Literacy Door

Last semester, I was placed in a fifth grade classroom for my field experience. I felt intimidated by these children before I had even had a chance to meet them. On my first day of student teaching, I remember trembling as I walked towards their classroom door. I assumed most of these fifth graders would tower over me like tall bean stalks and feared that these cool cats wouldn't like me. I thought that the knowledge I carried with me would not be enough to help these kids learn something new. I was afraid that I wouldn't be "smarter than a fifth grader," and I knew that it made me feel insecure about myself as a "teacher".

This semester, I am placed in a first and second grade classroom and will experience what it is like to be a co-teacher. Once again, I feel intimidated and fearful, but in completely different ways than with those fifth graders. These early years, in my opinion, are the most important years in a child's entire educational career, where they learn to read and write. It is frightening to know that I will be an enormous influence in their reading and writing journey. As a learner myself, I am afraid to make mistakes when I become a teacher! However, this time, I also feel more aware of what kinds of students there are in classrooms. I feel more familiar with what kinds of readers and writers there are in classrooms. I feel more prepared to reach out to these different learners because of all the wonderful resources we have been using in our program. More specifically, the readings assigned to us this week have really inspired me to question myself less and to have more confidence in myself as a future teacher.

In a "Voice of Literacy" podcast on early writing, Dr. Deborah Rowe suggests that "all kids [don't] walk in the literacy door the same way." Some students are specifically procedural oriented, some are creative, some are socially oriented, and others are conceptually oriented (students are also combinations of these). Just as teachers have their own interest patterns, so do children. In other words, children seem to have preferences for play. In a school setting, some examples of choices would include solving puzzles, manipulating blocks, and a writing center. Some children are interested in relationships with teachers and other students, and others like to do whatever their friends are doing and want to understand how things work. There are even children who look for creative and new uses for items and objects, and enjoy experimenting with materials and properties. The key point is that teachers need to reflect the variety of interests that children have, instead of just reflecting our own interest patterns. In order to accomplish this, teachers must look at how children approach things and create a classrooms that has a wide variety of literacy activities. "We want to support our children's interests," as Rowe mentions in her interview. We need to understand that "all kids [don't] walk in the literacy door the same way," but they will walk through that literacy door at some point. As teachers, we need to be there to encourage these students as they take this walk!

Once students walk through this mysterious and exciting door, their writing journey begins. While children are busy exploring this new world in their own creative and imaginative ways, teachers need to educate parents on the development of early writing. Just as we oppose the deficit model that blams children for their reading difficulties, we should not view children's writing from a deficit viewpoint. Kate Cusumano explains in her article, "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing," that we should look for meaning when viewing a student's writing. What is the child saying through their words and pictures on the page?

Let's just stop and think about this for a minute.

In my previous post, Diving Into the World of Struggling Readers, I wrote about how children are developing a thinking system, or network of strategies, that helps them make meaning when they read. This same idea of a thinking system can be applied to writing. Children are organizing their ideas and expressing them in a way that makes sense to them. They are communicating. They are making meaning. This is exactly what "successful" early writing looks like.

While searching for meaning in children's writing, we can also look to see "what rules for writing, including accepted writing conventions, the child has discovered thus far," as Cusumano suggests. Children are showing us exactly how they are learning through their writing. "Every mark a child makes on a paper is made for a purpose" (pg. 11). It is important to help parents try to appreciate these marks and try to understand what their young author was thinking when making each mark.

If teachers, parents, and community members can all try to see the value of every part of a child's writing, we will all spend less time worrying about writing and spend more time encouraging and praising children's abilities.

Empower students! Empower parents!