Literacy Teaching and Teacher Education



CTL 3028 Literacy in Elementary EducationFinal ProductDue Date: Thursday April 2, 2015By: Jason Gregor 995318703Professor: Dr. Clare KosnikTable of ContentsPreface3Why is Literacy so Important?4My Literacy Story5PrefaceDear Clare,When I sat down to write this final product, I thought that I would write a couple blog posts discussing my literacy experiences and how my outlook on literacy has changed, especially over the last two semesters. As I sat and wrote though, the metaphorical flood gates opened and my original goal of a few 200 word blog posts turned into a 10 page story. So rather than try to cut down what I had written to fit my original idea, I instead decided to write a sort of autobiography about my literacy experiences. I felt that this assignment allowed me to do so in a way that I had never previously thought to or was allowed to.As a result of these floodgates opening, what you are about to read is a two part product. The first section is a blog post. It is a stand-alone piece, but I thought that it goes really nicely with my story. The second part of this product is the actual story. It is long, but I felt that there was a lot that I had to share and through the writing process I feel that I got a good amount out and down on paper and I was also amazed at what I actually wrote.Lastly, Clare, I want to thank you. I’ve been told, never experienced it, that every teacher has that one teacher that really changed them. I recently was sitting and probably eating when I thought about this, but I did not feel that I had that experience growing up. I had many great teachers, but no one teacher really inspired me to go into education. That was reserved for my grandfather. I just didn’t think that I would have that special teacher. That is until I took your courses and I met you. You are that teacher for me that has really inspired me and made me know that I can do this. I hope you know what I am talking about. Thank you for taking the time to help me through everything and give me lots of guidance for my next steps.I know I will have said this to you in person, but writing it makes it more official somehow. You’ll be able to hold me to it! You know you can’t retire for a while…because if/when I work on my PhD. I’d like for you to supervise me please. So you need to give me a few years to get me act together, get some experience, get my personal life in order, and then I’m coming back. Hopefully.I think it goes without saying this, but I really enjoyed your classes and I feel very lucky that I came across them when I was choosing courses last year. Thank you again for everything that you have done for me, which may be more than you will ever know and I hope you enjoy this. I know that I did when I was writing it.Thank you more than I can say,Why literacy is so importantI never truly understood the hype around literacy. It seemed to be the biggest thing in the education system. As someone who did not like English very much and was much more focused on science, I felt that it kind of got all the limelight. Now however, I realize that I was wrong. I was dead wrong. While recently working on my final project of graduate school (I’m done much to my chagrin!) I took the opportunity to reflect on my experiences with literacy and how they have shaped the way that I viewed it (in a much skewed way). Thanks to Dr. Clare Kosnik and the two classes I took with her though, I have found that I was very wrong. Literacy is the most important area for education. Without literacy, you’ve got nothing! For this reason, I have become much more engaged with literacy education and feel very strongly towards it. Sure science is important, but without literacy, well, you wouldn’t be reading this right now! So, moral of the story, even the most disengaged, no matter what level they are at, be it student or teacher, can be motivated to re-engage with literacy. It’s never too late. Take it from me, I’ve been there.My Literacy StoryNot often in graduate school can you be truly selfish when it comes to your writing. Sure you can take courses that interest you and you can write papers on topics that you think are interesting, but very rarely, at least in my mind, can you be totally and completely selfish. What do I mean by this? Normally a professor will give an assignment and you will be able to choose a topic of interest that falls within the parameters of this assignment. You could also be completing research and the topic you are researching will be of interest to you. Through writing your paper or researching your topic, you will learn more about the topic and continue to expand your interest in it as well. What I am talking about is writing or learning about the most interesting thing around, which also just happens to be the most selfish thing too: Yourself! Now, I know what you are thinking: that just about makes me the most selfish person around, but really, I’m not. I think about others and do things for others all the time. I’m a very giving person and love helping everyone and anyone better themselves and develop their skills and knowledge; after all, I am an educator. The thing is, while I was trying to figure out what interesting topic I could discuss for this final project, my last final project in the last course of my graduate studies for my masters of education degree, I could not think of a better topic to discuss or one that interested me more than myself. What I mean is that my experiences in literacy from my past, my present, and my future, are absolutely fascinating. So please let me indulge myself as I take you on a journey, my journey, through literacy: what literacy means to me and how literacy has drastically changed for me over the last two years. Sit back, relax, and please, enjoy!Just about two years ago almost exactly to the