Module 4

Michelle Suggs
Module 4
March 2, 2022

I do not know an English teacher who does not struggle with getting students to read independently, whether inside the classroom or outside the classroom. Most students do not read for pleasure, but they generally will not even read for a class assignment. Going way back to my high school and college days, I often bought the Cliff Notes with the book! Possibly because I was not 100% sure I would finish reading the book, but also because some of the books were difficult to understand. My daughter’s teacher requires her students to do some sort of a book report or project on the book they check out from the school library every two weeks, and I know my daughter will often asked to hold my phone to Google a summary of the book she was SUPPOSED to read! A good portion of the students in her two classes do the same thing. And these are the gifted and accelerated students! Adults are given Sunday school books to take home and prepare for the class the next Sunday, but most of them do not even bring the book back to church the next week. Teachers are sent email after email that they never even read thru the end. Parents sign paperwork that they never read. With all of this, I remember the frustration of getting my ELA students to even read the entire passages on the state test at the end of the year.

What is the problem? In my house, it is often time. Between homework, piano, guitar, competition dance four nights a week, youth praise team practice, church events three times a week, a social life, and an attempt at keeping a clean house and car, there is little time for much else. In other homes, it is electronics and television, apathy, or reading difficulties. In many homes, reading is not a priority. Children are not read to when they are small, so they see no value in reading when they get older. Many have difficulties reading because they did not come to school with the prerequisite skills needed to be a successful reader, so they are left behind by the pace of the curriculum. However, in some homes, it is a lack of interest or connection.  This is what I would like to focus on for this assignment.

Classroom should advocate reading that interest the individual students- no that they cannot read about other cultures or people groups, but at times, students want to connect to what is familiar to them or to what they like. According to “Multiculturalism and Literature,” the term melting pot is not only incorrect but biased. The United States is a mixture of different and unique cultures. A melting pot gives the idea of people giving up their identity and uniqueness and becoming like everyone else. This should not be the case, and if it was, everyone would melt into the majority’s culture. The authors of this article advocate that multiculturalism is a better way to preserve individual cultures.

According to “According to “Respond to stories with Stories: Teachers Discuss Multicultural Children’s Literature,” stories help us connect to ourselves, and stories also help us make sense of the things going on around us. Patricia Polacco’s Thunder Cake was written to help her granddaughter keep her mind off the storm brewing right around them. I also think that when children hear stories about other cultures and people groups, it give them a sense of understanding and even empathy for other who may not act exactly as they do.

In order to get all children reading independently, especially those students from a different culture, offer a variety of books bases on a variety of events and cultures. Be sure to include all cultures in the classroom, and possibly the majority of the cultures represented in the school/area. Many years ago while I was teaching 5^th grade at Holley Elementary School, I taught a very shy girl whose father was Vietnamese. She was very smart, but said very little in class, so it was difficult to know that at first glance. The summer before her 5^th grade year, she and her family traveled to Vietnam. I asked her to speak about her experience. She simply came alive! She spoke, first of all, and we could all hear her. You could sense her excitement, as she told the other students all about her experience, where her dad was from. She had pictures, videos, and artifacts. The students loved it as well. From that point on, it was as if she felt validated by the other students. We all want that even as adults, and book and stories are often able to bring that alive in us.