Introduction
Teaching literacy is a complicated process, which requires the literacy educator to be able to balance reading, writing, comprehension, and speaking exercises and activities. Educator is a social profession, as it requires constant contact with the learners, who all have their diverse needs, which need to be met with appropriate strategies. Literacy needs to be taught with real, meaningful literature, both by being read by students and being read aloud to students. Educator needs to be able to balance individual and group activities, as well as the difficulty of the material. And, of course, the literacy educator needs to be critical of his work and seek opportunities for personal improvement (“Invitations to literacy”, para. 1-9; Duke & Martin, 2011, p.8-9)
Philosophy of literary instruction
Literacy educator needs to understand that reading and writing are social activities and that students should be encouraged to view reading a pleasurable leisure pursuit. Reading quality authentic texts improves pupils’ writing, and practicing writing improves reading skills. Students need to be provided with comprehensive information about vocabulary, fluency and be taught phonemic awareness and grammar. For the learners to absorb the information, it is necessary to have the students reflect on what they are learning through their interests, values and ideals, history, and use them as them as motivation. The teachers themselves need to be well motivated about their sphere of teaching expertise (Nettles, 2006, p.3-6).
My personal philosophy of reading instruction incorporates the method both the old-fashioned phonics and the new “whole language” technique. Whole-language puts the emphasize on the meanings of words and aims to develop students’ intuition about not just the definition of the terms, but also their role in the sentence and the story, to infer meaning
(Askildson, 2008, p.23-25). This method allows for a more wholesome learning but requires the basic ability to recognize words, which means phonics are still a necessity.
My writing philosophy takes inspiration from the article “Young Authors’ Writing Workshop in Kindergarten” by Kathryn M. Brown (Brown, 2010, p.24-28). Rather than make children do many writing exercises, she drew them into writing books. Children were given freedom to choose a topic and a title and were guided through the process. By treating children like small writers, she motivated them to try and become like writers themselves.
Seven Pillars of Literacy Educators
As a literacy educator, I take the seven pillars of effective literacy education into serious consideration. These pillars are Family and Community Connections, Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Assessment, Evidence-Based Teaching Practices, Response to Intervention, Motivation and Engagement and Technology and New Literacies (Hayes). While I attempt to excel in all of these pillars to be a successful educator, I feel that I am strongest at integrating new Technology and Literacies into the curriculum and motivating students to use them through Motivation and Engagement. However, I feel that I need to improve on Family and Community Connections. Interacting with the parents more and imploring them to participate in the teaching process when children are at home can make can make the program much more productive. Also, the parents’ participation would be very motivating for the students, especially if the “children-as-writers” approach is accepted.
Conclusion
I believe the literacy educators need to have an open mind for new techniques and literacy teaching philosophies. It is essential that a teacher keeps studying new methods and practicing them, and finding ways to merge them best for the purpose. I also believe that educators need a lot of enthusiasm and determination to succeed in their task, as well as the flexibility required to find the best approach for each child.
References
Askildson, L. R. (2008). Phonological Bootstrapping in Word Recognition & Whole Language Reading: A Composite Pedagogy for L2 Reading Development Via Concurrent Reading-listening Protocols and the Extensive Reading Approach. ProQuest.
Brown, K. M. (2010). Young Authors: Writing Workshop in Kindergarten. Young Children, 65(1), 24-28. Web.
Duke, N. K., & Martin, N. M. (2011). 10 Things Every Literacy Educator Should Know About Research. Reading Teacher, 65(1), 9-22. Web.
Hayes, H. (n.d.). Seven Pillars of Effective Literacy Educators (Cycle Diagram). Web.
Invitations to literacy. (n.d.). Web.
Nettles, D. H. (2006). Comprehensive literacy instruction in today’s classrooms: The whole, the parts, and the heart. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.