Reflection+Letter

April 27, 2011 Dear Dr. McKool, This semester has been a treasure trove of ups and downs. This was the semester that I really had to take a look at whether or not education was the career path that I wanted to continue perusing. It was hard that I needed to tackle this situation so late in my college career. I am I the spring semester of my junior year, deciding education might not be the place for was would mean starting from scratch, extra years at school, and more loans. This weighed heavily on my shoulders for weeks, a better part of the semester. At one point, after a lesson that I know could have been better, and an assignment I was not happy with I broke down crying. I could see it in all my assignments; it was something that was affecting me in a major way. Avoiding my feelings about where I should be at this point for so long, I had no other option but to explore my thoughts and come to a conclusion.

I have always wanted to be a teacher. I use to joke I knew my calling before I was even born. The only time I ever entertained another career path was when I wanted to be just like my mother. Needless to say that phase lasted about a week, if that. I struggled with the idea that something I have wanted for so long was too far out of my reach. Even as I sit down and write this letter to you, I am choking back tears a little. Something I have always loved, always was so natural at, was becoming extremely difficult. My first lesson or two were not what I wanted them to be. My first math lesson could not have gone any worse. How could it have got so bad so quick for me? The pressure I was feeling from knowing that one wrong move could make a child hate reading, or put them behind developmentally was weighing down. Literacy in a child’s young years can affect so much of a child’s life. To teach incorrectly could ruin so much. I was not sure I was up for the challenge anymore. Walking to class everyday I was scared. Listening to the lecture meant hearing more things that made me feel pressured, more things I had to remember so I did not ruin a child’s chance at greatness. I would sit there wide-eyed and quiet soaking it in, and trying to sort in my brain, before leaving class with more pressure.

I then started to realize all the reasons I came into the world of education. I wanted to be that teacher that changed the lives of students, to make learning fun, and to give the students all the opportunities for greatness that I could. I also took a look at how I felt when I was actually in the classroom. I loved it. I thrived. I loved walking in and the kids saying good morning “Miss Lapointe, I missed you.” And after a while when my lessons became much better and I could see the success on the faces of the students and in their answers, I felt amazing! I taught them something and there weren’t just blank stares across the room. I even had a chat with a student teacher at Wicoff and Dr. Bulgar one day at lunch. She expressed to me that she thought the same thing, and she failed at lessons too. You learn from it and you grow from it and you keep trucking on. Dr. Bulgar added one of the most important pieces of information that really sticks with me. We are not surgeons where if they are off an eighth of an inch it could kill someone. We are teachers, we get redo’s. If we think something did not go right, we get a chance to go back and correct it the next day, a chance to try again. I then realized that I am in school to become a better teacher, to make my mistakes now and to learn how to be the best teacher I can be. This is my time to take in my mistakes and to reflect, (although you never stop reflecting, it is a sign of a great teacher) regroup and try again. My co-op was also very supportive of me, she saw that I was hard on myself and was always reminding me that this is my time to learn, this is why I am in school. I told myself this is where I belong and it will get easier with experience.

With this going on, I would like to reflect on a few of the things you have had the chance to teach me. I would never be able to write them all down, I may not be able to explain them with justice, but I would like the chance to try. I think the most important thing that was stressed to me this semester was the importance of reading in a young child’s life. Reading can offer a child the world. Even simple reading can have such a big affect on students. I remember the first day of class when you asked us if our parents read to us, and I was the only one standing on the side of the room for no. This had a major impact on me. Both my parents worked and at the time, lived paycheck to paycheck. The last thing they wanted to do when they came home was read something. This is an important thing to remember. Many children today have that same situation and do not get a rich reading experience at home. Because of this it is important to offer children as many opportunities throughout the school day to be able to read. To be able to read a book that is just right for them, and the opportunity to read an anything book just because they want to try, whether or not it is too hard or easy. With reading it is also important to teach children to comprehend. Do not just read the words on the page, but what did you just read, and did they understand it? (R & C, p. 154) Offering children strategies for compiling the information they learn while reading helps with comprehension, one example is graphic organizers (R & C, p. 170). It is also important for teachers to model these strategies so the children will know how to properly use them (R & C, p. 158) Children will never know how to correctly be able to comprehend to their fullest if they are never shown how to.

In order to achieve the best level for comprehension, students need to attain a certain level of fluency. Fluent readers can decode the words in the text correctly and effortlessly. They have correct volume, phrasing, intonation and a reasonable rapid rate, where essentially reading becomes automatic. When this occurs the reader is free to focus on the comprehension of the text, and not struggles on the decoding of the specific words. Fluency provides the gap between word recognition and reading comprehension (R & C, p. 65). We can do a very effective and quick assessment of a running record to help us see the students fluency, and we can take it one step further by asking questions that would elicit the level of comprehension.

Choosing the right book for students to read is essential. If you chose a book that is too hard for a student to read, it may turn them off to reading for the rest of their lives. Choosing a book that is too easy does not challenge them enough to become better. However it is important to remember that it is not a bad thing to read books that are two easy sometimes, as long as it is not all the time and students are exposed to just right books (Miller, p. 26) In my co-op classroom children get the opportunity once a week to go to the media center an pick out a book. This book is allowed to be any book they want. This is to encourage reading no matter what it is. This is very beneficial to my students. They always had their nose in a book.

Vocabulary learning is very important in a children’s life. To make reading the most effective it can be children need to learn vocabulary. Research shows students should learn about 8 to 10 new words a week, to learn them to their fullest potential. Teaching every unknown word in a book could take up to much time, and the large amount takes away from the success of each word (R & C, p. 117). You want children to spend the bulk of their time reading, not memorizing. Reading is a great way to learn vocabulary. Expose the children to books that will challenge their skills with harder vocabulary. A book that take that harder vocabulary and sets them in a rich sentence, with context clues the students can use those to figure out the meaning of the word (R & C, p. 115) However I learned this semester that many of the vocabulary words that kids use come from speaking. It is more common for students to in counter a word they do not know in talking, because they have more opportunities to be in conversations. So I have learned that when teaching it is important to offer students opportunities to talk, with adults and with peers.

As a teacher in training, I completely under estimated the power of read alouds. It still gives students the model of fluent reading and they can enjoy a story. In addition to these amazing benefits, I under estimated the many uses of a read aloud. There are so many mini lessons with so many possibilities that you can base off a book you just read (Chen, p. 36). During read alouds it is also important to know your book. A good teacher will know where, or mark where their predetermined stops in the books are (Chen, p. 34).

Also in the book Kidwatching by Owocki and Goodman, I really got to learn the benefits of how much you can learn just by observing the students. I also really think that the reproducibles in the back of the book are going to be very helpful one day. They really lie out and cover effect checklists and worksheets that I one day might need to create.

In Caulkins’ book for writing workshop, the chapter about conferences and their important was really helpful to me. Learning that conferences are important for the student was helpful because it was something that I had always written off. But I learned that it give the teacher the opportunity to be one on one with the student and teach them a strategy that maybe only that student needed help with (Caulkins, p. 63)

Overall this semester, I learned so much. It was a trying time for me but I think that I came out at the other end a lot more knowledgeable. I learned that like I need to keep working at things to become better. And practice makes perfect. I also learned that it takes years of experience to be just like the seasoned teachers I see everyday and at one point they were in my shoes too. I look forward to next semester in hopes that this is behind me and I can put one strong foot in front of the other as I go through out the semester. Sincerely, Michelle Lapointe