Love to Read!

This is my EESL Reflection #2, on the topic of reading. It's more important for you cute moms than it is for me as a teacher! We believe in this profession that the most important thing you can do for your child (...other than love him or her, I suppose...and feed them. And keep 'em warm...) is to take the time to READ! Pull them on your lap and read. Why? My thoughts: the bonding you will foster in your relationship goes down in the annals of their memory for life. Your modeling of the love of reading, and therefore learning, I believe, shapes their attitudes toward life. You will open up opportunities for conversation and discussion of life's most important lessons, which might not be brought up otherwise. Talk about the things you read. Talk about morals. Talk about your child's thoughts and reflections. Let them see you slow down and take time to learn, to spend time with them, to teach them, to listen to them. Your work as a mom is the most important work of this life! Don't ever forget it! (Or I will find you! I know where you live! =o) )

Here it is:
“Reading is important in all aspects of our lives…As teachers…we need to be able to assess students’ reading skills so that we can make reading an important and joyful practice their whole life through.”

Our ‘enduring understanding’ is interesting to me. It is a unique challenge that we have as educators--to not only teach children the skills of reading, but to teach them to hopefully love to read. Why? Other professions may have a purpose of teaching another person the skills necessary to complete their responsibilities within their trade, and yet whether the learner loves it or not can be irrelevant (though arguably makes the person more valuable to the trade in the case that they do happen to love it). As we teach these children to read, however, the affective associations they make with the skills we are teaching them are almost as important as the skills themselves. The feelings a child has toward reading and the attitudes they develop toward learning have powerful influence upon their lives, through adulthood. This has many implications, I believe, as to the environment we create within our classrooms.

Stephen Krashen’s fifth hypothesis supports this concept in second language learners: “People acquire second languages when they obtain comprehensible input and when their affective filters are low enough to allow the input in [to the language acquisition device]” (Krashen, 1981, p. 62). Socio-emotional variables, such as low-anxiety learning environments, greatly affect a student’s self-confidence and self-esteem. We as educators must model a love of learning, children, and enjoy our career, not just show up to work. Our attitudes toward these things change children’s lives in more ways than we sometimes recognize!