“YOU READ TO ME, I’LL READ TO YOU!”
All my children screaming that sentence together reflect my ideal format for literacy development. My literate experience, with English as a Second Language, was unconventional; and, it somewhat mirrored the children’s book, You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, by Mary Ann Hoberman. (Hoberman & Emberley, 2001) When you flip through the book, you can’t miss the colors accenting how the author wants her readers to interact with each other, the method that helped me read, write, and speak in school. When I asked my parents to share stories, they humbly explained that they couldn’t assist with my literacy advancement. As Haitian and Jamaican citizens, they told me that I learned from my teachers and by my intellect, though they are a magnificent support system, always praising my efforts for high achievement.
However, one story makes me smile when I hear it. At three years of age, I started day care with no knowledge of the English language; and thankfully, the school was welcoming and paired me with an English-speaking child. After months, the teacher prompted the class to start the morning routine. I raised my hand and uttered, "Teacher, me. Sing," and as a director, I led the class in our morning schedule by singing “God Bless America.” My educator beamed with joy when my mother picked me up, and that was a significant turning point in my life. As noted in Literate Lives, our ideologies shape who we are and how we perceive the world. …show more content…
(Flint, 2008, p. 5) Despite that my childhood story isn 't reflective of real reading, it demonstrates how social interaction impacts learning. I believe other children can benefit from learning from one another, as I benefited from another child. Yes, it’s great to send the struggling readers to the specialist, but how about pairing the children for 15 minutes with an on-level or beyond-level peer, and then spending the rest of the time with the specialist? Also, why not use the inquiry model to gauge the students’ imaginations by allowing them to write their own decoder books, splitting the class into teams like Hoberman splits her readers? With an unusual literacy journey, my “focused mindfulness” is vast, including a hodgepodge of skills and hobbies that can work together, which I never experienced as a child. (Flint, 2008, p. 21) For instance, I would love to write test cases, as Software Engineers do and childproof components of the test case system (pass, fail, functional, regression, integration) for phonemic awareness exercises. It’s meaningful to see how I can join multimodal literacies in the classroom to build upon my love of education and technology, such as developing a mobile app, like Theo & Izzy the Word Seekers, an app now progressing for release in April 2017. (Flint, 2008, p. 17) I can’t imagine the excitement children would feel to create their own class mascots, oversee the process of working with an illustrator, and celebrate a published work. Conversely, my greatest concern is that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) theoretically stifles a teacher’s innovation. As the “federal legislation to improve the state of education,” NCLB underpins the industrial model of schooling that defined my upbringing, the standardized approach to unify learning, rather than diversify it. (Flint, 2008, p. 7) Since I did not have the typical experience of getting
All my children screaming that sentence together reflect my ideal format for literacy development. My literate experience, with English as a Second Language, was unconventional; and, it somewhat mirrored the children’s book, You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, by Mary Ann Hoberman. (Hoberman & Emberley, 2001) When you flip through the book, you can’t miss the colors accenting how the author wants her readers to interact with each other, the method that helped me read, write, and speak in school. When I asked my parents to share stories, they humbly explained that they couldn’t assist with my literacy advancement. As Haitian and Jamaican citizens, they told me that I learned from my teachers and by my intellect, though they are a magnificent support system, always praising my efforts for high achievement.
However, one story makes me smile when I hear it. At three years of age, I started day care with no knowledge of the English language; and thankfully, the school was welcoming and paired me with an English-speaking child. After months, the teacher prompted the class to start the morning routine. I raised my hand and uttered, "Teacher, me. Sing," and as a director, I led the class in our morning schedule by singing “God Bless America.” My educator beamed with joy when my mother picked me up, and that was a significant turning point in my life. As noted in Literate Lives, our ideologies shape who we are and how we perceive the world. …show more content…
(Flint, 2008, p. 5) Despite that my childhood story isn 't reflective of real reading, it demonstrates how social interaction impacts learning. I believe other children can benefit from learning from one another, as I benefited from another child. Yes, it’s great to send the struggling readers to the specialist, but how about pairing the children for 15 minutes with an on-level or beyond-level peer, and then spending the rest of the time with the specialist? Also, why not use the inquiry model to gauge the students’ imaginations by allowing them to write their own decoder books, splitting the class into teams like Hoberman splits her readers? With an unusual literacy journey, my “focused mindfulness” is vast, including a hodgepodge of skills and hobbies that can work together, which I never experienced as a child. (Flint, 2008, p. 21) For instance, I would love to write test cases, as Software Engineers do and childproof components of the test case system (pass, fail, functional, regression, integration) for phonemic awareness exercises. It’s meaningful to see how I can join multimodal literacies in the classroom to build upon my love of education and technology, such as developing a mobile app, like Theo & Izzy the Word Seekers, an app now progressing for release in April 2017. (Flint, 2008, p. 17) I can’t imagine the excitement children would feel to create their own class mascots, oversee the process of working with an illustrator, and celebrate a published work. Conversely, my greatest concern is that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) theoretically stifles a teacher’s innovation. As the “federal legislation to improve the state of education,” NCLB underpins the industrial model of schooling that defined my upbringing, the standardized approach to unify learning, rather than diversify it. (Flint, 2008, p. 7) Since I did not have the typical experience of getting