What are you reading? - (Blog 1 - August)

Routman - Chapter 3 - Share Your Reading Life

I believe everything discussed within this chapter. I truly believe that our students look up to us in all aspects of our classrooms and our personal lives. It is important to form relationships with students in such a way that they know and understand who we are as people, not just as their teacher. When students can relate to us as a person that is when real learning takes place in the classroom. I have sat in on interviews and given advice to new teachers and that is the one thing I always tell them. You must share yourself with your class in such a way that you are a person, a teacher, a mentor, a role model, and a friend to the students sitting in front of you.

Although I have known this and connecting and building relationships with students is something that I feel is necessary for learning to take place, I have not always connected it to reading and teaching reading in the way the Routman expresses in this chapter. I am not an avid reader in my independent life when it comes to novels and pleasure reads. I typically read nonfiction, and I do so because I am in search of something or looking to learn something knew. This is similar to why our students might read a nonfiction text. I understand now that sharing with them my everyday reading, may help not only during "reading time," but also during the other times of the day when we use nonfiction text. 

The author points out that it is important to try to become an avid reader in your personal life in order to share and teach reading with a more passionate point of view, he states, "It's hard to model something that is unfamiliar to you" (pg.24). Now, I stated previously that I am not an avid reader in my personal life. I do not believe that this affects my passion for reading within the classroom. I love doing novel studies with students and seeing their enthusiasm for the books that follow. I am also very passionate about certain authors and I share this with my students and have an entire reading unit where we spend time studying an author and their work, both independently and in groups. I notice during these times that my students are enthusiastic about reading, not just because of my passion as a reader, but because of my planning and passion for teaching them to love reading.