Sunday, February 7, 2010

Literacy Week

My students have been very excited because my door won the decorating contest.  I could not have done it without the students.  They cut out designs and used fusible back webbing to iron them onto construction paper.  This created the doors.  The doors were attached to the background paper using double sided tape.  We were unable to place all 100 doors on the paper so my students selected the pictures of book covers to go under each door.  It was so funny listening to them explain why one cover should be selected over another.  They discussed the books and which was best and why it was the best in their opinion.  I was amazed by their conversations.  My prize was a chocolate bar.  However, one of my ESOL students won in the book cover poster contest.  They were only expecting one winner.  She did such a fabulous job free handing a book cover and the fact that she had been working on reading the book since May of 2009 and they gave her first place as well.  They needed a prize and gave her my chocolate bar.  I was so proud of her.  I wish they had more they could have given her.  It seems to have gotten students more excited about reading so it was all worth it.  Unfortunately it didn't have the same effect on teachers.  Only three of us participated in the door decorating contest.  Only three of us encouraged students to read and take the tests to prove they had read the books.  Most of the teachers said, "Oh, do we HAVE to do anything?"  How sad is this?  We want our students to improve yet are unwilling to motivate them.  Two teachers have outright said they want to be head of the reading department next year, yet one of them refuses to get her readign endorsement to teach all grade levels of reading.  The other one loves the canned reading program so she doesn't have to do much except read the script and then for the second half of class she can grade their workbooks while they read.  I will take it if offered because I am passionate about reading.  However, I feel I can do more in the classroom without being the department head.  I never want the reason I do something to be money.  I want it to be the passion I feel for the subject.  I have two  people who want me to be the department head because of my passion.  I believe they would make excellent department heads because of their passion.  It is like mine.  Of course the 3 of us  collaborate all of the time.  I will do a lot of praying about this.  I feel stifled when I see there are so many teachers and administrators who care only about the kids passing the state test but yet won't really do anything to help them.  For me the students who came to me hating to read and now ask me to recommend books to them made this year worth it.  Due to benchmark testing all of last week, I had students helping me inventory all of my books so that we can finally get them all sorted into genres. It was funny watching them slip books under their desks then slip up and ask me quietly if they were allowed to check out a book that they found while logging them in.  I love it.  I do book passes twice a year for the same reason.  They find books they might be interested in.  I hope to have a lot more planned for Literacy Week next year.  I know I will have students who will help me get the word out.

1 comment:

  1. Funny, how can she even keep teaching reading without a reading endorsement?! Guess different rules apply to different people. You would be an awesome department head, and your voice could really impact the school. :)

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