Key points:
- As students continue to struggle with reading, it is critical that teachers receive structured literacy training in teacher preparation programs
- Literacy serves as the foundation of learning, and families should be involved in this learning process
- See related article: How to support reluctant readers with literacy strategies
After 14 years in education, I consider myself to be a good reading teacher. Unfortunately, the path to getting where I am today was a long, frustrating journey.
Growing up, as the child of two teachers, education was in my blood.
After college, I was accepted into a graduate program to get my teaching certificate and Master of Arts in Teaching. I learned the latest and greatest in elementary education instruction and pedagogy…or so I thought.
But I was never taught HOW to teach students to read.
I landed my first job as a fourth-grade teacher in a suburban district outside of Portland, Oregon. Before the students arrived, I set up a cozy classroom library, complete with a couch, rug, lamps, and boxes filled with rich literature and chapter books.
It didn’t take long for me to recognize that a handful of my students could not read the district-provided curriculum. I was surprised, because I thought that by fourth grade, students were reading to learn, not learning to read. I had no tools in my proverbial tool belt to help my students that year. I did not learn this in my teacher preparation classes.
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