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I gathered that the main idea behind this week’s reading is that educators need to be responsive to their students’ individual developmental stages, needs, and interests in order to create an engaging and collaborative comprehension-learning environment.  This semester we will be asked to get to know our students in great depth in order to create lessons that are culturally relevant and engaging.  I anticipate a struggle in maintaining a distinction between my personal and professional life.  I think it is a difficult balance to achieve being friendly, but not friends.  I wonder how involved I may become in my students’ lives without it becoming emotionally straining.  I hope to be able to establish and compassion for my students without creating an unhealthy attachment for them or for me.  I guess that this dilemma addresses a larger issue about what it means to be professional in the teaching community.  Are personal relationships with your students unprofessional?  How much distance is appropriate? 

Now after hypothetically achieving a balanced yet informed relationship with my students, how do I incorporate what I have learned into my literacy instruction?..  My educational experience at MSU allowed me to broaden my idea of literacy into something much more dynamic than simply reading and writing.  I understand that literacy exists in multiple contexts and that every context requires a different skill set.  Students with a more comprehensive variety of exposures are better equipped to function in a variety of contexts.  The ability to take in, process, and convey information in a variety of formats is highly valuable and must be enriched by a teacher.  While this broadened perspective of literacy is wonderful, sometimes I find myself being slightly overwhelmed by it.  How am I supposed to design lesson plans with a clear and achievable objective, within such a giant beast of a concept we call literacy?  I want to become more proficient in my ability to address a more concise goal within my individual lessons, all while working towards the BIG idea of literacy.