Imagine: You're reading, but you don't understand. Nothing makes sense, but you keep going. Things get harder; you can't fake it anymore. You drop out. Years later, you decide to go back. Your first stop is a reading class that teaches you strategies so you can start to understand and like what you
Most of my kids come from homes in which education is not a priority.
Often, drugs, alcohol or gangs take precedence. When I ask them to tell me about their first memory of being read to, they rarely tell of bedtime stories or sitting on mom or dad's lap. Their first recollection is in either preschool or grade school. My kids are smart, but they have been lacking in opportunities to tap into all that intelligence and creativity. Their vocabularies are so lacking that it keeps them from understanding books that are well-below their grade levels. When low vocabulary is combined with no reading strategies, the result is a person who is ill-equipped to comprehend what he/she is reading. This then leads to a person who thinks he/she is not very smart, but they don't want anyone else to know that. So, they begin to build up defenses and ways of avoiding anything that could reveal that weakness. When they arrive in my room, they have well-fortified walls built up for me to break down.
My Project
I will be teaching three periods of the same class. Though our class sizes are small, I still need at least 50 of each book to ensure that all students have one when they are in my class. I also want them to be able to take them with them, especially when they beg me because they HAVE to know what's going to happen next. It also allows them to use sticky notes to mark questions, unknown words, or reactions to what they are reading. Finally, my kids are very sensitive to the fact that they don't have their own things. My best guess (based on previous work experience in CPS) is that there have always been 10-15 more of them than there were books. I think that tells kids right off the bat that they aren't important, and they pick up on that, especially mine. I believe I have the smartest kids who early on recognized the unfairness of the situation and have been mad ever since. My kids have many things to be concerned about. Having their own book for a class shouldn't be one of them.
There is something wrong with kids as smart as mine not being able to understand what they are reading.
Yes, my kids are drop-outs and many of them have been in trouble in some way, but I can't help but wonder if that wouldn't be the case had they had different opportunities. So, I present them an opportunity to move from feeling like a failure and hating reading to actually wanting to read a book on the way home on the bus. Can this then lead to them seeing college in their futures? I hope so!
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