Caroline Smith - Blog Post #5: "Teach With a Sense of Urgency"

When I hear the word “urgent” I think of hurry, so this chapter really made me rethink how I view it. Routman says that she does not mean for teachers to teach from anxiety but in reality I think all teachers battle with that at some time. With all of the assessments and portfolios and expectations, it is hard to not get anxious over what we have to accomplish. But Routman reminds us that that kind of teaching is what can hurt our students and ourselves. Teachers should be excited and happy when they come to work, but sometimes everything else gets in the way of that one simple thing. The deadlines can keep us from really taking the time to work with our students and move them forward. I do not want to become the teacher who selfishly hurries the lessons just to say I did them and move to the next thing. It’s important to make every moment count with these students, especially at an at-risk program. We must constantly be aware of where students are, where they need to be, and what we need to do to get them there.  Part of teaching with a sense of urgency includes keeping expectations high for our students.  Teachers must include high-level thinking, problem solving, and questioning within their instruction. When Routman talked about “Focus on Language Acquisition, Not Just Letters and Sounds” I was surprised. I agree with the fact that students have to understand stories and written language before they can pay attention to print. It was interesting to about the “fourth-grade slump” and how beneficial oral language development is to future literacy skills. I cannot let my sense of anxiety and pressure be a pitfall in my students' literacy development.