Oh, the many roles of a teacher...

Looking at this list of the many roles of a teacher, I see all that I am going to have to juggle on top of having to make sure that my children are learning and enjoying school. These roles that are presented are mainly for Language Arts Instruction, but I can also see these roles spilling into other subjects and areas as well.

Teachers organize their environment so that students will feel welcome, comfortable, and wanting to learn.

Teachers facilitate in the classroom to help all students learn through different means if necessary as well as learning through ways other than just reading from a textbook.

Teachers participate with their students in the classroom so that their students will see that learning is a lifelong experience and that their teacher is interested in seeing them learn the material.

Teachers instruct their students about the material at hand as well as others strategies, skills, and concepts.

Teachers model the material to their students through different strategies.

Teachers manage the classroom through expectations and responsibilities set by the teacher and the students.

Teachers observe and diagnose their students based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Teachers evaluate their students progress and help their students to also assess themselves.

Teachers coordinate with others outside of the classroom to help their students get the most of learning through experiences that take them outside of the classroom walls.

Lastly, teachers communicate with their students to understand and share with their students what is going on in and out of the classroom.

All of these roles are important roles of every teacher - whether it be the main classroom teacher or the music teacher - these are roles that ALL teachers should possess because if they possess these roles, then their students will get the most out of their learning.

Affect and see the effect...

"In order to have an affect on someone else, you must first allow him to affect you." -Ralph Fletcher

What a powerful statement and a thought, that at first, is rather confusing. When I first read this statement, I had difficulties understanding its meaning, but after more thought, I began to realize how it could apply to me in the future, in both a writing community, and a teaching community. In a classroom community, I have to learn who my students are first and then I will be able to help them flourish. So, first I must allow them to have an affect on me and through that, I can learn who they are and then I will be a better teacher because I know my students better. So when it comes to a writing community, I better understand my students' strengths and weaknesses as well as their interests, so I am able to help them where they need help and help them grow. This also applies to a teaching community as well, with both students and other teachers. Teachers help teachers in almost every school, so if I apply this idea to my interactions with other teachers, then they can help me, but they too can help me!

What makes writing worth reading?

What a confusing yet interesting question! To me, I want to read something that is interesting, clear, and grammar-friendly. So, when I am writing, I try to make my writing something that someone else would find interesting and would want to read.

Making your writing worth reading also has to do with your audience. If i am writing for younger children, I am going to make my writing more expressive and inviting and intriguing so that the child(ren) will want to read the text because they find it interesting and want to imagine the world that I have written about.

Learning Language

As a child, I think that I mostly used phonics to learn language. I vividly remember spending a countless hours on the computer playing Reader Rabbit. It was so much fun and I loved all of the noises that the game made while I was playing. I had several levels of this game and enjoyed getting to pass this game on to a boy that I used to babysit for him to use. Games like this get kids to learn while having fun and that is something that they greatly enjoy.

As a current pre-service teacher and in the future, a classroom teacher, I think that my previous learning experiences of learning language will inhibit me in some ways because I learned through using phonics rather than other methods. So, when I am trying to teach language to my students, I am probably going to begin by teaching phonics because that is what I know and that is my first instinct. So, I am going to have to learn the other ways of learning language so that I can teach my students how cannot learn through phonics for different reasons.