Adding to Our "Teacher Toolbox"

I recall sitting in class and hastily writing down every strategy my past professors spewed at me as an undergraduate student. Because they talked so highly of certain strategies (yes, even KWL), and how my future students would be able to read, write, and comprehend so much more with the aid of these strategies, I assumed all my students would be able to actively engage with whatever text I gave them immediately after introducing the strategy. While some of the strategies I have learned have indeed proven to be extremely effective, after teaching for only a few short years, I have quickly come to realize that literacy goes far beyond compiling a “toolbox of strategies” that will serve as a remedy for all my students’ needs. Speaking of toolboxes, I still remember a group project Richard and I were apart of during our first education class. For the presentation, we created a giant toolbox with various tools (different strategies) that we thought would “fix” all of our classroom literacy problems. If only it were that easy.

I am not saying strategies are not beneficial. Instead, I feel that teachers need to remember that it takes more than just content strategy-based instruction to help students move from learning to read to efficiently reading to learn. As mentioned in class, the best teacher is not the one that uses twenty or more strategies all in one day’s lesson. It will require more to prepare students to become truly literate today, which Goldman defines as “being able to use reading and writing to acquire knowledge, solve problems, and make decisions in academic, personal, and professional arenas” (2).

    Goldman focuses on three major types of instruction that can help students reach this type of literacy when used together: strategy, discussion, and disciplinary content-based instruction. Besides giving clearly explained examples of all three types of instruction and how the combination of the three help students become literate members of society, she also comments on the fact that many teachers have little experience with really thinking about how they read a text, which would be different than how someone else in a different discipline would read that same text. I could not agree more with that statement; although this is still a hot topic in the educational realm, when I was studying to become a teacher just a few years ago, I was not practicing disciplinary content-based instruction. Instead, I felt that there was more of a focus on general strategies that usually did not lead to a deeper understanding or interpretation of text.

There is also mentioning of the need for more professional development for teachers in order to foster this type of learning environment within their own classrooms. I also think it would be beneficial for undergraduate professors teaching future teachers to also incorporate more discipline and discussion-based instruction into their curriculum, along with the strategy-based instruction that most of us are familiar with.