The Excitement In Early Childhood Literacy

Early childhood literacy development has been one of the most eye-opening areas of study in my pre-service teacher education. The responsibility of assisting young children along the literacy path can be overwhelming at times. Deciding, as an educator, what lessons deserve more time than others and which students need more assistance than others can be a daily struggle; however, being in the classroom and seeing the difference that literacy makes in a young students life is incredible. I imagine the struggles of “perfecting” my craft, as a future educator, will give way to the joys that each day in the classroom will bring. During the brief time that I’ve been in the classroom, I’ve seen primary-aged students turn a corner in regards to their reading ability. In just three months, an English language learner went from struggling with the language to writing me a goodbye letter thanking me for reading Frog and Toad with him. These are the joys that make me want to be in the classroom everyday. Towards the end of my field experience, I started to wonder what I was missing on the days that I was not in my classroom. Who was making a meteoric rise through their leveled books or continuing their path towards fluency in their chapter books. It’s exciting to know that as an educator you can have a direct impact on a young child’s life. This can be a stunning thought at first, but when you see how literacy affects every aspect of your students’ lives, you quickly realize that it’s a responsibility worth having.

The different techniques and literacies that I have learned about this semester are very encouraging going forward. I feel more confident now that even in a strictly structured literacy program, there are opportunities to bring different literacies into the mix. Whether that is print-based, digital, interactive, storytelling, play, etc., the opportunities seem endless; it’s just knowing how to implement those techniques in such a way that you’re furthering your students’ literacy development.

The importance of keeping students engaged cannot be overstated. As is true with any subject, students are not going to learn if they are not intellectually engaged in the activity. As a future educator, I understand the need to truly know your students. By taking the time to know your students, you will be able to connect with them by keeping books in your classroom library that interest them, having props available that they can use to play, or be able to talk to them about things that interest them. These seemingly simple ideas can be the difference between a student with outstanding literacy skills and a child that learns to dislike all aspects of literacy. The responsibility of keeping students engaged in literacy falls squarely on the shoulders of educators. While this might have been a scary thought four months ago, I now find it exciting and ultimately worth the struggle.