Frederick Douglass: How My Teachers Changed My Life

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How My Teachers Changed My Life "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." - Frederick Douglass. Mr. Douglass could not be any more correct with this statement; the best gift you could ever give a child is teaching them how to read. Learning to read is one of the greatest achievements a child will make in their lifetime. Not only does reading allow someone to become a fully functioning member of society, but it also grants them the ability to read any book they please. My journey of becoming the reader I am today has been guided along by many teachers throughout my education. The most influential reading teachers that I can recall having in elementary school were Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Bloomfield. Mrs. Potter assisted all of the kindergarteners …show more content…

I had a teacher named Mrs. Coons for my 6th grade reading class. We didn’t always get along, but I do credit her for being the first teacher to get me to start thinking a little more about the reading material that had been placed in front of me. Mrs. Coons attempted to get us to get our feet wet in the idea pool of being analytical readers, but I struggled and never tried to work harder on the concept of it. Even though I always excelled at reading and understanding the basic purpose of what I read, I never understood that there were deeper meanings as to why an author wrote a book. This is what led to my downfall as a reader. Once my teachers began pushing us to do more than just read a book for fun, I fell behind the rest of my class. In 8th grade, I had another reading teacher that assisted me on my journey of becoming the reader I am today. Miss Levon began introducing books that were not only a higher lexile, but also required some deeper comprehension to the text. She insisted that we read Animal Farm, and I can remember detesting it. I had been informed that the book was a satire of the Russian Revolution, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant and how it impacted the storyline. I knew that there was more to the book than talking animals living on a farm, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly that …show more content…

My English teacher, Mrs. Keener, assigned selections of text for homework, and the next day we would undergo a discussion called a socratic seminar over what we read. Someone asks questions about the text, and then the rest of the class shares their opinions on it. It took a little bit of getting used to this method of discussion, but I learned to love it. If I didn’t understand a part of the assigned reading, I could discuss it with my classmates, and we would help each other comprehend it better. This helped me learn what I should really be looking for in what I was reading and how I should explain my reasoning behind what I

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