RES 5535: Race, Class, and Gender in Literacy Research (summer 2010)

My name is Natalie Enns and I am currently teaching 1st grade at Easton Elementary School in Winston Salem. I am completing my 3rd year as a teacher and I love it.
I graduated from Western Connecticut State University with my Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education in 2007. After teaching for 2 years I decided that it was time to further my education and this past January, started taking classes towards my Master’s in Education. I think that teaching reading is the most important thing that you can teach to a child. In my school so many students come from a non- English speaking background so for them reading is a struggling. I find so much joy when a student comes to be not being able to read, and when they leave at the end of the year has made so much growth in reading!

As a child I read by the time I was 5 years old. My parents instilled in me a love for reading and we read all the time. I read during the school year and then we had to read during summer vacation. My mom and dad both worked. My mom worked out of the house and would always find time to listen to me read. One thing that she would do was I had to tell her what my book was about when I was done. I couldn’t just say “mom I’m done”. She’d say, “Ok now tell me about it” and I’d have to tell her what I read about. During the summer my mom would pay us 1 penny for each page that we read as an “allowance” for the summer but in order to get that money we would have to tell her what we read about. That taught me how to read and understand what I am reading instead of just read. I still love to read and when I am in a good series (whether fiction or non-fiction) I could get lost in it for hours. I remember reading to a kindergarten aid during free time and I loved it! I loved that someone would take time out of her day to just listen to me read “Dick and Jane”. That has always stuck with me during my time as a teacher. I love to find time in my day to let a child just read to me for fun and they love it as well!

I find that teaching reading is a difficult thing for me to do. I find that my students can “word call” but when I ask them what they read about, they have a very hard time articulating that to me. I am learning more and more how to teach them good comprehension skills. The main goal that I have when I teach reading is for my students to walk away with a love for reading. I try to instill in them a love and a passion. We read all sorts of genre in 1st grade, and I try to get them to pick what they like reading the most. The greatest joy I have is when my students have some time after they are done with their centers or during a rainy day when we can’t go outside, and I look over in the library and I see students reading and interacting with each other about what they are reading. To me, that is what teaching is all about!

Natalie Enns