As I reflect upon my reading experiences, I feel very grateful for all of the influences which I had early on in life that led me to love reading. Because of the people who encouraged me to read, I eventually decided that I want to be a school librarian, which I have done as my minor in college. I want to be a school librarian because I want to share my love of reading with my students and encourage and inspire them to open the world of good books. I also want to help them to be critical thinkers and lifelong learners.
I think of myself as a "good reader", whatever that label really means. As far as I am aware, I don't think that there is a strict definition of "good reader", but that each individual has to decipher for themselves what this label, or any other, truly means. To me, it means that I can read well, and although I may not be the fastest reader, I take the time to comprehend and indulge in the topics about which I read. I started to read when I was very young and, throughout elementary school, I was told that I was a very good reader.
I like to read books in general, as long as they are clean and wholesome. I particularly love to read children's books, anything from picture books to young adult fiction. My favorite genres are mystery, fantasy, and historical fiction. I also love to read factual books, like books on history, biographies, and the encyclopedia. I absolutely loved reading in elementary school because we read a lot of fun fiction books. I have always loved to read outside of school anytime that I have a spare moment because I can choose my own reading material and read at my own pace. I love to read for my own enjoyment, but I don't mind discussing or writing a paper/reflection on a book if I like it.
I think that I started to dislike reading in school when I hit about 5th grade. If I remember correctly, this is the point at which I began to be assigned a fair amount of textbook reading. Reading a textbook was so much different than reading the types of books that I usually had with me. The format of the text was very different, and my teachers were making me read about subjects that didn't necessarily hold my interest. I think that the main thing I had trouble with was switching from a narrative writing style to a strictly factual and wordy writing style, which we have discussed in class will often happen to students in elementary school.
My family is probably the main social network which encouraged me to read and continue reading. As you already know from my introduction (and my autobiography), my grandfather taught me how to read, and my family has always been very supportive and influential in my reading development. I also had a few teachers who were supportive of my like for reading, and they gave me encouragement at school by suggesting good books to read. I don't really feel that I had any social networks who opposed my efforts to read.
As a mathematics educator, I hope to be able to instill a love of reading in my students. I want to be able to support them in reading in general, as well as in my own discipline. I think that it will be important for me to choose texts that aren't too wordy, to define new words that my students may not know so that they can remain engaged in learning, and to find texts that cross disciplines in order to gain their interest. I think that it will also be important to choose texts which create a safe classroom environment, as well as to share texts that cover and are beneficial to all of the different reading levels which my students will bring with them into the classroom. In these ways, I hope to be able to build my students' self-perceptions of themselves, their confidence in their abilities, and their interest in mathematics.
