Past Learning Experiences

Well, I have to admit that I have no clue how I learned language and how to read. I remember read circles in the first grade, my mother and father reading to me when I was younger, and many vocabulary lists throughout elementary school, but I can't recall how I was taught how to read. I have always loved books and literature, so I'm sad that I can't remember how it was that I came to know how to read them.

My fourth grade teacher used to have three bookshelves in her classroom, granted, her classroom was in a weird corner, so this resulted in her having one of the bigger classrooms in the school, so I lucked out having her as a teacher. Fourth grade is when I started picking up books one after the other, and I believe it was because books were readily available to me in her classroom. Since I have seen how this experience has positively impacted my learning experience, I want to have bookshelves in my classroom so that students can check out books on their own time. From fourth grade to eleventh grade, I read very often and loved it. During my junior year in high school, I found myself not liking literature and not enjoying reading- especially during my English class. My eleventh grade English teacher was not helpful to students and, sadly, didn't encourage students to exceed to all of their potential. Due to this experience, I've realized that I DO NOT want to be a teacher like her at all. (I know this is a "haterade" on this teacher, and I do apologize...) I want my classroom to be a positive learning environment in which students are not afraid to ask questions and learn all they can to succeed to the best of their abilities (even though this is cliche, this is my goal.) Even if I only change one student's view of English, I will be happy, even though, I would like to change many many students' view of English...