What Children Have to Offer

Take a second a listen to what this young girl has to say. I think you'll find that she challenges a lot of preconceptions about how we approach children and their dreams.

Reading Comprehension and Assumptions

   I'm reading a fantastic book right now called I Read It, But I Don't Get It by Chris Tovani. The author made it to her first year of university and realized she didn't know how to read, and taught herself how to do it properly. Since then it has been her mission to keep kids from falling through the cracks and teaching them how to comprehend text. The book is a collection of strategies and realities of reading in school.
   While reading this book, I realized that as a good reader, I employ many of the strategies she teaches her students. But I do this without thinking about it. And that drove home a point that my education professors have been making for years: As teachers, we are proficient at certain things, and our students are not. 
   Seems obvious right? But as educated people, we skip steps in our thinking. Our students haven't mastered those steps yet, and we need to teach them. It's so important to remember that students don't have the knowledge and experience we do, and that everything has to be taught in steps. In other words, scaffolding. We can't expect students to be as efficient as we are, even at something like reading.