So Long...Farewell!
I have been engaged in telling and retelling the story of Goldilocks and the three bears to my granddaughters for the past several months, so as I prepared to write this message for the Missouri State Council/ International Reading Association it occurred to me that the two had a lot in common. Both deal with a “just right” fit.
In the story, the different characters experienced different motivations to achieve their desired results and in MSC we experience multiple motivations to achieve results in our membership and in our classrooms.
Lev Vygotsky (1962) refers to the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as the distance between a student’s ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer collaboration and the student’s ability solving the problem independently. According to Vygotsky, learning occurs in this zone. Just as Goldilocks sought to find the perfect food, chair, and bed, this domain becomes the area where independence is fostered. MSC/IRA offers a zone of ZPD for its members, a zone that offers professional development with just the right amount of support and challenge to ensure growth. Through professional networking, literacy service projects, and ongoing leadership opportunities, MSC/IRA stands at the ready to motivate you – our members.
Joining MSC/IRA provides you multiple levels of choice. We encourage you to become an International Literacy Association(ILA) member, joining forces with thousands of educators in an organization which for 60 years has provided resources and expertise to teachers in the area of literacy, has set standards for literacy instruction, and has advocated for literacy both at home and globally. ILA motivates its members to become actively involved in literacy efforts while it provides a ZPD for its members through state and local affiliation.
At the state level, membership is provided with a network of diverse yet like-minded educators to support professional and personal growth. Members stay connected via Twitter, Facebook, our website (www.missourireading.org), conferences, and our outstanding online journal- The Missouri Reader. You might even be motivated to submit an article, a book review, poetry, or a favorite website, sharing your literacy success. I encourage you to check out our website for current features and upcoming events. Shortly, you will have the opportunity to apply for free (FREE!) books for your classroom or school through our Read and Feed Grant which we offer in conjunction with ILA and Title I schools. Please check the website for details.
Local councils provide you a close to home choice with opportunities to join together with colleagues and friends to explore literacy topics relevant to yourlocale or your students. When you support your local council you are in fact expanding the network of literacy educators in Missouri.
Whatever motivates you to join a professional organization, we (MSC/IRA) hope you will consider us to be a “just right” fit. As literacy partners, we want to ensure professional and personal growth for you and provide you opportunities to network with other literacy colleagues across the state. We look forward to meeting you soon.
Tamara Jo Rhomberg, President
--President Tammy Rhomberg and the MSC Board
Message from the President
We are delighted to be the new editors for The Missouri Reader! After long careers as classroom teachers, college teachers, reading specialists, staff development specialists, and literacy leaders, we have both retired and are (almost) full-time literacy volunteers. When we are not working on The Missouri Reader, we fill our time supporting literacy as members of the Missouri State Council (MSC) Executive Board and through our local reading council – St. Louis Suburban Reading Council. We both are active in the MSC Read and Feed Project through ILA and spent many hours preparing and sharing 1,500 books with students in the Ferguson-Florissant Summer School (See article on page 24). When MSC activities are not keeping us busy, we both volunteer in our grandchildren’s schools to support children and their teachers.
We have LOVED the articles sent to us by teachers and educators around the country. Glenda receives the articles, sends them to the Review Board, and communicates with authors. Sam handles the technology involved with getting the issues laid out, published, and posted. This is our first edition to edit, so we have relied on continuing support from our past SUPER EDITORS – Julie Bryant and Jennifer Fox and we send them a BIG THANK YOU! We hope you enjoy reading this edition of The Missouri Reader and gain as much from it as we did.
Happy Reading,
Dr. Sam Bommarito and Glenda Nugent
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