This is goodbye for now....

I wanted to take the time to say thank you and goodbye for now!  I hope that you have enjoyed my journey through learning about what literacy is and what it is all about.  In the beginning I had preconceived notions that literacy only involved reading, and writing skills.  Boy was I wrong!  I have taken a journey this summer through two amazing books, many videos, and many other authors who showed me and I hope you too, that literacy is everywhere.  It should be a part of every content area, and in every class that the students come into contact with.

It is our responsibility as educators to take everything that we can and incorporate those things into every lesson that we can.  It is time for people to stop being so protective of their curriculum and get into the mind set that we can share some amazing lessons with people if we could combine more curriculum.  We are very possessive of our desks, rooms, lessons, etc. But why aren't we being possessive of our students' learning?  We need to be aware that we can add in literacy to any subject matter!  We can make students literate in many ways, not just in reading and writing.

It is time that school districts stop looking at the encore/specialty areas as breaks for the regular teachers, and look at that part of the students' schedule as just as important as the contained classroom.  It is time for people to work together.  We need to prepare our students for their future, and this future is by far very different from what we are teaching them.  We need to remember to think outside the box when we plan lessons and units and we need this so that we can get kids to think outside their boxes.  If their future careers aren't even invented yet, then we need to give them the tools to be able to come up with these new jobs and how to handle them when they do get to them.

It has been my pleasure to come down to this last literacy blog for class. However, I will be writing and continuing this blog but based upon what I would like to write. I want to continue coming up with thought provoking items and to be able to speak my mind about them. I even considered changing the name of the blog, but after taking this course, I realize that I can still use the term literacy blogger to apply to anything that I think we need to be literate about.  I look forward to sharing my blogs with you in the future and I hope to that you get to see what my thoughts and feelings are on many topics.  I still have my list to complete about being literate in Family and Consumer Science, so come along with me on the next part of my journey.  I look forward to sharing it with you!