Saturday, January 24, 2009

I Can See Clearly Now!



Thanks to my new lime green reading glasses, Lenscrafter and Vogue. Okay, so it set me back almost $300! I finally broke down and did it. I went for my eye exam and decided that the little $1 readers from the Dollar Tree were no longer going to carry the reading load I have before me. I have just begun the daunting task of undoing the cart before the horse, and am rearranging the steed and putting it in front of the cart, which is what I should have done many a year ago. You see, I am enrolled in the Reading Endorsement program at UWStout, that is the University of Wisconsin Stout, a distant learning program.

The Cart before the horse scenario is simply this; I have been teaching literacy, that is reading and writing for many years now. I did not set out to, actually I am highly qualified in History, but there is a shortage of teachers, or a glut in the history, actually social studies teacher market. So in 2001 I was assigned the task of teaching literacy through the America's Choice program funded and developed by the NCEE, National Council on Economic Education. Why would they care about literacy? Well, they are concerned as there is an even greater shortage of people who can manifest a document worth producing to an executive team. So, if you want literate executives, you better educate the next generation, right?

After a four years of training and the attaining of a MAE in curriculum and instruction, I went on to work in the area of literacy integration for a non-traditional education program at a museum in Chicago. Now, I am again teaching literacy remediation and without an "endorsement." The lovely and limiting No Child Left Behind, has left many a veteran, trained educator behind. So now I am back in school paying yet another University a large sum of money to obtain an endorsement in an area that I have presented, and authored in and taught! Go figure, only in America!

Oh, the green glasses...I have many books to read and unfortunately, I have discovered that my eyesight is failing at a much greater rate than our reading scores! Eeeewww, not good, hey, maybe my glasses will help me read, and my "endorsement" will raise a few scores.

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