Literacy and Urban Settings

After reading through the syllabus and looking over the goals and objectives of this course, I am extremely excited to embark on this semester of furthering my knowledge in the area of literacy. Literacy is such an important part of a student’s learning and development within education, so it is vital that we, as future educators, provide the best opportunity for students to excel in this academic subject. Throughout my elementary education and the teachers who have helped me learn to read and write, I gained a great insight and motivation for literacy, which I hope I can do for my future students as well.

One of my main goals for this course is being able to gain a better understanding of how to organize literacy instruction in the classroom. I think that I will further these skills not only by participating in my field placement, but also from class discussions, readings, and listening to the experiences of my classmates. Classroom management is crucial to creating a positive learning environment where students feel comfortable to express themselves and be able to engage in their learning of literacy. I think classroom management is definitely one of the things within teaching that I need the most help with, so I hope to further this, specifically within the context of literacy. Another goal of mine for the literacy portion of this course is developing better strategies and examples to help students with their reading and writing. Although I thoroughly enjoy helping students with reading and writing in my placement, I do not necessarily know how to implement strategies into promoting their learning of the subject, which is an area that I could improve upon. These are just a few of my goals that I have for this semester in regards to learning about literacy, and implementing that into my teaching practices.

I have always been very interested in working in an urban setting, but have little experience in working with that type of setting. In my previous placements through Michigan State University, I do not feel like I have had a great deal of experiences in urban settings, so do not necessarily feel that I am prepared to deal with this population and the teachings that would be involved with reaching these students. I think that working in this type of setting could be a very rewarding and satisfying experience, so I hope to further my knowledge on how to approach teaching these children and eventually implement that into my future classrooms that may either be an overall urban setting, or with only a few children from this population. It would be a great privilege to get the experience to work in an urban setting, and I think that I could learn a great deal of knowledge that would help me in all areas of education. Since so many urban schools lack the resources or credibility of teachers to teach literacy in an efficient way, it is vital that these students receive the proper instruction to further their opportunities in their comprehension of literacy. I would love to work in this type of setting in order to increase students motivation and desire to further their education and understanding of reading or writing. From this course, I hope to take away a better idea of how to reach second language learners and students in an urban setting to improve their motivation and desire to learn literacy.

These are just a few of my initial thoughts on the course overall and how that pertains to urban learning in schools. I am looking forward to continuing the conversations on this blog, and learning from everyone’s experiences and ideas in the realm of education.