Challenges of the Reading Specialist

Have we considered what we may encounter when we have left these hallowed walls of UWI, St Augustine and entered into the world of work as Reading Specialists? Well I considered a few of the challenges and listed them below. Feel free to blog or add any that I may have overlooked.

• Sourcing appropriate and effective resources to execute the programme.
• Dealing with misconceptions as to what exactly our role as Reading
Specialists actually is
• Acceptance – coming in after a history of ineffective professional
development programmes, teachers may be unwilling to unlearn before they
can apply the new ideas we may bring forth
• Support from fellow colleagues
• Building a culture that encourages ‘receptivity to constructive criticism’
• Proving that we are not here to dictate changes to the curriculum or
enforce extra work without consultation with teachers.

The Beauty of Collaboration

If there is one term that resounded throughout this course is that of COLLABORATION. As we explored the collaborative tools; Wikis, Concept Mapping and other social networking devices, I felt the growing need to work together with my fellow colleagues in reading, to design programs that would meet the requirements demanded by our changing society. Usually this level of collaboration would be among teachers or reading specialists, but today I read an article that shared the success story of a charter school and an urban school district in Rhode Island that “forged an unusual partnership to share best teaching practices and collectively support early reading proficiency”

Pivotal to their concept of school success was the task of working collaboratively. Teachers of both the district and the charter school visited each others’ classrooms and developed lesson plans together during the school day and after school. The charter school was able to rank among the top 10 highest scoring urban elementary schools in the state with 59% proficiency in reading, although a large number of the school’s family live in chronic poverty. I invite you to read this article which portrays the result of teachers coming together to rise above the challenges that could easily beset us.

Article: http://www.annenberginstitute.org/VUE/wp-content/pdf/VUE27.pdf
Wiltshire,C.,Gallo, F., & Connolly K., (2010), Collective Practice Quality Teaching.,Annenberg Institute for school Reform.,Voices in Urban Education.

Rising to the challenge

Bernice Johnson Reagan stated that “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyse you; they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”
Was this course a challenge for you?
Were there times when you felt overwhelmed?
Did it test your resilience as a teacher-student, demanding time and resources that you were not even aware that you had?

Well hats off to those who did not struggle as I did, although I must admit it got less challenging as the weeks passed by.

My advice is – Do not let the demands temper your enthusiasm, but allow this exposure to Web 2.0 tools to revolutionize your pedagogical and technological skills.

However, I urge you, not to take in the new at the expense of the old. Our challenge is to blend both literacies; digital and traditional, within our social context and tailor it to suit our needs.

Technology in Education

As I come to the end of this Mega-course, I thought of putting what I think of technology in education in verse.

Teaching would be fun for
Each and everyone
Collaborating and participating in
Highly-motivated planning.
Nothing should prevent us from
Online applications that
Lead our struggling students to higher-level education.
O may we never rest
Growing every chance we get
Yearning for the very best.

Let us rise to the challenge of providing our students with the necessary skills to'navigate the sea of information that surrounds them … for the ability to work with information may well be the most important skill of the 21st century.” William Badke (2008) Research Strategies: Finding your way through the information fog .

Accepting the challenge

Have you ever created an Electronic book or E-book as it is commonly called? Well, for the first time since I have been exposed to the interactive, explosive and innovative Web tools of literacy have I felt so confident that I COULD and WOULD use a device with my students with almost immediate effect. I am so excited about this E-book that I called two of my co workers after the lab session to share my experience of creating E-books. I have been exposed to Power Point Presentations for years and have never realized that it could be so interactive.

What I love about Teacher created E-books is just that – the teacher can create the reading material to suit not only his/her class but also the individual student or small interactive instructional group found within. One major problem I had experienced working with adolescent struggling readers in the senior department is sourcing suitable books at their independent reading level that are not embarrassing for them to be seen with. Now the time I would have taken to source, I can now CREATE. Since these books are specially designed for them, it would motivate them to become more engaged readers.

E-books are definitely a “MUST TRY”.

Bookmarking - the safety tool

The Internet, as effective a tool of learning as it is, is well known for being a den for predators, frauds and sometimes inept writers. As such all would agree that as teachers we need to teach our students the skills needed to be ‘web wise’. At times, however, even the web-wise students can become distracted or so overly consumed with searching the web that a lot of instructional time is lost.

The questions for most ICT teachers are:
• How can I control what my students view on the internet?
• How can I get my students to search the web efficiently without losing valuable instructional time?

One possible solution is Web based bookmarking
I read an article in which Leighann S Forbes (2004) demonstrated how Bookmarking can support reading instruction and provide structure and content for students with special needs. She describes this Bookmarking as a tool that increases time on task and decreases frustration among struggling readers. This is mainly because the teacher would have previewed the material before it was made available to the students.

This is basically what Bookmarking is about, collecting and storing the websites that you believe are relevant to your class or your lessons.
I invite you to read this article. It also gives you information on web based bookmarking services and an excellent lesson for Infant One students using web based bookmarks. This article can be found in the journal International Reading Associations (pp 148-153) doi 101598/ RT.58 2.3

Facing our challenges

One of my colleagues, in response to my blog ‘Overcoming the red tape’ highlighted the fact that many teachers are ‘stuck in a quagmire because they have a defeatist approach when it comes to technology’. This comment, brought to the surface, the memory of my grandmother sharing with me, her fears of lighting the stove when she first got one and how often she would revert to using the coal pot even though it was the same fire. Of greater concern is the fact that many of our senior citizens still prefer to stand in line at the banks rather than use a debit card. It is not just that old habits are difficult to break, it goes beyond that, into the realm of our fears of the unknown.

Reverting from the traditional approach to teaching reading means coming out of our comfort zone and entering that unfamiliar zone. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. stated that "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of a challenge." Challenge here being ‘the test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking’ (Webster’s Dictionary). It will be a challenge for us as Reading Specialists to train this technologically diverse group of teachers to this non traditional approach to reading . What we must keep in mind is that this upgrading of both content and pedagogical skills is inself a challenge to our trainees.