Effective teachers are not only leaders, but are also passionate, challenging, and positive. They understand middle school students and establish a safe and welcoming learning environment. Learning to be a leader is a life-long learning process, which I have begun, thanks to strong teachers and leadership seminars. When it comes to passion, I could gush about literature, language, and writing for eons, but I need to discover how to instill passion in my students. To understand middle school students, I will continue to spend time with them and will learn facts about eleven- to fourteen-year-olds through Mid-Level Literacy and Pedagogy. In regard to attitude, I must remind myself to have confidence, watch my sarcasm, and think of every day as a good day. In addition to having a positive attitude, I will learn to create a safe learning environment through experience.
Effective teachers need to meet the goals for mid-level ELA students, which are to learn to become independent readers and writers and to make connections between their individual lives and their academic coursework. In When Kids Can't Read, Kylene Beers describes how an "independent" reader is a person who can struggle with a text and make sense of it (15). By contrast, a dependent reader is someone who depends on an outside source to tell her what to do or even relies on another to read for her (16). Although students in both middle and high schools should strive to be independent readers, mid-level students should focus on becoming readers, while high schoolers are generally pushed farther up the pyramid of Bloom's Taxonomy and are engaged in a different kind of rigorous reading.
Another important goal for students is to be able to make connections and have "aha" moments in regard to school content and their personal lives. Students learn when they can make connections and see the relevancy of literature and language arts.
Based on the important goals for mid-level students, there are two goals I am setting for myself for this education course:
1) I will learn how to teach reading and will improve a student's reading abilities.
2) I will continue to build on being a life-long learner. By studying and interacting with middle schoolers, I will be able to learn ways to challenge and connect the content I am learning to their lives.
As a future teacher, I will strive to be a leader to my students and lead them to be passionate readers and learners. Leadership and teaching are so intimately connected that the OED should add a footnote underneath "leadership," which says, "See also: teaching, n."
If a teacher is not a leader, then the students are likely to become lost. Kylene Beers described her first years as a teacher, where she did what appeared to me to be a horrible job at teaching. A leader takes initiative, and when a strategy does not work, a teacher switches to another strategy. Some of Beers' students were not reading, and instead of finding a solution to the problem, Beers just kept treating the non-reading (or more accurately, non comprehending students) students as if they could read (comprehend.)
ReplyDeleteI agree that a leader takes initiative and adapts to failing strategies. Although Beers may not have pursued many alternative reading techniques her first year, at least she continued to try and not give up. Leaders do not quit.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you hope to, "be a leader to my students and lead them to be passionate readers and learners." As you described yourself as an avid reader who hopes to continue lifelong learning, you will go beyond simple leadership into leading by example. Do you plan to use this as part to help encourage reading and learning? Or do you think that could become a detriment to helping students who lack reading skills or interest in reading?
ReplyDeleteNicely staed everyone. A teacher is a leader and must be willing to put the time and effort to make school better for your students. I can resonate with this topic fairly well because not only do you want to lead, but you want to lead by example because students look at you as role models. As I go forward into my education, I look forward to be an effective leader, which in turn means I am also an effective teacher.
ReplyDeleteJennifer, because I love reading, I will exemplify characteristics of being a good reader in my classroom. I want students to share my love of reading, so I will do all I can to help dependent readers become independent readers. I won't discount students who are less than enthusiastic about reading. Besides, those students are the ones I'm excited for.
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