Blog #3

During my interviews this week I had the pleasure of meeting with the assistant principle and another librarian at the school.  It was very interesting some of the items we talked about.  When I met with the assistant principle we talked about how she deals with advocacy issues on a daily basis.  I asked her what her biggest issue is when it comes to helping parents understand the importance of early literacy.  She replied by stating that some parents do not have much formal education and are just getting back into school themselves so it takes time for them to see and learn what needs to be done at home in order to better their child;s educational process.  I guess I have never thought of this before because both of my parent went to college, my dad for four years and mom for two, and they always pushed me and my sisters within school to work at a higher level.  Another topic we talked about was progress reports and how parents are informed of their child’s academic process.  I asked her how, other than actual report cards/progress reports, can the parents find out if their child is struggling or is too advanced for the level of reading that they are currently at.  She said that they have a reading resource program which is a unit of teachers that works within the school to better the children and parents.  They have their own reading readiness website that is linked with the schools website for parents to see frequently asked questions, phonics ideas, comprehension and so on.  She also said that if parents have concerns or if the teacher has a concern about a particular student, that they can at anytime communicate their concern with the other person in order to improve the child’s learning.  One thing that she also stated was that within their school reading is a, if not the, most important subject for children to learn at a young age.  

After talking to the assistant principal the week before I wanted to talk to one of the teachers on the reading readiness team.  I was very excited to talk with someone who I knew would know a great deal of information about reading and early literacy.  The first question that I asked her is why she believes reading is so important for children at young ages.  She replied by saying that everything a child does revolves around reading and being able to communicate on a greater scale.  Reading is the first step that children have to become independent in their learning.  After she said this I thought about the children I work with and how when they are working on their homework they do work independently and how proud they must feel that they can read without me sitting next to them looking over their shoulder.  It is a form of self-confidence that can start at a young age with the proper training and reading programs.  While I was interviewing the reading readiness teacher she showed me their website which has tons of information for parents.  One of the topics I liked was what should a parent do if their child is stuck on a word while reading.  My first thought was my interview with the parent where she stated that it can be hard to not help and just tell them the word.  Instead the resource teacher says their are six keys steps you can take.  The first is thinking of if their is a picture that can give a clue to what the word is, another helpful hint is to just keep reading and come back to that word later. She said that in a lot of cases kids will read a sentence and understand what is says without always knowing every word and they will be able to go back and sound out that word when they have a better understanding of the entire concept.  

Overall I really enjoyed my time spent at the school and my two interviews.  I think that I gained some more insight in what schools within my area are doing in order to better provide for early literacy within the school and in the homes of the students as well.