Burning out?

              Teacher burnout is an often overlooked topic in teacher preparation and advancement programs.  In fact, after 4 years of undergraduate work, 2 years earning a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education, 3 internships, and 3 years of post graduate work, THIS is the first time that teacher burnout has come up as a discussion focus in an academic setting for me.  While teacher burnout is a relatively large problem, it is interesting how easily we overlook it.  I enjoyed reading Nan Nassef’s personal narrative on teacher burnout and felt connections to many of the points that she made.

                I think the rate of teacher burnout is affected greatly by the level of support that the teacher has.  This may be support at home and support from friends or loved ones, but most importantly the level of support the teacher has at school.  No matter what children a teacher works with (and let’s face it, some students bring about burnouts more than others) if I teacher has support and outlets to deal with the daily stresses of teaching than they might make it without burning out.  For example, the school I currently teach in is tremendously supportive from the administration, to the parents, to the fellow teachers.  There are many teachers working here that have been here 20-30 years!  On the other hand, my first internship was in a school in Boston which was considered “failing” and had virtually no support.  Teachers left there all the time, even in the middle of the school year.  Other teachers who felt they had to stay took out their stresses on the kids. 

                What can we really do to help avoid burnouts?  I agree that sometimes meeting up for a drink with colleagues to get your complaints out or even talk about life outside of school can be VERY therapeutic.  I also think that, whenever possible, you should try to leave school issues at school and spend time outside of school doing other activities.  You need to try to be balanced.  It is impossible to stay emotionally separated from the kids and your class, but you have to learn what is within your control and what is out.  Take the time to make emotional connections with children and colleagues, but don’t make it your entire focus.  I hope that by following these guidelines and staying in a wonderfully supportive school I will be able to avoid a burnout!

Nassef, N.A. (2009). I shouldn’t be telling you this – a story of teacher burnout and attrition.

13 Educational Insights,(4).Retrieved from: http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v13n04/articles/nassef/index.html

Digital Readers for Young Readers?

             This week’s article on the use of digital readers in the classroom opened my eyes to a new use of technology in the classroom.  While I have experienced using different types of technology in the classroom I have never really considered the use of Kindles and other digital readers with students.  Based on the article, it sounds like there are many benefits to using these devices with students, particularly increasing student motivation, providing an opportunity for students to respond to the text while reading, and providing reading assistance for developing readers.

  I must admit that I have been a holdout with the whole digital reader trend and find that I am reluctant to trade the feel and familiarity of an actual book with a digital device.  Although I think it is important that students learn to enjoy books, it seems that we may be at the beginning of the phase out of actual paper texts.  Digital readers can be very convenient and useful for students and we might just see their popularity in the classroom increase.  Who knows?  Maybe one day we won’t even assess certain text feature understanding with students such as which way to hold a book or how to turn pages and other reading behaviors. 

At first when reading this article I also thought that digital readers would merely be a substitute for an actual book.  As I read I realized that there are many features available to help developing readers.  I think these would be great to use with students who perhaps have higher comprehension abilities but who my still be developing their fluency.  I worried about the computer reader feature but was delighted to hear that the two students studied did not end up using this feature much.  It seemed like this feature was more useful to the developing reader with lesser skills.  I thought their comments were significant as they showed that the transfer of a book onto a computer screen did not take away the reader enjoyment features in replace of visual/auditory stimulation.  The students still enjoyed telling the story in their head and hearing it from someone else ruined it.  I, like so many others, have often felt the same way after reading a book and then seeing the movie. 

I do not feel that digital readers would be very useful in my classroom of kindergarteners at this point, although depending on the books available and certain applications it could develop into a useful tool for all readers.  Curious, I went onto Amazon to see what children's books are available for the Kindle and was surprised to see many young children's books have been adapted.  I have seen young children using alphabet or phonics games on iphones and ipads, and I suppose that these too will soon be used in classrooms as another practice modality.  I think we do need to be careful just how much screen time we expose our children to, but I am excited to keep up with the potential growth of digital readers in classrooms to see just how great their potential can be.  

Larson, L. C.  (2010).  Digital readers: the next chapter in e-book reading and response.  The Reading Teacher, 64(1).  Retrieved from: http://cte.jhu.edu/ELC3/Uploads/ELC_78/Ebook_readers.pdf

Creating Comprehenders

“Comprehension is the goal of reading” (Tompkins, 2010) whether it’s when choosing an option from a menu, finding out what is happing in your local news, or reading a story for pleasure.  We read to learn something, to be entertained, or to perform a task of some sort.  We must put all of our background knowledge, phonemic awareness, vocabulary understanding, semantic knowledge, etc together in order to read and understand a text.  The fact that comprehension is typically the most challenging aspect of reading to master is dependent on the fact that it is the most involved process.  Tompkins describes that it is most definitely a process of behaviors that happen over some time in order for readers to have a deep understanding. 

            As teachers we are made aware of the many strategies related to comprehension and the many ways we can try to teach these strategies to our students.  I recognize that I perform many of these strategies as I read without even really thinking about them.  The argument between strategy instruction and content instruction lead me to think back on my own reading instruction.  I wish that I could remember more of how I learned to read and to be successful at comprehending what I was reading.  I do not remember being explicitly taught to use different strategies, but I am sure that I was in some way. 

            As I do think back on my own reading development I remember just loving to read.  I remember talking about the books I was reading with my parents or even my grandparents.  I remember sharing books with friends, acting out stories with friends, collecting whole series of books, and even pretending to write small stories based on some of my favorite books.  I think a lot of comprehension development does not necessarily happen in the classroom but through developing a love of reading and learning and sharing that with others.  My parents read to me all the time when I was little, but they also continued to stay involved in my reading as I grew up.  They talked to me not only about what I was reading but what I was doing, or other people were doing, or the news, or just about anything.  They let me ask questions and told me when they didn’t know the answer.  My parents took me places where I could have fun, but also where I could learn something.  This background knowledge and promotion to think about things beyond what is seen on the surface became embedded in me and beyond having a series of fabulous teachers, I don’t think I could have gotten the same experience strictly from school.  Perhaps we should look more towards outreach programs, after school programs, mentoring programs, or parent education programs to help create initiatives for better educating our students and making it fun instead of simply choking more strategies and facts and information into students during the school day. 




Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA:

                  Pearson Education, Inc.