eBook experience

eBook title, author, and web address

Just After Sunset: Stories by Stephen King (Purchased at amazon.com and downloaded to my iPad.) 

eBook review 

            The book itself is a collection of short stories from the prolific Stephen King. In between banging out epic yarns, he will occasionally put together a collection of short stories which I find is more suitable for my horribly limited attention span. In my opinion, the most moving story in the collection is "Willa", about a husband and wife trying to find their way home.

         Feelings and Thought About the Experience


        I'm officially more of an eReader than a paper book reader. As a student, I've always had great difficulty sitting and immersing myself in a book, and always found the process to be more of a chore than a treat. I had never really considered it before, but after I considered this experience with this book, I realized that if I am reading a large paper book, I am more likely to abandon it if I don't finish it immediately. However, when I read books with my iPad, I tend to allow myself more leeway to step away from a book and return to it whenever I have time.    



                Value of the Book for Education


        As a writing teacher, I think that short stories are a powerful medium for teaching, and I think that if all students were given access to eReader technology, that this would support literacy exponentially. As I previously mentioned, I can only truly use myself as an example of a student's habits, and I feel that if I had been exposed to this technology in my formative years, that my feelings towards reading would not be so bittersweet.

ESOL Class Visit

For my study, I made the long journey down my hallway at Seabreeze to observe an ESOL classroom. Typically, one classroom on each grade level is designated as the ESOL inclusion class. It is a logistical nightmare when we receive an ESOL student, because the teachers are “flagged” and required to take ESOL professional development, or face the certainty of being terminated at the end of the school year for not being in compliance.

Traditionally, we have a small number of ESOL students at Seabreeze, and in my own teaching career I have had a handful of students. I visited the classroom of Debra Bornowski, who is our designated fourth grade ESOL teacher.  What I observed was what I recognized as conventional in our building, but was a far cry from what I was taught in a college classroom.

All five of the students in Mrs. Bornowski’s class are all classified as ESOL because English is not the first language that is spoken in their homes. These students, (three are Albanian and two are Mexican) are all fluent English speakers and readers, and Mrs. Bornowski reports that these students are by far the most polite and curious students in her class. 

In my previous studies, most of the ESOL students that I observed and that were discussed in the classroom, were struggling students that required major academic accommodations just to stay on pace with the rest of the class.  However, in Mrs. Bornowski’s class, these students are high achievers that are the most proficient users of classroom technology. Dariana, one of the students stated that though her parents speak very limited English, they are extremely proficient at email and Facebook. The other students agreed that this was also the case in their homes.

Dariana rocking out on her keyboard

In terms of a next step, I think that it is significant that ESOL students and their families are using technology as a modern Rosetta Stone. It is essential for teachers to capitalize on the universal language that is technology, follow Mrs. Bornowski’s lead, and encourage these students to flourish in the classroom.