Personal Experiences

Many times I sit and wonder how am I, one person, going to be able to teach 25 individuals. It freaks me out at times because I am afraid I won't be able to conquer the goals and I will be a failure. But then I remember how my teachers were able to meet all the needs for me to be a successful student. And it all began with Language Arts. We had to be able to talk, read, and write before we could do anything else. It is a necessity in life!

I learned to read by phonics and how to sound out words. My teacher constantly worked with us on sounding out words using the consonants as the hard sound and then always followed by a rhyming ending. For example, cat, hat, pat, and bat. Once we knew the rhyming we could move on to bigger words. It is all about learning in phases. I just remembered being pushed and pushed until I knew how to sound out words until I was able to recognize the "whole language" and read the words without sounding them out. Can we now read from memory or from sounding it out still...or a little bit of both? It is so amazing how once someone is taught how to read and write they can never degress. It may become more complex, but it will always be needed.

I will learn from my teachers examples and use all the tools that they gave me growing up to teach others how to read, write, and talk. I also I have to take into consideration that not all students will learn at the same pace or by the same technique. It is going to take a lot of practice and tons of patience. But, I consider myself a great person for the job!