When I was given the assignment for the creation of various blogs with a main or central theme in mind I did not know where to begin. I scrambled ideas down but did not know where I was heading. I decided to focus my blog on illiteracy in schools. The idea did not simply come to me, rather it was through experience that I decided the topic. I volunteer every other day at the GRYC downtown and started noticing a pattern in the kids who attend. The kids who wish to work on their homework struggle to read when I ask them to read me their assignment sheet of the suggested homework. They stumble over basic words and all too commonly look at me with confused faces as if saying “Help?” I want to shoot questions at them like “Why are you struggling?” “What are you feeling, frustrated, used to this feeling of struggle?” But I just smile at them, help them figure out and understand the word (s) and move on, wishing I could do and know more.
It is when they look at me with those faces that I realize illiteracy in schools is the topic I wish to further look into and write about. It pertains to what I see at volunteering, and the future students I may have. Questions rose in my mind when I decided to take on the topic: Who is to blame for this problem, if anyone? Why is illiteracy such a problem in schools and what is being done to change it? And many more questions which I hope to through various articles answer. I am excited to have finally picked and narrowed my thoughts down to a coherent topic which is of great interest to me as a future teacher. I hope to always be knowledgable about the world and the problems we all face in education, and I believe this is one topic which it is important to be informed about.
I choose the feeds from The New York Times, and The Washington Post as my two major news sources. My search under Google News is for “Illiteracy in Schools”. I believe the variety of sources will allow me to search through numerous articles and gain a well rounded view of the topic.
