My Passion in Teaching

One of the things I have always been passionate about, which applies to my role as a future teacher, is reading. Personally, reading has always been one of the most important things in my life, I have always enjoyed it and think that my interest and ability in reading has helped me to succeed in school and life. Unfortunately in my experience with peers, students, and others I have seen not only disinterest in reading but strong dislike and aversion to it. I think that attitude has a lot to do with the way that children are taught to read and their successes or failures in reading early on, especially in school. I have already started to see this difference in the kindergarten class I am student teaching in. the students all came in around the same level, but now in February some have excelled in quickly learning to read and passing through the levels while others are still getting stuck on their letter sounds. Even though many of the students still have a very positive approach to reading, the ones who are struggling are already beginning to act discouraged and seem to disengage at times when they are having trouble. This is a far reaching problem which I see having consequences for not only individuals but the world as this attitude towards reading expands. Because of this I think one of the things I am passionate about in my future teaching career is finding ways to help students succeed in learning to read and also to really enjoy what reading has to offer. In the teaching program I am in we are about to start an action research project and I hope to explore this idea of reading, especially starting in kindergarten where most students are just starting to learn to read. I want to see what strategies help different students to succeed and enjoy the reading process in order to help them become not only life long learners, but life long readers.