An Autobiographical Account As To How I Ended Up In A Graduate Class on Reading Problems
Once upon I time I disembarked on a grand new adventure called COLLEGE, a period in my life meant to permanently alter my perspectives of life and open my eyes to the world around me. COLLEGE was supposed to provide me with the tools and experiences necessary for me to enter the workforce as a competent and knowledgeable individual. It was like a late-night infomercial come alive; COLLEGE puts hair on your chest and spring in your step. COLLEGE keeps your car looking shiny and new. COLLEGE will complete your taxes quickly and accurately. COLLEGE helps you lose weight and clean all of your household surfaces. COLLEGE removes even the most stubborn of stains from your favorite blouse. Buy now! Only two easy payments of thousands of dollars per year! Perhaps a steep price, but the product was supposed to be worth it.
Now, here I sit five years later disillusioned and bitter, mostly because I still haven’t the slightest notion as to what I am actually trying to accomplish. A few years ago, I even went so far as to making a list of the possibilities that lay before me that I actually felt qualified for. It did not take very long at all.
List of things I will feel qualified to do after graduating:
1. Go to grad school
How could this be! Somehow the miracle product that was supposed to make my life so open and free actually restricted it more than ever! Maybe I used the product wrong, but COLLEGE failed to come with detailed instructions as to its proper use. Maybe I inhaled too much of it in confined spaces. The one benefit that arose from the sole decision I apparently had was that I again could choose what area I decided to study in, and temple offered what appeared to be a very attractive five-year program in Secondary Education with a focus in TESOL/foreign language. I made this decision out of my desperation for direction in life and because I was looking for ways to avoid the inevitable responsibilities of being a full-time employee of one company or another. So far it seems to be working, inasmuch as I have not only been able to increase the scope of my pedagogical knowledge, but I have actually gotten a few part time teaching gigs since beginning the program, jobs that were actually based upon my credentials. Huzzah! How the prospects of employment lift my spirits like a backroom employee at a liquor store!
There has only been one problem that has arisen since I neared completion of this program/started actually working with students: I don’t think I actually want to teach. Maybe it stems from my laziness, although gravity seems to increase its strength whenever I am comfortably seated on my couch reading at the time when I am supposed to be writing lesson plans. I hate to blame my potential failure on such a clichéd reason, but it appears that getting that kick in the rear when attempting to create a lesson plan creation routine is much more difficult than I ever anticipated. Physical phenomena aside, I do feel a sense of accomplishment after a lesson goes particularly well, so hopefully the desire for a feeling of self-accomplishment will motivate me more and more.
In so many words, what brings me to take this class (besides its requirement for the completion of my degree) is the fact that being an avid reader, it strikes me as very odd and foreign when people have trouble/no desire to read. In this literacy-based society reading is a tool that not only allows for better success, but also can ultimately affect the quality of one’s life. Speaking of the difficulty of reading reminds me of a line from the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Advice to Writers:
“Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school —- twelve long years.”
I feel these are important words to remember when attempting to teach reading, because it is something that people (like myself) truly take for granted. If anything, I have gained quite a bit of perspective in this class, so maybe the advertised qualities of COLLEGE are true after all.
