Rationale
I fell in love with biography in the second grade. My elementary school was home to a branch of the city's public library. Each week, my class would pay a visit to that library, just as my class does now. The only difference between my weekly library visits and those of the children of the school where I teach is that our school library is called a media center and is not open to the public.
In my first visit to our little public library in second grade, I was greeted by a brand new section in the library. This area was dedicated to "Biography: 100 Famous American Stories." I was immediately curious about this thing called "Biography," and asked my teacher about it. She explained that they were simply true stories of the lives of important people. She seemed very excited by my interest, and with her encouragement I decided to try to read one and see what they were like. I checked out a biography of Amelia Earhart.
I spent that first week struggling a bit with this new type of book. Even as I was struggling, I was engrossed in "seeing" a life unfolding before my very eyes as I eagerly read word after word. This was different from the picture books and beginning chapter fiction books I had been reading. There was something about knowing the story was "true" that drew me in. I could know what it was like to be somebody else – and a famous somebody at that.
After Amelia Earhart, I could not stop reading biographies. Week after week, I delighted in standing before the Biography section, looking at the cover notes, and choosing whose life I would find myself immersed in next. Over the school year, and throughout the summer, I made my way through those one hundred biographies. My rate of consumption jumped dramatically from reading only one book per week to checking out two and sometimes even three at once. I was living and learning the lives in those biographies; more importantly, I was learning not only how to read, but to want to read, and how exciting that feels.
The very last book I read in the series, I had purposely saved for last. The final biography I read was that of President John F. Kennedy. It was written shortly after he became president, but before he was assassinated. I remember reading it with a sense of sadness, as it was just a few years after his death. All the symbols and imagery of his funeral proceedings were still in the forefront of my mind. Somehow, it seemed a fitting end to my journey through that series of biographies.
However, it was not an ending, but a beginning. After reading all of those biographies, I found myself addicted. I may have read other types of books in my elementary years, but those I remember most were the biographies. Something about being able to see the world as others may have seen it through their eyes, watching them grow, and follow their destinies made me believe that maybe someday, I could achieve something, maybe not as grand and monumental as their achievements, but that in my own way, I could be important, too. I would like to pass on that feeling of hope to my students.
I lived in a different world from the one my students live in today. Although my family was not wealthy, it was intact. The desire to read was something I craved long before I set foot in a school. I was fortunate to have a relationship with books. For as far back as I can remember, there were books in our home. My mother read to my brothers and me each day with great relish. Some of the books were read to us time and time again, but each time seemed like the first time. No one ever told me that reading was important. I intuited it, and could not wait for school to come, so I too would be privy to that secret code.
As a first grade teacher, I have many responsibilities. However, the paramount responsibility set before me each year is teaching my students to read. This instruction is often met with resistance. For many of my students, the values of education and reading are foreign concepts. Most of their parents never finished high school, for any number of reasons: incarceration, pregnancy, lack of resources and support, working for meager wages to augment their family income, frustration. Some of my immigrant parents lacked access to education in their native countries. The overall result of this, no matter what the cause, is that many may lack a connection and a reason to believe in something they consider being a futile pursuit. It is therefore incumbent upon me to not only teach the five pillars of literacy, but to also provide an answer to the question, "Why do we need to read?" It is my wish to cross the curriculum from language arts to history in order to provide that answer. We will examine the "literacy biography" of each great American as they are introduced to the children, and then follow that introduction with the story of their rise to prominence. My goal is for the children to discover how lives are transformed by journeys into literacy and discover the role it can play in destiny.
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