Kyra Woodyard - March/April Blog: Chapter 12 Routman

I believe the title to this chapter is most definitely fitting to this time of the year; "You Only Have So Much Time." This is the most literal statement to be made for anybody in the teaching profession, the work never ends and there is never enough time. I wonder sometimes if being a teacher means you have to sacrifice an outside life to be successful. Even as a first year teacher I can see how easily one could get tired while having a family, raising kids, and going back to school. Even as a first year teacher I feel overwhelmed on a daily basis, constantly questioning if I am working too much or too little compared to my peers around me. I say this time and time again that I feel like my downfall as a first year teacher is that I was unable to stay after school in the afternoons to prepare for the following day. I feel as if I am living day-by-day in this profession because I never feel prepared. I thank myself for taking on coaching for that one. Lesson learned, goodbye coaching, hello better teacher at least that is what I keep telling myself...

Routman mentions in this chapter teachers should make learning as meaningful as possible, do not waste time doing unwanted, unnecessary work that do not benefit your students, instead find work that engages students but does not wear you down. She also mentions keeping work simple, I think we forget about simple nowadays. We want everything to be NEW and with technology but sometimes the simpler something is the more a student may enjoy it and it sure does take a huge burden off of yourself. 

Routman talks about always being able to evaluate your students during the day, there is always time to do this, especially during independent reading, pop a squat with a kid in the floor and listen to them read, as them comphrension questions, this is a great way to stay involved, evaluate a student, and still make sure they are on task. 

I loved how Routman talks about do not just teaching reading during the allotted "reading time" teaching it in Science and Social Studies. I already do this almost every day not even relaxing I am teaching reading. When you have so much content to cover in a short amount of time you learn to improvise, it is nice to know what I am doing to get through content is benefitting my kids. I could not tell you have many non-fiction and information texts have been read in my classroom during science and social studies. 

I have enjoyed reading chapters from Reading Essentials by Regie Routman and I plan to implement some things I have learned so far into my classroom next year. I love the idea of having a mystery word every week, this allows students to be introduced to words they would not ordinarily being introduced to.