FANTASTIC! We've finally made it to the first day at our school and I am overjoyed at being at this point. After a lovely breakfast with our vice-principal and principal we all got to sit in on our classes for a good half hour. Most of the students were out of the classroom as E-Class testing is going on so I only got to see three of my prospective six students reading and being tested. The other three I will meet tomorrow as things really get underway. We received a warm welcome both from the staff and the children so we are all off to a good start!

Friday October 13.

Today was our last day of orientation before we start working in the schools on Monday. I found out that I will be team leader for my school. This is exciting news all around and I'm sure everyone is eager to get started. Our last day was a very interesting and insightful activity. What I learned most from bumbling around trying to figure out how to work a mechanical DHL envelope after an intense lesson in levers, fulcrums and loads is that we all learn in different ways.

Once the activity got underway I immediately could tell that I was missing something. I was trying hard to articulate what I didn't understand and needed explained but was at a loss. Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness come to mind! I kept at it and tried another strategy. What if I could think of something that was in the house that sort of worked like the levers then I could visualize and contextualize the entire activity and be on my way. But alas that didn't happen and I was stuck in my world of confusion up till the end! Sad but very insighful I must say because even with all my tools and years of learning I had a hard time articulating what I did not understand. This is something good to keep in mind when teaching our students on Monday and beyond.

I'm quite excited about Monday but honestly have no idea what to expect so I'll spend my weekend doing my best not to speculate. We start 9am sharp with breakfast with the principal. So I guess orientation is over and we are well on our way!

October 12. Reading with English Language Learners by Dr. Barbara Hruska

The most important thing I picked up today from Dr. Hruska is that there is a major difference between English Language Learners (ELL) who are already literate in another language and those who are not. As a literate English language learner, one has a wealth of background knowledge in reading and writing that is of great assistance when approaching English for the first time. Those who are both learning English for the first time and trying to become literate for the first time are faced with a double challenge.

It was quite informative to take a personal look at this by testing out our own ability to decipher codes and meanings from reading other languages that we were not necessarily familiar. I had the most difficulty with Arabic and was quite perturbed at the thought of learning three different ways of writing the same letter depending on where it was in the sentence! It was helpful to have reinforced again the importance of assisting our learners with books that have a strong print to picture relationship and that are culturally relevant to the reader.

Context! Context! Context! This is very important for making positive strides by first grabbing the attention of our student and using that, their background and experience to make reading the fun and joyful activity that it is and not the chore that it can become.

I'm reminded of my time teaching English in Bosnia and how our host Larisa alerted us to how our vocabulary was chock full of idioms. It seems like we couldn't go five minutes without making our point without using an idiom. I think that studing and learning idioms give one an important and unique entrance into being able to use a language for naturally. Idioms encapsulate not just plain words but values and attitudes of the cultures that they come from. They are fascinating and I would have liked to spend more time on how best to go about teaching idioms which will invariably pop up in our conversation if not in the text itself.

I am happy that we had this orientation period as I feel that I have a good and solid supportive group of people with whom I can trade ideas and converse. I can't wait to get to school!

Joe Yukish took us through a more indepth look at leveling books today. I have a greater respect for all my teachers and elementary teachers in general. It is very challenging to work with children and teach them when they are too young to even know what they don't understand. As a graduate student I have a better grasp on what it is I need in order to learn best and can even take control of my learning. Not younger children. They are very dependent on the ability of their teachers.

I found the session was very interesting, especially the video which took us through a lesson of assessing a students reading level. Keshia was fascinating to watch. At first she was very engaged and excited about reading but became increasingly more deflated as she read and met more obstacles. I picked up many helpful tools on how to help a student who is stuck on a word. I'm beginning to think of ways I can move away from the usual technique of sounding out words. One thing I thought was very helpful was his emphasis on drawing on context and the child's own environment and experience. Very good tip! Works with adults too.

Today's session was about learning how to pick the right book for where our students are at. We also learned about how to correct or not correct or students and positively reinforce their efforts depending on their reading level. I was surprised that level A book readers are encouraged to substitute words and make good matches. I'm glad we had this session because my instinct would have been to correct at the time the error was made and encourage sounding out words because that's how I was corrected and taught to read. It seems that this method we discussed today, in the end produces more confident and creative readers. If they are encouraged at all points and corrected in such a way that they do not feel inadequate or dumb but rather like partners with their teachers, I think it's a good thing.

When our group broke up to review and level our books we did a good job! We even found an error on the TC label which had a D book labeled as an A book. Joe Yukish confirmed that we were right in our assessment!

October 5.

Lisa Blackwell's session was very informative and encouraging. I'm happy that we are being encouraged to go into our teaching experience as more than just "fix-it-upers-come-to-whip-you-into-shape". I remember my earlier years of schooling and how inadequate and dumb I often felt in certain subjects when being compared to other students. Mrs. Jackson in the 4th grade was a teacher who completely changed my life because her attitude towards teaching was refreshing, enthusiastic and engaging. She actually gave off the vibe that she liked being there, she liked what she was doing and most importantly she liked us and believed in us. I fell in love with school after that and although I'd always been good at reading, she boosted my confidence in math. I got my first A in math from her class. This is the experience that I think I'll be taking with me to my students at 200. I'm already convinced that they're just brilliant! I will also have to learn how to encourage "their strategies and processes" rather than focusing on them as Lisa Blackwell touched on today. I have high expectations because I know from my own personal experience that one-on-one work and encouragement gave me the confidence I needed to take charge of my own education. I think I will be learning just as much if not more than I will be teaching. I'll be sure to remind my students that I'm also in school just as they are and everybody is always learning and growing. It's part of being alive!

