Kyrie Boyle

What I know

I know my subject. Literature, the means of exploring one's world without ever having to leave home and an all-access pass to past places and times and imaginings of the future. I know how to apply active reading and engagement with a text to help students to acquire new knowledge and empathize with others with different backgrounds and experiences. I know how to explain the creative process involved in creative writing, and how to research appropriate sources for supporting a claim or idea in different forms of academic writing. I can help students learn to write clearly and efficiently in order to make conveying thoughts and ideas effortless. I know how to utilize other forms of expression such as music and art to make the written word into a more sensual experience. I know how to use literature to draw meaningful connections to current events and social issues.

What I Have to Learn

Everything. As a student just beginning on the route to teaching licensure, I have a lot to learn about being a teacher. Classroom management, student assessment, lesson planning, are just a few of the things I need to learn to make myself into the teacher I see myself as becoming.

The Teacher I will Become

It is my goal to be a nurturing, caring, influential contributor to establishing effective reading lives for my students. To provide them with the tools they will need, not only to be successful in their education, but also within their adult lives. I want to motivate my students to create active relationships with the texts they will encounter throughout their lives; using various active reading aids and student opinion when selecting course texts, as well as providing them with the tools they will need to be independent critical thinkers. I intend to be supportive of my students in developing a reading agenda, to help them find texts that excite them, authors with whom they can identify, and inform them of the ways reading can teach them about the world. Though I believe the perennial method of teaching is an appropriate approach to teaching in an English classroom, I feel that a progressive approach is also necessary to actively engage students in an English classroom. Providing students with opportunities to choose what will be read and how it will be read increases the students' interest in the subject and allows them to feel more in control of their education.

The one word that will describe me as a teacher is "creative," I will provide my students with endless opportunities to exercise their creative brains while engaging with texts. For example, a student who loves to write creatively could write a parody of a short story we interact with in the classroom, or an artist could make a painting that reflects their interpretation of a poem.

My ideal students are engaged critical thinkers with active reading lives. It is my goal to foster all of my students to meet the ideal, so when a stranger walks into my classroom the first thing they will see is an extensive carefully curated classroom library with texts from all genres and with as much diversity as possible. I will use student input (not just my own) to curate my classroom library, so that the texts available will appeal to larger sections of students.