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John Corcoran's The Teacher Who Couldn T Read

812 Words4 Pages

“It [feels] as if I [have] been thrown off a cliff into deep water and I [don’t] know how to swim. All around me there are people who can help me, or teach me to swim. But I can’t get to them, and they don’t help me, and I know that eventually I will go under” (Unknown). Millions of illiterate children across the world have experienced, or continue to experience, the overwhelming hopelessness of being thrust into a society that demands reading skills. Sadly, though, too often this world does not give the tools needed to learn to read. As illustrated by author John Corcoran in The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read, children and adults with severe learning disabilities often feel misunderstood and trapped in an isolated prison of shame, anger, and despair. As Corcoran recounts his personal journey of shame due to his misunderstood and misdiagnosed illiteracy, a continual pattern emerges—time heals, but the scars will always remain. Corcoran …show more content…

When I hear about a teacher who mistreats a reading disabled child—even if it is with the good intention of pushing them forward to new limits—my heart starts to break. I wish that all teachers could experience the real needs of their children. But sadly, too often I still fail in this same way! Too often I feel like I have got it all figured out, when actually, I am wrong. Too often I say things to a child that hurt him—that he could read if he just paid attention or simply tried harder. As a teacher I try hard to monitor the feelings of my students. Are they afraid of me? Are they scared to come to school? How are they handling the pressure that I am putting on them? But I am far from perfect—so my hope and prayer is that even while I make mistakes, my children will always know that I love them and want the best for them. And furthermore, I hope to continue to study and understand why some children in my classroom simply do not grasp on to the concept of

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In the essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society”, written by Jonathan Kozol and published in the Reading for Writers, New York, 2013, the author is raising awareness of illiteracy and the effects it has on society to his audience, the literate who can read and can do something about the issue. Pointing out the illiteracy problem in the United States that is unknown to most, he explains the impact that such a vast amount of illiterate people can have on voting and the government. Being that such a large amount of individuals are uneducated on the voting candidates, he goes on to say that many often do not vote or vote for someone for the wrong reason. With the use of statistics from the 1980 presidential vote to argue his point, he said that Ronald Reagan likely would not have been the president.

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Introduction “Every school day in the United States for the past decade, more than 3,000 students have dropped out of high school (Joftus), 2000).” This is becoming an epidemic because literacy is simply not just being able to read or write your name. The rigors for the literacy curriculum have become much more complex and require students to be able to comprehend and state their input on different reading texts from a variety of sources. A vast amount of the funds from the federal government has been targeted towards the reading for primary grades. Secondary students such as high school students may find it difficult to transition to a higher reading level because of the complexity.

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Many children at school are capable of hiding their learning difficulties by steering clear from reading aloud or writing very little (Reid 2013, p13).Not to mention, the Report of the Task force on Dyslexia (2001) states learning difficulties from dyslexia occurs across the lifespan of a person and can vary from mild to severe at different ages (Report of the Task Force on Dyslexia, 2001). It is extremely vital for teachers to be fully aware and trained in the area of dyslexia. Teacher’s use of differentiation in their subjects in the classroom is a strong fundamental in order to meet the needs of a student with a learning difficulty like

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