My Journey into the World of Teaching ELA

            Gallagher’s chapter “Reading the World” was very useful because I realized how important it is to prepare students for the outside world once they leave my classroom.  Teachers cannot assume that students will acquire the skills they need to interpret the literary world outside the classroom because chances are they will not.  Students need to be taught how language is manipulative and that they cannot believe everything they read, or hear just because it is in on television, the internet or in an advertisement, newspaper, magazine, speech, article, or book. Students must learn to distinguish between fact and propaganda and be able to identify if the author of a given text may be biased. I was amazed to learn while observing that students will blindly copy down information word for word from an internet site without even checking out the origin of the source.  Students need practice reading real word texts in order to peak their interest and learn how to become properly informed by the news so they will in turn view the world on a deeper level.   I must do more than simply getting my students to read and comprehend texts deemed necessary by the curriculum. I need to prepare my students for the world as they move from adolescence into adulthood.

Now that I have knowledge of the different teaching strategies and theories, I believe that I have grown as a reader and as a future teacher.  I feel comfortable going into any graded ELA class and using the theories presented, and I plan to use some of the various activities that were presented throughout Gallagher’s and Appleman’s text.  I know from experience that I was not as prepared as I should have been coming out of high school and I do not want my students to suffer the way I did through my first few years of University.  As a future teacher I am very excited to teach the skills needed to comprehend texts at a deeper level and to prepare my students to be life long learners!