September Post:Share Your Reading Life

This article really resonated with me. Growing up in a school system, as diametrically different to the American education system as one could imagine, I have no idea how our teachers were trained. What I do remember, as early as kindergarten, is walking to our school library (in a single file of course), and being allowed to check out as many books as we could carry in our arms. What’s more, we could go back to the library at any time, and check out more books as long as we returned the ones we had checked out. The point I am trying to make here is that the main motivation of those multiple trips was an abiding love of books that have lasted through hard times, immigration, and across careers. In a nutshell, the author of this article discusses her love of books and the importance of modelling the love for reading in readers.

The salient point in this article is that students are influenced by other readers i.e. their classmates, parents, and teachers. Reading books, regardless of genre, just for the sheer pleasure of the book is paramount in helping students grow. This growth takes a variety of different forms as adults model “reading journals”, quotation notebooks, book recommendations of their own. I thought that the second point was a particularly brilliant idea; this is an idea that would especially appeal to adolescent readers who need that element of ownership to buy into any suggestion an adult makes. It is an idea that I want to try, both for myself and for some of my students. It transforms reading from something one has to do to something one wants to do. My thoughts go back to a young lady that I talked to in the course of a risk assessment. She said she was “a quotes person” and that “quotes made her feel better, gave her strength.” I want to go back to her and give her a notebook and encourage her to read and write. It is a classic example of how reading builds up resilience and academic achievement. In my opinion, students and teachers alike, need resilience to survive the world of education today. In addition, this text underscores the importance of building a rapport with students though conversation. It is a refreshing departure from an emphasis on techniques, standards, and guidelines. It brings the focus back to the importance of human interaction and modelling the behaviors we want our students to exhibit.  In the final analysis, literacy is not an exact science because it involves people and the multiple variables they bring to the table. It is critical that teachers remember the importance of the affective component as they lead their students to become better readers.