Hey gang!
Like most of you (hopefully!), I've reached that point in my life where I wanna develop my life and career, and for me at least, one of those will be a by-product of giving back to my local community. So, a little backstory:
I live in a small village in the North West of England. Or are we a town? I think it's hotly contested. We're about 22k people, but we have good links? I dunno, whatever. When I was growing up, I was an absolute FIEND for the library and reading. Like, we're talking, I used to go to the library on Friday after school, load up my backpack with fantasy novels and Jacqueline Wilson, and I'd just read all week. It kinda developed into a lifelong love of reading/writing and the English language in general. Now, in the next...year (?), I'm applying to teach English overseas (I'm applying for both the JET Programme and EPIK, to teach in either Japan or Korea respectively) in 2020. I wouldn't be lying when I said it's been my dream job since I was 18? At the moment, I'm a teaching assistant in a primary school, and one of my big passions at school is interventions about English. I love teaching grammar, spellings, sentence structure, how to read effectively, basically all aspect of the current SPAG curriculum! I'd absolutely LOVE to translate that love of English into a job, and I'm very into SEA as a culture where you can teach English to great effect.
So, something I've noticed in my ten years working in education is how traditional reading and writing has fallen by the wayside. It's very rare that I find kids who read for pleasure. I'm not a parent, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but a LOT of children in the UK, I'm finding, are raised on tablets and games consoles (I mean thank GOD my school has almost dried up in how many people play Fortnite), but there's still a lot of children who struggle to read, don't read at home, and just spend their entire lives on Twitch and Youtube and the XBOX One (It's somehow NEVER a PS4...)
So, I'm wanting to give back to my local community, and I have an idea how. Feeding back to my local library, I'd love to do some sort of weekly reading group there. I don't know if I should do a session where I just READ to kids, or we do activities, or we discuss books or what. This is kinda why I'm reaching out to the GB community, something I've been a part of for a long time. Does anyone have any ideas how I could promote literacy and a love for reading in my local community? Has anyone here done anything similar, and has any ideas for how I'd go about doing it? I guess the first step is contacting my local library and seeing if a slot is available at weekend for a session where I could read some books to children, and talk to them about what books they're reading? I'm CRB/DBS checked within the last month, and I've been working in education at primary schools with NO PROBLEMS for the last 10 years, so I think my credentials are there too.
Help me out GB friends. If anyone has any advice/encouragement/ideas or ANYTHING, then please reach out to me in this thread! It's something I'm really passionate about, and I guess it looks good on my CV to show that I'm actively making an effort to improve my professional practice in a voluntary sense.
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