What I Learned This Semester in Education Classes

This semester, I only took one teacher education class, EDT 246A, Foundations of Language and Literacy. However, of all the education classes I’ve taken so far at Miami, for me, this one has been the most beneficial.

From this class, I learned more about the “how” of teaching than in any of my other classes. During my freshman year, I took EDT 190, which is an Introduction to the Teaching Profession class.

In EDT 190, it wasn’t so much about how to teach, but it was more about testing the waters, so to speak, and reflecting on whether or not we wanted to be teachers.

As a result, I really enjoyed my EDT 246A class since it was my first real exposure to teaching. We covered a great deal of topics in the course, all of which were valuable.

It was an interesting class as it was mostly discussion based and since there were only 10 of us in the class, it was nice to really be able to listen to and learn from my peers.

In this class, we created lists for both reading and teaching strategies as we read through articles that were assigned to us. I plan to hold onto both of those lists and add to them as I go through the rest of my education.

Image I took of a scantron test.

Within reading, we talked a lot about Kelly Gallagher’s concept of readicide. The basic definition of readicide is that students are beginning to despise reading for a multitude of reasons, one of which is standardized testing.

In his book, Gallagher writes that “…schools are working against developing independent readers” (7).

As a future teacher, this is an issue that will most certainly play a role, in one way or another, in my classroom. Students, reading, and standardized tests are almost inseparable, and I have not yet been in enough classrooms to see the impact that reading and standardized testing have on students today.