Jaime Steading's Blog Post 4--Routman Chapt. 4: Teach with a Sense of Urgency

Teaching with urgency is not "prompted by anxiety but rather about making every moment in the classroom count...."  Routman opens her chapter with this important statement and she is right.  We need to make every moment count.  Whether we are assessing, teaching, reviewing, or even transitioning, every moment of every day is important.  We need to make the most of it if we really want to see our students grow.  

Routman goes on to explain how we can make these moments count, in the way we teach reading, by discussing the Optimal Learning Model.  She gives informative explanations of demonstration, shared demonstration, guided practice, and independent practice.  I appreciated this review as I often forget the components of shared demonstration and tend to neglect this in my own classroom.  I usually either demonstrate, guide, or have independent practice.  The reading curriculum I am currently using incorporates a lot of shared demonstrations, and for this I am grateful.  It has been a great guide to help me get more comfortable and confident with this method.  

Another point that Routman discusses is the importance of integrating skills and not just teaching them in isolation.  This is something I have thought about for a few years now.  When I taught preschool, we had one teacher that wanted to move our preschool program in this direction and we had several teachers that wanted to continue to teach letters and sounds in isolation.  I saw the benefits of both and have always been on the fence about this.  Routman makes some very interesting arguments towards focusing more on language acquisition and other integrated skills.  She states, "Isolated drilling in the basics hampers low performing students because they fail to learn how to process new information effectively."  She also states that "students don't understand how the skills they are learning in isolation apply to other contexts".  I find this latter statement of particular interest because students with autism have a difficult time generalizing information learned to other contexts, yet we are often trained and taught to teach skills in isolation and then generalize them to other contexts.  I am interested to see if integrating skills from the beginning would benefit children with autism as well.  

Routman closes the chapter by saying, "Kids never let me down, no matter where I teach."  I think that's the mark of a great teacher.  Is there a magic answer or pill?  No.  The answer is to just teach. Expect your students to achieve, model your expectations, give them support, guide them when they struggle, and cheer for them when they succeed.  Finally, and most importantly to me, love them.  No matter what obstacles you face, if you expect your students to grow and learn, they will.  If you love them and they know that you do, they will work hard and will grow and learn in spite of those obstacles.  I have the amazing opportunity to witness this often in the field of special education.  It's what keeps me going most days.  When you see that "ah-ha" moment in a student's eyes.  When they smash through that barrier to do what once seemed impossible.  This is why the urgency is there.