Wednesday. October 4

English is a VERY hard language! I repeat, English is a very hard language! I am beginning to take a step further back and remember what it was like to learn to read and write. What is the most troubling thing about English is that so many words are spelled the same but sound different and mean different things in different contexts. This is where helping a child to expand their vocabulary and read things in context comes in, because even if you can read the word and pronounce it well phonetically, where does it leave you if you don't even understand what it means in context? I am very excited about getting into the schools now! This is going to be as much a challenge for the student as it will be for me. We went more indepth into understanding the cvc rule. Dr. Arno also focused on the importance of teaching ch, sh and th as important phonemes. I'm really happy that we have all these tools and oppurtunities being offered to us. The more we get into orientation, the more I realize how important it is and how isolating and perhaps more difficult things would have been without it.

We were assigned our schools today and I got school 200. Most of us will be there and I'm very happy to be where there is a large population of Africans. This is exactly the group of students that I would love to engage and work with so I am very enthusiastic about starting.

At the end of class today we filled out forms in preparation for Lisa Blackwell's visit tomorrow about or thoughts on intelligence and ability. I'm looking forward to her talk and am quite curious about what she has to say.

Tuesday. October 3

CVC. Well I'd never heard about it at all - consant-vowel-consonant - and when you put an -e- on the end it is silent and the vowel becomes long. Many of these little rules are completely new to me. I think my learning experience with reading was more of the whole language approach. I think I did get some phonics in there but itw as not as in depth or focused. I think what I learned has worked for me but I defintely see how if I had learned some rules as foundational early on it would have be much more helpful.

Monday. October 2.

We didn't meet today but I worked on and completed the online course on ethical practices for researchers. It was another rude awakening and reminder of how ruthless people can be with other human beings. These laws are in place to protect people against being taken advantage of in the name of research. Against the backdrop of tortuous medical testing in Nazi Germany and the US governments Tuskegee Syphillis experiment with black men, many important laws have been enacted. It took me a while to get through it but it was good to be familiarized with the laws. Anything that raises our awareness and sensitizes us to pertinent issues is a plus and a good thing.

Friday September 29.

On friday we made our way over the the TCEdZone offices on Adam Clayton Powell to have a session on Child Abuse Training by Marceline Watler. To say the least much of the final portion of the session was controversial. To begin she asked all of us a few questions which we discussed in groups. We talked about how we were all disciplined, how it made us feel, how effective it was and if we ourselves would discipline our children in the same way.

Her aim was to help us realize where we ourselves were coming from and how that might affect our ability to see or not see the necessary signs of child abuse amongst our students. According to Ms. Walters, all forms of physical hitting are punishment and not discipline. We learned that we are "mandatory reporters" by law and what those responsibilities entailed, and the dire consequences of not reporting. We also watched an old Oprah session on sexual child abuse, which was quite moving and disturbing.

On Thursday September 28, we had two visiting speakers. Dinelia Rosa came to talk to us about coping with difficulties and most specifically preparing ourselves to work with the students who would likely come from different backgrounds that we did. Most important guidelines she gave us were threefold - 1) Awareness 2) Knowledge and 3) Understanding. We also talked about how we should be aware of our own perspective, feeling and where we are coming from. The aim is to acknowledge all these things so that we can most effectively help the students. They after all are the most important group in our interactions.

We also discussed the importance of structure and space, which all children need. There was some discussion about what were appropriate boundaries to set up so as to maintain proper lines of authority. The long and short of the matter is that it's not about "us", it's about the students.

Stephen Peverly also came to speak to us about the teaching of reading which I found to be a very fascinating session. We got an introduction into the basic themes of the "reading wars". He stressed the importance of developing automatiscity by encouraging them to read quickly and accurately. This is a very important foundation to lead them towards more intense comprehension of what they are reading as well as improving overall language ability. It makes perfect sense to me.

The basic components of the whole language approach to reading, from what I got, is that students are talk in word families, vocabulary of high frequency words is taught, and they are encouraged to learn meanings of words from context. This approach is an interactive approach that does not emphasize phonics.

Phonics on the other hand emphasizes a systematic focus on recognition of symbol sounds. Symbol-sound association is very important in this intensive and systematic approach. Dr. Peverly stressed that he considered both approaches necessary for achieving automatiscity in reading but if he were to choose an approach most appropriate for populations considered "at risk", he would restrict a curriculum to reading, writing and numeracy that intensely established automatiscity. Why is automatiscity so important? Research has shown that to the degree that we spend our time trying to recognize words is the degree that we do not have enough space in our working memory to comprehend what we are reading. In all basic skills automatiscity is essential!

Our work is not just to create individuals who can read well, but those who WANT to read. Learning to reading is closely related to developing verbal ability and reading is related to the ability to think critically. Equity is about equipping students with these skills in the first three grades.