Becoming an Effective Teacher

It has been a very eye-opening semester. I truly have learned a great deal about how I want to conduct my future classrooms.  I have had experience observing a variety of teachers, teaching a variety of grades. As well, I have had the opportunity to study literature on effective teaching methods. However, across the board, one message seems to be clear. As teachers we need to do more than merely assign novels and allow students to read them.  We need to ensure they are reading assigned material through a critical lens.  A critical lens will allow students to take a great deal more out of the literature than a surface read ever could.  Not only that, by reading literature with a critical eye, students will be able to look at their own life situations more critically.

As I mentioned in a previous post, English class has to be about more than just teaching classic novels. English class should provide students with skills they will be able to carry with them in their lives. Their reading skills, and their ability to pick out deeper meanings in their readings should be upheld over whether students were able to gain the same appreciation for classic novels like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as their teacher. 

My time spent in a grade 10 English classroom this semester has shown me the real life importance behind these theories. Following the class having read the novel Of Mice and Men, the students were drilled continually on the underlying themes of the novel.  It took a while, but I did observe some definite improvement in their abilities to understand the deeper messages in the text. At the end of the novel study, I quizzed a couple of the students in the class about whether they had enjoyed to book or not. A couple of them said no, while one did say they liked the movie better. This said to me, that while it is important that we strive to ensure that students are able to pick out deeper reading messages in books, we must make sure we do so in a way that does not alienate the reading experience. The love of reading must be fostered alongside the refining of reading skills. There has to be a balance. If I am able to find that balance, I believe that the two should be able to be taught hand-in-hand rather fluidly.