month, after sitting at home not doing very much since leaving the faculty of education, I decided to put everything together for the application package that I would send to OISE. After researching a few masters of education programs, I had found this masters of education program the year before and had instantly wanted to attend. After having a rough go at it with not getting any work teaching the first year out of school, I decided now would be a great time to once again put on my student cap and learn some more. So, with everything in order, I sent in my application package and hoped for the best. I really was looking forward to the opportunity to take on this next level of education and to continue educating myself so that I could become a better teacher. Lucky for me, I was offered a spot in the program and in September 2013, I started on a life journey that would see me become totally disengaged from teaching, but not learning though, and then do an about-face and totally get re-engaged with teaching. Let me explain.My teaching qualifications lie within I/S Chemistry and General Science and I also have my Junior Qualifications. My goal was to be the best chemistry teacher ever! So were the thoughts of this green, right out of teachers college, newly minted teacher. I thought I could take on the world. But I was very wrong. In September of 2013, I started teaching too and unfortunately for me, had a terrible experience, quit two months into the school year and swore I’d never step foot back into a classroom. Now, you are probably wondering, what does this have to do with literacy? Well, I’m getting there.Prior to starting graduate school, literacy only stretched so far for me as to what it had to do with science education. Science literacy was my game. I wanted students to be able to pick up a piece of science literature and decipher exactly what was written. I wanted my students to be literate in the ways of science. Why was my vision so tunneled? Because I hated…HATED…English. That’s what literacy was called when I was in school (now I sound really old). For as long as I can remember, I disliked English and all its studies with a passion. I was so excited for university because guess what? I did not have to take English. Science for me, all the way! I had so many negative experiences throughout elementary and secondary school that my outlook on literacy, though I was quite literate, was not the most positive.My mom taught me to read. I give her a lot of credit because I was not the easiest kid to deal with. She would painstakingly spend hours with me, teaching me phonics so that I would be able to pick up just about anything and read it. I credit her with giving me the tools that have helped me get to where I am today. My first real literacy experience that I think started to shape my view of literacy happened in grade 1. We had word walls. These word walls were lists of words that were taped up on the wall and when we felt comfortable with the words, we had to recite them for the teacher. If we did not get through the word wall, we had to practice more, recite them again, and then when finally accomplished, move on to the next level. Needless to say, for a boy who learned to read phonetically, this did not go so well, and was quite discouraging. I persevered though and my mom was there through it all encouraging me along and getting me to where I needed to be. I even saw a tutor twice a week before camp for an entire summer at the end of grade 1. Grade 2, 3, and 4 were alright. I do not remember much from those grades other than my grade 4 teacher really pushed me and one of my biggest years of growth happened in grade 4. The next big literacy moment came for me starting in grade 5: the novel study. How I hated the novel study. I never quite understood the purpose of it and I never wrote them very well. Of course teachers love to use these in elementary school, so I was stuck writing five page summaries of books for the next few years. My grade 6 year was the first year of the grade 6 testing; that didn’t go so well for me. Then came more novel studies in grade 7 and 8, useless pieces of writing gibberish, and finally high school.In high school I think I actually learned how to write an essay or at least a good 2-3 page 5 paragraph essay. But I cringed through every class. Shakespeare I did not understand. Not one word of it I can proudly say (on a side note, it was years later at Stratford watching the Taming of the Shrew that I came to appreciate Shakespeare just a little bit more). We did a whole bunch of other stuff, essay analysis, some more novel studies, but overall, I didn’t have the fine appreciation for English. Do not even get me started on the grade 10 literacy test. Science on the other hand, I loved. So naturally, when it came time to explore university and the multitude of options that were available for me to study, science was the way I went; chemistry to be exact. It also provided me with an escape from English.When I started writing in university, this is where I learned quite a bit. Actually, it’s where Part I of where Jason learned how to write took place. Somehow, writing a lab report was much more enjoyable for me than writing any other piece of work. In second year, I had lab courses that had me writing a lab report every week, sometimes two in one week. It was heaven. I spent time with one of my TAs and she really helped me set up and organize what a lab report should look like. From her guidance, my style for writing lab reports remained the same for the next four years. If I had to write a lab report today, it would be written in the same style as they were in university. I did not read too much academic work at this point. Mostly just books from a variety of genres that interested me, especially when I wasn’t studying for school, so my