind of problems when they talked about their children. Instead, they hoped that their children would take advantage of greater economic, social, and educational opportunities while still retaining their humanity in the future. Immigrant families seemed to want their children to become well-rounded, responsible citizens, which I think is very similar to what white, middle class parents expect of their children.

I also thought it was interesting how the teachers viewed the immigrant children in contrast to what the parents believed. Although the teachers were very compassionate and didn’t use deficit language, I don’t think they gave their students the benefit of the doubt. I’m possibly being a little hard on the teachers here, but I think they focused so much on the challenges the students faced instead of how those challenges could be beneficial to both their social and educational experiences. Instead of taking advantage of the different experiences the students brought, the teachers seemed to overgeneralize their struggles and just feel bad for them. I think that the teachers were content with their sympathetic assumptions about how their immigrant students lived and how their parents viewed educational success without making the effort (like this study did) to actually talk to the parents in order to understand their lives and their expectations.

As for the Duke and Purcell-Gates article, I thought the most informative part was at the very end, where they gave examples of how teachers incorporated home literacy genres into their school literacy teachings. I especially liked the play centers (I think two classrooms used them) that allowed children to play act situations that they would encounter in their home life, like playing house, going to the store/restaurant, or going to the doctor. Those learning centers made sure to incorporate literacy materials, like blank paper, calendars, telephone books, magazines, recipes, etc that allowed the children to play but also forced them to use literacy in their playing. I that incorporating everyday, real-life situations like grocery shopping or cooking dinner into school learning is really beneficial in many ways. Not only are the children making connections between home literacy and school literacy, but they are learning other valuable lessons like math (measurements in recipes, budgets for shopping, etc), how to use useful items like phone books and calendars, and how to be responsible adults in the future. Maybe those teachers who were so worried about the challenges that their immigrant students faced would benefit from making these real-life connections between home and school. If the teachers took the time to get some information from the parents, then they could incorporate it into their schooling, which would teach the children how to take advantage of the literacy experiences they have in life.

I enjoyed Gillander’s case study of Sarah’s prek classroom. I was impressed by how much effort Sarah put into connecting to her ELL students. Building a good, trusting relationship with all of her students, despite language barriers, was very important to Sarah, and I think she provides an excellent example for English-speaking teachers with Spanish-speaking students. Sarah really took the initiative with her professional development. She attended Spanish classes, checked out books and tapes, and incorporated bilingual materials into her classroom. Because she was trying to learn a new language, she got to experience how difficult and stressful it was for her ELL students to be in an English-speaking classroom. I think that Sarah’s ability to empathize with her Spanish-speaking students was invaluable, and I think more teachers would be able to effectively work with their ELL kids if they could understand what the students were going through. I also liked how Sarah’s efforts helped the ELL children gain social status in the classroom. Because they could do something the English-speaking students couldn’t, the ELL kids became interesting and cool, and everyone wants to hang out with the cool kids right?! Most importantly, I think Sarah created a learning environment where the ELL students were appreciated, nurtured, and encouraged. I’m working with an Ell students on my kidwatching project, and one day I dredged up my memories of high school Spanish. Just my saying, “My name is Megan” and asking “how are you?” in Spanish really excited my kid. We had our best session that day because she was attentive and eager, and she got a huge kick out of teaching me something, like the Spanish word for “cake.” You don’t have to be fluent in Spanish to teach Spanish-speaking kids; in fact, sometimes allowing your ELL students to teach *you* something can give them enough of a confidence boost to really foster a desire to learn.

I wonder, and some of you teachers may be able to answer this for me, how many opportunities North Carolina provides for teachers to take professional development classes in other languages? I mean, teachers and librarians have to take classes every few years to keep them up-to-date on technology and emerging problems and methods, so why not throw in some language classes? Sarah went out and found her own Spanish class, but what if there was a class specifically aimed at teaching teachers Spanish? I mean, teachers don’t need to know how to conjugate irregular verbs or read Don Quixote in Spanish, but they should know some basic grammar and vocabulary. Even such basic knowledge might help them understand why Spanish-speaking students are making spelling and phonological mistakes (like using “ll” for the English /y/). I know UNC and other education programs offer classes on teaching ELL kids, and I think that teachers should really consider taking them.