Personal Learning Experiences

Elementary School

In Elementary school, probably somewhere around 4th or 5th grade, my ELA teacher did a read-aloud of the book Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May. She would read us a chapter or two of the book, and then we would have follow-up questions regarding that chapter. The questions would be a mix of vocabulary, comprehension multiple choice, and short responses. The skill was to build comprehension, and responding to the questions proved that we understood what we read. These early reading foundational skills were ones we would repeatedly see in school, with the text getting more challenging as we moved up in grades. These early learning experiences helped cultivate my love of reading. However, as someone with ADHD and slight auditory processing issues, I needed to make sure that I was following along in the book, or I would 'zone out.' We know a lot more about how the brain learns, so I always wonder if I would have been a better student knowing then what I know now.

In a high school economics class, we were learning about how the stock market worked. Our economics teacher at the time had us pick stocks and fill out a sheet that tracked how much the stocks were worth and how much money we would put in the stocks and then track it over the semester (we had a predetermined budget and were encouraged to pick a few different companies). At the end of the semester, we would then have to give a presentation on how we did. Did we make money, lose money, and what happened in between? To be quite honest, I am not sure why we were learning this skill. High schoolers are not often putting their money into the stock market. In addition, I remember looking up stock prices and finding everything in a newspaper. I think about how much technology has changed and how labor-intensive schoolwork was when you are looking up what you need in a book or newsprint.

High School

Teacher Training

In my first year at the private school I worked, I took a Lindamood Bell reading training. A few of the veteran teachers were instructing the training to a few of the teachers. This is very intense training that includes a pre-reading of the training manual, discussions, in-person training that teaches you the program the way the students have presented the information, teachers would also practice the activities on each other, and sixty hours of observation. This training provides struggling readers with an intensive intervention to help fill reading gaps using elements of speech therapy, grammar, and phonics that are systematically taught. To be honest, after taking this training, I became a better teacher with an in-depth understanding of struggling readers. As a struggling reader myself, I only wish I would have had programs like this for me in elementary school.

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