Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (Summer 2011)

Hello. My name is Leslie Rothenberger and I currently teach fourth grade in Catawba County. I spent the first 15 years of my career teaching kindergarten and the last two in fourth grade. I am married and have one daughter.

My mother taught reading and she instilled in me a love of books from infancy. As a small child I knew that bedtime was synonymous with story time. Mom and I would sit in the old green rocker and she would read me a bible story and nursery rhymes. As I began to fall asleep, she would usually end with “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” by Eugene Field. As I grew older and memorized the stories, I began to read them to mom. After this came Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss and Archie comic books. How the Grinch Stole Christmas was one of my all-time favorites. Even when I came home from college, Mom and the Grinch were waiting.

When I was in first grade the reading instruction I received was centered around Dick, Jane, and Sally. We also had a reading center with bean bag chairs and that was where I spent most of my free time. I loved to sit there and read! As I became a proficient, independent reader, I discovered my favorite genre – mysteries. My new best friends were Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. They filled my book cases and occasionally a Hardy Boy would join them! This is still my favorite genre today.

As a teacher, I want to instill this same love of books and reading in my students. I love teaching reading and it always breaks my heart to see a child struggling with learning to read. What is it that makes it so easy for some students and seemingly impossible for others? The desire to reach these struggling readers led me to the graduate program at ASU. I believe that I am a better teacher of reading and that the knowledge I have gained in this program will help me reach more and more of those struggling readers. I am better able to diagnose reading difficulties and differentiate my instruction to address specific problems.

Having taught both kindergarten and fourth grade, I feel that it is easier to motivate kindergarten students to read and write. By the time they reach fourth grade, some of them have become so discouraged that it is extremely difficult to motivate and engage them in reading and writing activities. Grades and standardized testing have taken away their self-confidence and have made them afraid and unwilling to read or write.

I hope that I will be able to use the best practices that I have learned in my graduate studies to reverse these negative attitudes and feelings about reading. I believe that reading aloud is one effective strategy that can be used to help me reach this goal. I just finished reading The BFG to my students and even my most reluctant readers were enthralled. They looked forward to that time each day and begged for more.

Now that I am the mom, I hope that I have instilled this same love of reading in my daughter. Bedtime is still synonymous with story time, but Kinsey does all the reading now!

Leslie Rothenberger