Reading Is Fundamental

 The first two weeks of school passed quietly enough. As the prep teacher, my job for those first ten days are to straighten out any confusion, rustle any stacks of paper, move furniture, direct kids to the water fountain, move furniture, remind students of what they may have forgotten about being students and move more furniture. 

Now it's the third week of school, and it's time for the Mister Caven Show. I will be performing in the Computer Lab, held over for the twenty-sixth straight year. I will also be appearing weekly on the playground as both yard supervisor and PE teacher to the masses. Additionally, this year I have been asked to teach a group of students phonemic awareness, a stepping stone on the path to fluent reading. 

And I confess that the weekend before I started this new gig, I was nervous. Those first day jitters that have always been a part of my school experience were back in full effect. There is probably a certain component of this that stretches all the way back to my first year in the classroom. I got my teaching job on a conditional intern credential. This meant that I was teaching during the day and going to school at night to learn how to teach. Unlike a traditional credentialing program, there was no master teacher in the room with me, in case things slid off the rail. My only hope was that whatever I forgot or messed up would be covered in that evening's lesson. "No, Mister Caven, it probably wasn't a good idea to hand those third graders each a copy of A Farewell To Arms and tell them that they would probably figure it out in time."

I didn't do that, by the way. On the contrary. I was much more likely to be the one asking for clarification for the third time before I did anything. I was cautious and careful, not wanting to teach a batch of kids the wrong way to do anything. So now I find myself turning back the pages to the days when I first learned how to teach reading, and though it seems familiar I also feel the pressure of every child's future success riding on these half hour lessons. Over the course of my career I have been asked if I miss being "a real teacher." I tend to bristle a bit at this distinction, but I also understand the underlying meaning. We call this "subtext," but not in elementary school. And the answer is "yes." That's why I accepted the opportunity to bring a world of sounds and symbols and words and paragraphs and chapters and books to life for my young charges. 

They'll find Hemingway on their own, I suspect.