'Just remember--you teach students, not books.' This was the advice given to me by my assistant principal, right before I started my first year of teaching 10th grade English in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, where few of the children graduate high school, let alone attend college.
This advice played in my head over and over during my first day, as I tried--and instantly failed--to get my students excited about reading. So I switched gears, and asked my students about themselves. Suddenly, they had a lot to say! But even though they would write about their own lives, including their dreams of college, they didn't have much to say about what they would do once they got there. When I told them that, in most of my college classes, we just read books and talked about them, they balked.
"But Miss, I don't like reading!" was the general response.
About my class
'Just remember--you teach students, not books.' This was the advice given to me by my assistant principal, right before I started my first year of teaching 10th grade English in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, where few of the children graduate high school, let alone attend college.
This advice played in my head over and over during my first day, as I tried--and instantly failed--to get my students excited about reading. So I switched gears, and asked my students about themselves. Suddenly, they had a lot to say! But even though they would write about their own lives, including their dreams of college, they didn't have much to say about what they would do once they got there. When I told them that, in most of my college classes, we just read books and talked about them, they balked.
"But Miss, I don't like reading!" was the general response.
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