My History
After graduating from college in 2004 I began teaching the following school year in rural Connecticut. In seven years, I learned many things about myself as an educator and a leader, but I also learned about what can go wrong in the educational system and process for many students. I taught 7th grade language arts, reading, and creative writing, planned field trips and coached multiple sports, and I was constantly confronted by students' creativity and opportunities to learn and experience life constrained by a lack of resources and innovation in the school district. I worked hard in my classroom and on various committees and projects to provide my students with the opportunities to experience different cultures and places, to learn and express their ideas in various and authentic ways, and to help my many struggling and reluctant readers to overcome their difficulties with skills, strategies, confidence, and motivation. Unfortunately, I found myself confronted by the same constraints as my students, and I was frustrated by my own lack of knowledge, skills, and strategies to resolve my problem.
The New Literacies and Global Learning Program in the College of Education at North Carolina State University seemed uniquely designed to prepare me to find solutions to these issues that I found in my teaching practice and experience. The program focuses on enabling teachers to do exactly what I was struggling to do, and the K-12 Reading concentration is exactly what I was looking for to help me identify and repair the issues with decoding, fluency, and comprehension that I saw often in my students but felt unprepared to effectively remedy. As I wrote in my application letter, "Reading is both a fundamental skill and dynamic process in today's world, and children must be prepared not only both to read and write traditionally, but also to work with the many new media that exist for communication. Students of all ages must also be able to communicate their ideas through various media in ways that are significant and sensitive to the many cultures they will encounter in our global society. I believe that your program is the one best suited to prepare me to do just that for my future students."
This website exists to show you my journey through the NLGL K-12 Reading program - what I came here to find, what I found, and how I got there.
The New Literacies and Global Learning Program in the College of Education at North Carolina State University seemed uniquely designed to prepare me to find solutions to these issues that I found in my teaching practice and experience. The program focuses on enabling teachers to do exactly what I was struggling to do, and the K-12 Reading concentration is exactly what I was looking for to help me identify and repair the issues with decoding, fluency, and comprehension that I saw often in my students but felt unprepared to effectively remedy. As I wrote in my application letter, "Reading is both a fundamental skill and dynamic process in today's world, and children must be prepared not only both to read and write traditionally, but also to work with the many new media that exist for communication. Students of all ages must also be able to communicate their ideas through various media in ways that are significant and sensitive to the many cultures they will encounter in our global society. I believe that your program is the one best suited to prepare me to do just that for my future students."
This website exists to show you my journey through the NLGL K-12 Reading program - what I came here to find, what I found, and how I got there.