writing was still not the greatest, but it improved every year.In third year, I took my first of four anthropology courses, focusing mainly on archaeology and ancient civilizations. I started reading more academic works, textbooks, some papers, and I also realized at some point, that the ideas behind the 5 paragraph essay were not so bad after all. There was no way that I could practically write a 5-8 page paper using only 5 paragraphs, but the strategies behind it were genius. Even though I was extremely nervous about taking courses that involved more reading and writing (who was I kidding, I was writing 20 page lab reports in second year! Piece of cake!) I think taking these liberal art courses really helped me. There was a life outside science, and I was slowly seeing that. But more importantly, it changed my literacy. I began to write differently and better. Since I was reading more, especially non-science content, I started to write differently than I did when writing lab reports.In my final year of undergraduate study, I took a writing course which really helped. The professor, a social scientist, gave me another perspective to think about when I sat down to write. While taking this course, literacy became a journey. I sat down in front of my laptop, or a stack of lined paper (I wrote a few major papers by hand first while taking the anthropology courses) and just watched where my writing would take me. That has been something, a kind of mantra, I have adopted when I sit down and write.My final year of undergraduate study also saw me preparing for teachers college and working in a research lab, completing my own research, reading academic chemistry journals, and finally writing a 35 page thesis paper. I presented my findings at an undergraduate chemistry conference, placed first in my category at the conference, and then defended my thesis in front of a panel of four professors. At the time, I thought this was the pinnacle of my literacy career. For me it was a marvel that not only could I write so much, but I felt that I wrote in a very professional and scientific way. Looking back now, my thesis proved to be the culmination of everything that I had learned up until then. Fortunately for me though, it was not to be the end.Teachers college came and went. Since I was not in any English specific courses, or literacy courses, I was not exposed to too much of this once again, much to my relief still. Looking back now, this was unfortunate and to some extent to my detriment, but since I did not plan on teaching grades 1-8 at the time, I was okay with this. This decision still played a role in getting me to where I am on my journey today. Almost every week, we attended professional development days on Friday. On one or two of these P.D. days, there may have been a session on literacy, but I did not attend them. From what I remember, there were no large group literacy sessions at all. Then, I graduated, became a teacher, and nothing happened!I took a few AQ courses while I was not working and tutored science and chemistry, but not much else of anything happened. Then, I was accepted to OISE for the Fall of 2013 to start work on my masters of education. Life was getting interesting again. Shortly thereafter, I received phone call for an interview at a private school, then the job offer came, and I thought my life was off to the races. How wrong I was.Luckily for me though, I was at OISE when everything came falling down. Through conversations with my fellow teachers, which I was heavily embarrassed to discuss very much with, and what I was learning in the courses I was taking, I still had something to focus on, which helped me move forward after the great disappointment I had. Even though I had set my mind to not ever step foot back in a classroom again, I was enjoying my studies too much to let that go. One of the first courses I took in-class at OISE was a course with Mary Kooy. I was very lucky to meet her and she really inspired me to start questioning my decision about moving away from teaching. It was in her class that I started thinking about trying teaching again. At the time, I was not ready to head back to the classroom, but she made me think about and really open my eyes to what had happened in my story and where I could go moving forward. Through last summer, I was mentored by some very good friends and educators and finally, by the end of the summer I figured out that I’m not going down without a fight and that maybe high school wasn’t for me. I don’t tend to give up so easily. So, I set my sights on elementary school. Around this time the 8 letter word that everyone loves so much started creeping back on to my radar (L-I-T-E-R-A-C-Y).Last fall, which was the Fall of 2014, I met the individual who singlehandedly has been the greatest inspirational push for me. That lady is Dr. Clare Kosnik. I had happened to stumble across her course, CTL 1817 Current Issues in Teacher Education, and without hesitation I signed up for it. I was really interested in the course. I had no idea who Clare was (sorry Clare) but the course seemed fascinating. Needless to say, I was not disappointed and I, Bill Nye the Science Guy (not really, but I wish) was thrown, mercilessly into the world that I despised and didn’t want anything to do with: Literacy. But, it opened my eyes. Clare’s course, in conjunction with another course I took with Mary, really opened my eyes and mind to what was out there and how truly important literacy was. Sure, I came at literacy with science screaming everywhere, but now I saw that without it, there was no science.So, I was converted. I could finally see what the great push for better literacy really meant. I also started to reflect on my literacy as well. At one point in her course, Clare said that it was not until she went to graduate school that she actually