Reaching Full Potential In College

Hi Everyone!

My name is Leslie Bowering.  I began my Adult College Prgram by taking part time classes toward an Early Childhood Education Degree.  After exploring the possibilities with my most excellent advisor,  I soon discovered that I could achieve my ultimate goal of becoming a Reading Specialist through a Certificate Program also offered at Granite State College.  In order to do that, I consulted  my adult education resources which included the Granite State College Course Description catalog to finely-tune the pathway I needed to follow to achieve my ultimate goal.  I am now pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Language Arts, teaching certification, with a Reading Specialist Certification.

I am excited to be able to meet the challenges of my affordable Bachelor Degree because it is a dream come true for me. I have always been interested in higher education.  I am an avid reader; one who loves to learn, assimilate, and process information in an educated and independent way.

I absolutely love teaching young children because they are happy when they are exploring their own ideas and most especially when they are learning to read.  The children I have known, who have entered first grade not knowing how to read and finish first grade as young readers who love books and feel so good and confident about themselves while doing it, have made it my life's mission to inspire as many young children as I can, to love reading books.

Literacy is my deepest passion, although it is also my greatest fear for young children in today's world wide technosphere; a place where reading does not abide.  The critical time frame for young children who will learn their basic reading skills has sadly decreased though the necessity of it is more vital than ever. So, it is my humble hope, to make a difference.

When I graduated from Granite State College in December 2010 I very much wanted to join a writer's group.  I  was vetted and accepted into the Seacoast Women Writer's Group. Still, something was not quite right.  Then I realized what was wrong ...

I wanted a writer's group of my own.

So, while I work on my NH Teaching Certification, I am also accepting new members into my writing group called The Write Ideas writing group which meets every other Tuesday morning in Portsmouth at Barnes & Noble.

I have been inspired by every wonderful writing Instructor I have had the opportunity to work with in Portsmouth, Manchester, and Rochester through Granite State College.

Adult education and training has taken me further than I ever dared to dream I could go.  But I do think it is important to give enormous consideration to the Institution you are joining and whether or not you fit in.

If you have been following my blog you may have noticed a sudden writing gap.  The reason for this huge writing gap has to do with the enormous academic challenge I met in my FINAL semester at Granite State College.

My meetings with my Capstone Mentor, Dr. Quinn, at the Rochester NH college campus, were a prelude to many long hours of writing three different drafts that would eventually metamorph into my personal teaching philosophy.  And that was the FUN part of the semester!

Yes FUN! If you love reading and writing as much as I do, are passionate about your future goals, and you are collaborating with a fair and interested mentor--as I was-- then learning is definitely FUN. And ... 30 pages of writing leaves you breathless and refreshed!

The Granite State College final writing project, lovingly referred to as the Capstone or the final course toward my Language Arts Degree most definitely seemed a daunting task--at first. But, with Dr. Quinn's expert knowledge of the writing process (and my personal writing style) we met the task head on!

Once I had made my decision to meet this awesome challenge, the only thing left to do was to see it through.  No! I did not give up! I did not invent excuses to procrastinate. In fact, I was so interested in my assignment and how it was constantly evolving that it never once occurred to me that I couldn't do it.

I have not yet met an adult learner pursuing adult education and training who has thrown in the towel. There is something special about us, as adult learners, because we possess a tenacious determination younger learners rarely do.  It is such a perfect day for the adult learner who has pressed on through the nervous discomfort and unknown territory of her academics until she has staked her claim on that final, excellent grade.  I can honestly say that NOTHING I have ever achieved in my lifetime feels quite as miraculously mine.

     Are you interested in exploring the area of teaching literacy? You can begin your learning process by attending Granite State College in Rochester, New Hampshire where you can create your own self-design program so that you can achieve your Language Arts Degree. 

     Once you complete your general education requirements you will then begin the arduous process of learning to read and write as a college student, a very different experience from the long ago and far away high school years.

     Only after the full completion of Multi-cultural Perspectives in Literature, Expository Writing, American Literature, Short Fiction, Creative Writing, and British Literature will you be invited to read much, much more!

     My book list for my Capstone is a challenging and interesting one. The titles include Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol, Is There a Text in This Class? By Stanley Fish, The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller, and Breakthroughs in Literacy by Susan E. Israel.

     It is such a good thing that I do love to read! Do you? Then why not begin today? Children today need to be gently reminded that books and reading are still important. I can hardly wait to write my paper because I am excited about all I am going to learn from the process!

