Mentally Engaged

I’ve just spent the last ten weeks taking a couple online graduate classes in teaching literacy. The credits add to the continuing education that I need to renew my license and the courses can be applied toward a reading endorsement, or, if I have enough stamina and motivation, an MS degree, but I don’t expect to take it that far. I have to admit that the reading has been very interesting. I didn’t realize all the factors that contribute to a child’s learning to read and write. Even “environmental print” plays an important part. That’s the words on packaging, price tags, the McDonald’s logo, road signs, and billboards.

There are lots of things that can put children at-risk for reading. Besides learning difficulties, factors such as cultural diversity, being an English language learner, low socio-economic status, low family literacy, and lack of environmental print experiences can all challenge reading development. I have also learned that scribbling is important and that there are different kinds of scribbling that denote motor development. It just goes to show how much we take for granted in the learning process.

As mentally stimulating as these courses have been, however, I almost bit off more than I could chew along with subbing and spending time with Mom. I got a head start on the reading, but writing two papers and six half page responses to other people’s papers each week plus two ongoing projects caught up with me about halfway through the term. Part of my problem is that obsessive desire to make things perfect coupled with the random refusal of the technological “Blackboard” system to cooperate with posting my work. Now I am racing to finish up the last papers and final application projects that denote the end; reveling in how much “good stuff” I have learned while counting the days until I am free to immerse myself in the luxury of reading for fun again. Yet, even as I breathe this sigh of relief at the light that has reached my eyes from the end of the tunnel, I wonder what will be next to help me fill some of those restless hours of the day.