learned how to write. Upon reflection, I have to agree with her one hundred percent. It was not until I started reading articles almost nonstop and writing more than I had in my life that I believe I actually developed into the decent writer that I am today. That Clare, she really knows what she’s talking about!And so, sitting and putting this final product together, I have come full circle. My literacy is at a level it has previously never been. I definitely read differently now. I am much more aware that there are subtle nuances in literature and I do my best to try and pick up on a few here and there. I also find myself preparing for when I have a classroom full of students and I have to teach them literacy. In my current job as an Educational Assistant, I spend a lot of time watching teachers teach and picking up ideas of what I can do when I finally have my own classroom. I do not know everything and I never will, but I will also never stop learning. There is so much to literacy that I look forward to sharing with my students as well as what they and my colleagues can share with me.Looking back at the writing that I did while I was in high school and university, I know that with every report that I wrote, every paper that I handed in, I became a better writer. Truthfully though, I do not think that it was until I started reading academic journals and then writing papers for this masters of education that my writing really matured. The quality of writing that I can produce now is so much better than it was before I started this program. I think the main reason for this is the fact that I read a lot, especially when I am in school. By reading different works completed by academics, I find that I mirror the type of writing that I see. I also think that by having discussions in classes and online, seeing what other people think and how they express themselves, has provided me with insight on how to shift my writing. I pick up as much as I can from reading other people’s work as well from what they have to say. Putting this all together, I have produced essays on topics that I find interesting by providing lots of information from the literature and a healthy spoonful of my own opinion. I have also become a lot better at providing more information on a topic mixed in with my own opinion too. This combination provides me with a foundation that I think strongly supports excellent writing and has allowed me to accomplish many goals over the course of this program. I also think that the skills I have developed in graduate school can be directly used in the classrooms that I will teach in soon.When I made the decision to give teaching another try, I knew that I would not be returning to high school. Even though I only had one experience, I had not been able to accomplish my goals concerning science literacy and teaching. I decided that high school was not the area in which I should have been teaching, so I turned my attention to elementary school and the primary, junior, and intermediate divisions. Teaching in the elementary panel will provide me with the opportunity to teach every subject, which is both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Due to my science background, I have no training in teaching literacy, or math for that matter, and as scared as I am, I feel that I have a better handle on literacy now more than I have ever had before. Instead of worrying about what and how will I teach, I find that literacy and the literacy program I hope to teach in the future, excite me. The possibilities are almost limitless in my mind’s eye.Working as an Educational Assistant, I have the opportunity to observe what goes on in the classroom. It has provided me with snapshots of what teachers do with their own literacy programs. What is great about this job, is that I am in a different classroom every day and able to watch many teachers teach. This allows me to examine what each teacher is doing, how they are doing it, and if I am lucky, I am able to discuss with them what they are working on and what they are accomplishing in their classrooms. It is almost like I am in teachers college again, except this time, I have a better understanding and idea of what I should actually be doing (thank you Masters!).What I find exciting about the possibilities of teaching literacy is the wide variety of genres, methods, topics, and platforms that I can use to teach. Science literacy does not have to be isolated to the science classroom, it is literacy after all and it can be taught in the literacy classroom. Online applications like Bitstrips and Prezi can be used to add creative twists for students creating written works and presentations. Book clubs and reading communities can be used to read, discuss, and exchange ideas about books and other written works. I can interweave topics from across the curriculum to bring literacy to every facet of my students’ day. There are so many possibilities that I have to take a step back and breathe because I can easily get swamped.Something that has been rekindled for me is my love of teaching and helping children achieve success through schooling. After not understanding why literacy receives so much support in schools, I now understand the true importance of literacy for living in our world. I understand the power that literacy gives an individual. Thanks to some great classmates, friends, mentors, professors, and teachers, I can see that my literacy experiences really have mapped the way that I look at literacy. After the experiences I have had this year, I think that the views I hold for literacy are not only much more positive, but also most importantly, I would want to be a student in my classroom because what I have in store for my students, to me, is very exciting. ................
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