    If you are thinking of going back to school anytime soon but you are talking yourself out of it because it restricts you from doing other things, then I have a story for you!

     My husband –who by the way—loves to celebrate all of our special anniversaries, booked us into an adorable little cottage at Eagle Lake in Northern Maine. Of course, he had to reserve our “usual” cottage in advance. At the time he did so, I was uncertain of how much homework would be assigned in my Linguistics class which I am taking at the University of New Hampshire. I am taking this Linguistics course as a Language Arts requirement for my self-designed program at Granite State College because I had a difficult time understanding the Online version of Linguistics that Granite State College offers.

   So, here I am today, sitting in this adorable little cottage in Northern Maine surrounded by my books, laptop, battery-operated mouse, and a printer provided for me by my husband so that I could “get away” with him for our second wedding anniversary.

   Nowadays technology makes all things possible when it comes to taking your homework on the road. 

   Even if you think that the technology is too daunting a task to tackle, Granite State College offers computer courses in varied locations across the state of New Hampshire for the convenience of students who are interested. It is a most excellent way to take a hands-on approach to getting technologically up to speed. For example, since I do not have wi-fi in the cabin, I will save this word document in my sweet little pink flash drive. When I return home to Exeter, New Hampshire on Monday, I will copy this document from my flash drive into my blog.  It’s a piece of cake!

     Before I can write my I-search paper for my Bachelor Degree Capstone I must first read four books and four peer-reviewed journal articles. The good news is that I love to read while my husband drives the car. Reading is the best way I know to pass away the time, whenever we take a long drive. With three or four pit stops along the way and one stop for brunch, it takes seven hours to drive to Eagle Lake, Maine which is almost to the very Northwest tip of the state.

    In the time it took Alan & me to drive 395 miles up the highway, I read 182 pages from one of the texts assigned to me by my mentor, Dr. Quinn. Jonathan Kozol’s book, Letters to a Young Teacher captivated me for the entire ride because of interesting questions the young teacher was asking.  

   When I graduate from Granite State College I will not be a young teacher. I will be an older, unsuspecting teacher because of the reading I am doing now, in regard to public school education; how it affects young children in this country.

    It is fascinating for me to learn the points of view that epitomize the department of education in the United States as they pertain to the education of young children in our society. Dr. Quinn has created for me a potpourri of literary works that define, regulate, and institute a certain degree of knowledge for me as a student who is interested in literacy and its importance to young children.

    I understand the importance Granite State College places on a well-rounded, critically thought out point of view. These views will help my I-search paper stand on its own merit.

     Taking a Linguistics Course, whether it is done online through Granite State College or in a face to face class at the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham, New Hampshire can be a daunting task.

     Therefore, as a college student at eighteen years old or fifty years old, one tip I offer is to stay connected to or perhaps revisit the rules you previously learned in developing the necessary skill of rote memorization.

     I am taking Linguistics 405.2 as the final course of my Language Arts Degree which might have been a more significant task at the beginning of my program because of how the course breaks the English language down to morphic units of words and phrases. Now that I have completed every single other language writing requirement, it seems I should have taken Linguistics in a different order at the beginning of my course work.

     The online Linguistics course offered through Granite State College is taken by those enthusiastic techno-geniuses from all over the world.  One of the students that signed up for this course was enrolled from England. So, from where ever you may be, there is a good opportunity to study this course online with interesting folks from away.

     Although I was fascinated by the distance between my local address and the students from away, I am not a techno-genius.  Because Linguistics is a course requirement for the success of my degree, I dropped the online course before I was in too far over my head... after awhile... you can tell when a course is going to surpass the label of challenging and meet up with the label of impossibility which the online Linguistics course did for me.

     My face to face Linguistics course at UNH is equally as challenging as far as I am concerned.  The biggest difference about taking the face to face class is definitely in the ongoing classroom discussion that occurs bi-weekly for an hour.

     Still, Linguistics covers a wide range of information that I have never been exposed to before.  Certainly, I should have made a point to find out more about the course before signing up.  The good news is that I love the English Language.  I love to read and write. And so, it is my most earnest hope that if I continue to do the reading, sit for many hours reconstructing the word and phrase diagrams involved in the course, and revisit the rote memorization model (even though I don't really believe in this method of learning), eventually the concepts and purpose of Linguistics will all come together and I will successfully complete the course.  You can too!