Reflection on Learning to Read

I spend a lot of my time (Monday-Friday) helping children learn to read. As a kindergarten teacher, I take my responsibility very seriously and give 110% to my students because I know they need to leave my classroom in May with a really strong foundation in reading in order to be successful in first grade. We obviously start by learning individual sounds and then put those sounds together in various combinations to make words. As with any new skill, some children learn to read relatively quickly and it is quite challenging for some.

By this point in the school year, we are in the home stretch. Just about 9 1/2 weeks left until the students leave my classroom. Everyday is an opportunity for learning new reading strategies.

Well....to the point of this post. Tonight I received a translated letter that we wrote to our son's foster parents. When I opened the translation, I saw the beautiful Korean (hangul) writing, but the individual characters had no meaning to me. I could not isolate sounds or put sounds together to make words. Instead of reading a letter that conveyed meaning, I saw horizontal lines, vertical lines, ovals, etc. No matter how long I looked at the letter, I would never be able to read it.

Hmmm...I started thinking. For children that struggle to learn to read, this must be how they feel.

Don't get wrong, I have taken courses that simulate dyslexia and other reading disabilities, but for some reason seeing the Korean letter really hit home for me.

Then, it was time for me to finish labeling all of the items we are sending in our care package. Although we were told we could just write the English spelling of his name (Si-won) I decided that I also wanted to write it in Korean.

As I was writing his name on multiple items, I had to concentrate so hard on each handwriting stroke. First a slightly diagonal swoop. Then another diagonal line. Next a vertical line. I was purely copying exactly what I saw, but I didn't know which lines represented which sounds.

This was another ah ha moment for me.

For students that are having difficulty learning to read, copying words from the board is such a tedious task. And having to come up with sentences to write independently is even harder. I've always known this to be true, but experiencing this tonight was a good reminder for me.

As I enter into the final weeks of the school year, I am going to empathize more with my students that need a little extra help.

Lord, please grant me wisdom as I plan lessons that will engage my students and make them eager to learn. Help me have an extra dose of patience when I feel like I have exhausted every "trick in the book" and a student is still struggling to learn a new concept.

Learning to read opens so many opportunities. I love seeing the look on a child's face when he realizes he has learned to read. I am thankful that tonight I was reminded what it feels like to want to read something, but not be able to.