I am just reflecting on my future role as a reading specialist. With my advanced degree in reading, what would be my new position? You would be entrusted with the responsibility to prevent reading failures in schools! A little voice inside my head is telling me that. What a tremendous task! I "google" the term to enlighten myself further on the role of a reading specialist.
Teaching all children to read requires that every child receives excellent reading instruction and that the children who are struggling receive additional instruction from professionals specifically trained to teach them. Teaching all children to read also requires specialist in every school because the range of student achievement with inclusive secondary education requires different educational models from those of the past.
To provide effective reading services, schools must have reading specialists who can provide expert instruction, assessment and leadership for the reading programme. If reading specialists have responsibility for readers in general and struggling readers in particular, then we need many more reading specialists than ninety.
According to The International Reading Association, the reading specialist supports and extends classroom teaching and works collaboratively to implement a balanced reading programme that is research-based and meets the students' needs. I wonder, how many schools can a reading specialist work with effectively? Assessment and diagnosis are vital not only for developing, implementing and evaluating the literacy programme but also in designing instruction for individual students. In addition to teachers and parents, would specialized personnel such as psychologists, special educators, or speech teachers work along with the reading specialist?
I believe that the introduction of laptops to form one students will assist in helping the work of Reading Specialists. It is a starting point as the laptops can be used by the students to begin the new era in technology as a form of instruction. ICT and education,though evolving, is the way forward as sited in a Reading Teacher's Journal that i read, that our students who were born in the nineties and onwards, have been born into a world where technology has driven them from an early age. The toys they played with such as Nintendo, Play Station and even online video games are all computer and technology based.The terms keyboard, mouse, hardware, software, flash drive,internet, email and so on are quite familiar to them. It is the teachers who now have to do the catching up to meet the students at their level. While some teachers look at the technology with disdain the reality is that they too have benefited from automated banking and hybrid cars. In simple terms technology has infiltrated every thing that we do and has helped us to attain the standard of living which we have today. MRI's, CT scans monitors for heart and blood sugar and the list goes on. With this in mind it is easier to see why our students are accustomed to technology being around them. They were born into it and so we have a golden opportunity to meet their needs through the use of ICT's. Our biggest challenge may lie, not in acquiring the technology but in getting teachers who are accustomed to chalk and talk to buy into the education process using ICT's. The job of the Reading Specialist therefore becomes a very serious one as it is he or she who must coordinate the training of the teachers and the teaching of the students to facilitate a seamless transition into the technologies and techniques of the twenty first century.
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