I Read it, But I Don’t Get it

              I am definitely guilty of fake reading. I honestly don’t know how many people that are in college are not guilty of this. Students learn from a very early age how to cheat the system and not read everything that they need to so that they can complete their assignment. Fake reading is something that throughout this book stood out the most to me because I think the purpose of this book from what I understood was to give students ways to read and understand rather than just reading words on pages because someone told you to.  After reading so many stories from the students and even the teacher about methods of fake reading that they have used I felt sort of defeated as a future teacher. I had never asked myself the really hard question that I think every teacher at some point asks, how can I expect my students to read the whole book, if when I was their age, I didn’t? Reading through this book I kept coming back to this question and tried to figure out how could I hold my students accountable, and how can I alter my lesson plans if I have students who also don’t know how to read. Having students at different levels of reading and comprehension was always something I knew I was going to encounter when teaching, what I never really thought about was that there is always the possibility that I would have students that don’t know how to read at all. This left me wondering how I would bridge that gap and teach to all of my students needs. The book provided so many different strategies for students to use when reading that I do while I read but that I don’t realize I am doing. I had to fortunate advantage of being taught how to be a good reader and had teachers that would hold us accountable for reading, but this wasn’t in every class. Reading strategies that show the student how to be purposeful, reading with a purpose gives students the ability to question what they are reading, and “questioning engages readers particularly in relation to difficult or uninteresting material.” Giving students the ability to question the material and other strategies to use when reading like making real connections to the student’s life so they can relate to the material, making predictions, stopping and thinking, writing about the reading, visualize, and my personal favorite, rereading. All of these and more were touched on in the book about how to make reading a better experience for your students, or steps that they can take to further enhance their understanding and ability to read for comprehension.

EdTPA Making Good Choices

So, the edTPA is this daunting thing that we all know one day we have to do if we want to become teachers. A conversation that usually surrounds this large task is why do we have to do it, what do we do, how are we supposed to do it as we student teach, and just overall a general abundance of complaining and concern surrounds the conversation about the edTPA. I was never really sure what it even was, or how it was completed, I honestly thought for most of my time in college that it was an actual test that you had to take, like a sit down, fill in the bubble exam pass, or fail test. I was wrong. It wasn’t until I had more friends in the program that were ahead of me that I realized how immense this “test” really was. This is not a test, but rather a portfolio of your work, your teaching methods, examples, artifacts and content that show your teaching style and how you will be effective in your teaching practices. After having a firm understanding of what the edTPA was I then had to figure out, how do you do this, do you complete it by yourself, do you have help, how are you supposed to navigate this task and be expected to pass it on your first try, all while student teaching? All of these questions and concerns are things that have worried me for a few months now as I watch my friends that are currently working on their edTPA get ready to turn it in for evaluation. Watching them navigate this process has made me feel better about how to get it done but after reading this edTPA making good choices guideline book has helped even more. It goes in depth about what I as a student teacher will need to get done, and how I will do that. What I appreciated so much about this book was that it broke it down based on the tasks you had to complete, and then went into specifics about those tasks, answered questions that come up as you are completing that task and overall really help guide you through those hard tasks you have to complete. After reading through this I feel so much more confident in my ability to complete the edTPA and do it really well. Knowing that there is source material to help me complete this and walking me through difficult questions and decisions that I will have to make reminds me that I am not alone in this task.