Hey everyone! I am Kathleen Carley. I plan to be a High School English teacher. I graduated last semester and am applying to the Single Subject Teaching Credential Program this month. I have been looking forward to taking this course ever since I transferred to Chico State in Fall 2012.
I don’t think I could properly sum up what being a reader means to me. Right now, reading is such a huge part of my life in so many different aspects. I have been a reader ever since I was teeny tiny, when I was looking at little cartoon animals and deciphering whether or not it was a dog or a cow. The ways in which I read have changed throughout my life and will continue to change. When I was a kid I was obsessed with books and read to pass the time. As I got older, I had to read to pass classes and eventually get into college. I had to read to figure out if my high school crush was “single” or “in a relationship” on his MySpace profile because I was too scared to talk to him in real life. Being a reader is so hard to understand because the moments I am not reading are few and far between.
I definitely read differently when I am outside of school. Outside of school, I read through various social media websites. I read texts from my friends and family. When I am reading outside of school, I feel that my comprehension is a little more disconnected. I am not so much focused on remembering the point or observing someone’s language or rhetoric. My reading outside of school is a lot more selfish. I am reading to see what I can get out of it, not how I can wholly understand material and regurgitate that knowledge back to my professor in a way that shows I understand the point and will use the information in order to improve my skills in my future profession.
My out of school reading does connect to my in school reading. I think it’s important to stay read up on what is going on in the world so that you can make connections in the classroom and then apply those lessons you learn in the classroom to real life instances. There are instances where I must e-mail a professor for advice about something outside of the classroom. In that instance, I still want to use professional language because I am not only trying to show that I am a serious student, but also an intelligent person worthy of their time and advice.
In Williams’ article, “Why Johnny can never, ever read: The perpetual literacy crisis and student identity,” Williams challenges the notion that with the rise of the use of technology in our lives, we are facing an immense literacy crisis greater than anything we have faced before. I always get a little excited when I read articles like this because I love reading about the ways in which we change our rhetoric to interact with the different people in our lives in different contexts. That is something I believe is incredibly important when you get down to the nitty gritty. Williams says, “As teachers, then, we should help students understand that grammar is not a rigid set of rules but a set of conventions that connect identities and status to language use.” I agree that grammar and spelling is extremely important and should be taught at a base level. Others need to know what you’re saying! However, after one is able to write clearly, it is alright to switch conventions to different audiences in order to create your own voice and intellectual individuality.
When applying this article to the ways in which I view teaching, I want my students to write to express themselves in a way that shows they are thinking about and engaging with my assignments. I don’t want them to be scared to write in my classroom because they had a teacher the previous year who would immediately fail an assignment for missing a subject-verb agreement. Williams states that we should teach students to understand how language, culture, and identity work together and I believe that is an excellent practice. I want to give my students the tool to express themselves in any context because I believe that is most important.
