“If you can read this, thank your teacher.”
Reading is a primary skill that we all use in everyday of our lives, from reading important notices, directions to understanding information. This makes the development of reading skills for learners necessary, not only for their academic success, but also for their daily living. Unfortunately, reality bites. Reading can be a skill that many learners struggle to master.
Many teachers are concerned about the numbers of elementary children who struggle with reading. Such concerns are warranted. Studies indicate that when students get off to a poor start in reading, they rarely catch up. Struggling readers encounter negative consequences: grade retention, assignment to special education classroom, or participation to long term remedial services. Further as they progress to the grade levels, the academic distance from those who read well grows more pronounced (Kelly & Campbell, 2001).
All these years of being a Reading teacher, I continuously show my gratitude to all my teachers by paying forward to my pupils the strong foundation and passion for reading they had given me.
I exert sufficient effort everyday to make sure that every learner would go out of the classroom better than yesterday. I have learned to love the causes and effects of problems in reading which I viewed before as “unlovable” because solutions are all around when I stop, look and listen.
Through these challenges, I have learned to stop and “decode” my learners’ difficulties in reading which may be caused by learning disabilities and other factors. I remember one of my mentors who emphasized that there are no disabled learners, only teachers are. This statement left a very clear blot in my mind as a teacher every time I am faced with academically challenged learners. This gave me a guiding principle that the struggling reader is not the problem but the teaching-learning process.
In teaching reading, I was also taught how to become “fluent” in my objectives. I need to look into the real difficulties by making sure that the learner can attain these at the end of the remedial class through the activities prepared. I really love that coffee commercial advertisement with a tagline “Para kanino ka bumabangon?”(For whom do you wake up?). As a teacher I can relate to its message. When faced with challenging situations in my teaching reading, I wake up early and prepare my materials for my learners and sip a mug of coffee to keep me awake
Most importantly, I have learned to “comprehend” the realities in remedial reading by understanding the outcomes. Not all planned activities would be effective to every reader. Learning styles vary, that is why I keep on innovating materials and contextualizing these to their experiences and interests. Thanks to the researches, seminars, workshops and mentoring sessions which are very helpful.
Up to now, I am continuously learning how to teach reading and the best teachers are my learners. It is through them that I have learned to regard that the heart of reading is comprehension and the heart of teaching reading is understanding them. Without them, I would not become one so I say, “If I can read in between the lines, I thank my pupils”.
By: JOCELYN R. BUMANGHAT, Camp 6 Elementary School
July 30, 2017
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