Teachers as Readers: The Organizing Principle

According to Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) "All content area teachers play a critical role in helping students to think, learn, and communicate with texts" (p.1).

My background includes teaching preschool and kindergarten for the most part.  In the past, I have worked as a substitute teacher in grades kindergarten through 5th grade.  I mention this because I have never had to separate the subjects nor been considered a content area teacher.  For the most part, teachers in the younger grades expect to teach all the subjects and often those subjects overlap with each other.  One difference that I have noticed with the introduction of common core is that reading and writing is integrated even more than in the past, and as teachers, we are expected to guide students through learning to truly understand text.  It makes a lot of sense to me that all teachers, regardless of what they teach, play an imperative role in helping students to think, learn, and communicate with texts.

I have been reading a couple of magazines (cooking) and occasionally a book (The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie by Dana Wilkerson, Kim Carpenter, Krickitt Carpenter).  One thing that I've noticed is that if a text is something I choose of interest or even if it's not something I choose but find interesting, I am more motivated to truly understand it and retain what I've learned.  Reflecting on my experiences of going to middle school, high school, and college, I have noticed a mix of teachers who appear to feel that it is their role to help students learn and understand texts while others see that as the role of the reading teacher only.



References

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading:  literacy and learning across 
           the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.