My name is Rissa Killen, and I am a retired secondary English Language Arts teacher. I taught for 32 years in the public school system, everything from 7th through 12th grade. Additionally, I taught drama, debate, compensatory reading, and compensatory writing. I was the English department chair the last three years that I taught. For several years I was our school district's English curriculum representative and helped to write curriculum geared toward our state's English Language Arts guidelines, including Common Core. I have a B.S.E. degree in English.
Over the years I have worked under many different guidelines/standards/curriculums. It seems that every few years, the powers that be want to reinvent the wheel. I have tried numerous activities, theories, and finally found those things that worked best for me and allowed my students to be successful.
One thing I have always believed is that, regardless of what is going on with the powers that be, students must come first in education. I have always been driven as an educator by a question one of my former principals once asked me: Is it in the best interest of your students? Everything else is just for show. What do you think is important to make your students successful? Yes, they must be successful on standardized tests. However, we as educators must never forget that there is a world outside of standardized tests, and students must be prepared for that as well.
As an ELA teacher, I sat down and decided to really think about what my students needed to learn from me. In addition to whatever curriculum guidelines I was given, these ideas became the guiding force in my classroom.
1. I needed to somehow engender in my students a love of independent reading. Not reading for a test, or research, or to learn something. Reading for the sheer joy of it. Reading is like a sport. You must practice it if you're going to be any good at it. The more you read, the better you get at it. It broke my heart when students bragged that they had never read a single book all the way through. So I began doing some research and became a fan of people like Jim Trelease, Nancy Atwell, Joyce Pilgreen, Harvey Daniels, and Jim Burke, who really espoused the benefits of independent reading.
2. I also needed to help my students learn to communicate in such a way that their ideas were understandable and enjoyable to read. This included expanding their vocabularies, assisting them with their grammar skills, teaching them to develop voice, and helping them to learn to organize their ideas into a coherent whole.
3. I had to find a way to help my students with issues unrelated to my subject matter as well. They had to be able to organize, to work cooperatively, to speak to a group, to research ideas, to recognize good sources, and to use technology. But also they also needed to understand how to laugh at themselves, not to judge others, to be kind and polite, to listen to others' opinions, and to formulate arguments.
Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? I know I'm not alone in understanding that the English Language Arts classroom includes soooo much more than just reading literature, writing essays, and working grammar activities. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. But I love it. There is nothing in the world like really reaching a student. Seeing their eyes light up when you praise something they've written. Or listening to them discuss the books their reading and asking for me to order new ones.
I know teaching can sometimes feel like an exercise in futility. Between parents, admin, politicians, and community leaders, teachers are tugged in so many different directions. We get all the blame when things go wrong and little praise when things go well. But we do it. Because we love it.
I loved it until the day I retired.
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