What Ignited My Passion for Teaching Written Language Skills

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What ignited my passion for the teaching of written language skills? I attended Lehman College, a division of the City University of New York right after the Vietnam War. At that time, New York City was in a dire financial crisis. The job outlook for educators was dismal so public colleges in New York were not allowing college students to declare education as their major. They needed to find an alternative.

Simultaneously the reading scores of New York City students as measured by the Metropolitan Reading Test by Harcourt, Brace and World Inc. were significantly below the national average. If you pursued education as a minor, you were required to take multiple reading classes.

While I was taking the education required classes I also began to take classes in speech and language as I then was declaring speech-language pathology and audiology as my major. I will never forget a reading class in which the professor showed the development of oral language and then the subsequent development of written language comparing these two systems.

The development of language both oral and written has become my life’s passion both in working with students on their development as well as refining my own diagnostic and therapeutic skills in this area.

It may be that from the beginning of my understanding of the reading process it was so closely married to the information I was learning in my speech and language that I have never thought of them as separate systems.

The speech and language pathologist’s national organization the American Speech and Language Association (ASHA) has reading and writing as part of our scope of practice. It is my favorite part of my job.

I have the best job. There are two magical times in my work. I love hearing a child say their first word. I love witnessing a child excited about the first book they have been able to read by themselves.

My favorite lessons are read-aloud units I do with whole classrooms. It provides opportunities to work on tier two vocabulary within a context, story grammar, and listening comprehension skills. We finish the unit off with a writing prompt connected to the story. This makes the connection between language and reading more evident.