My friend and fellow edublogger Angela Maiers wrote a post today that really hit home with me. In her post, Reading WITHOUT Meaning – Heartbreak at Home, she described a scenario of watching her son “get through” his weekly reading assignment, after which he tells her:
“Mom, I hate reading. I did not want to tell you that, ’cause I know that it’s your job and reading is a big deal to you, but I really really hate it. I dream of the day when I will never have to do reading again. If I was on a dessert island, I would rather die of starvation, than read a book. And, if you think I am weird or something, you gotta know, all my friends feel exactly the same way.”
My beautiful 15 month old twins are voracious “readers” right now. They LOVE their books and will spend a great deal of time every day “reading” as many of their books as they can. Not only do they love to crawl into my lap with a book and demand that I read it to them, they also sit by themselves, flipping pages, and babbling as they stop on each page. They point to the pictures and tell me the story in their own words. Of course they aren’t reading the words on the page — but they get the concept and most importantly, they LOVE the concept of reading a book.
My biggest fear is that someday, somewhere, some teacher will destroy their love of reading by giving them “reading assignments” that make reading feel more like a chore rather than a pleasurable activity.
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Stephanie-
I so remember those days. In fact, I even pulled out the pictures of Ryan on my lap, laughing, loving, and relishing the experience. Cherish these beautiful moments.
I pray that your voracious “readers” stay that way as they enter an education system that far too often values something quite different!
I am hoping this story empowers parents everywhere to notice, question, and bring this important conversation forward as they see practices in classrooms that disrupt the goal of creating lifelong readers. I thank you for sharing it with your readers!
This story should serve as an inspiration to parents, teachers, and school administrators on how important is to cultivate children’s love for reading.
I just spent two days watching two full day kindergarten programs. Both programs were pretty different in terms of their curricular programming and instructional delivery, but both had their kids reading at high levels.
Although both programs we visited had their students reading at high levels, I am not sure that the levels of intrinsic interest to read were the same. I think if you asked the students from both classes “Why do you read?”, the answers would be different. How would you want your students to respond to that question? Would you want your students to say “to discover new things” or “because Mrs. So-and-so thinks it is important”.
In education, because of the length of time it takes to achieve our final product (13 years) and student motivation being an integral part of achieving a quality result, the processes we employ to achieve each step along the way are critical to achieving our long term goals.
Cultivating a love of reading is definitely one of our most important roles as parents. While it is true that a single teacher can have a powerful effect on kids (positive or negative) I personally think it is very difficult for any single individual to outweigh the influence of a parent/parents and a home environment which models reading, loves reading, and reads together.
It was a REAL big deal when our oldest son discovered his “home run book.” I’m sure with your continued encouragement to read of your kids, they’ll become lifelong readers and join “the literacy club” too!
One of the best traditions we developed years ago in our family was whoever travels away buying “happys” for others who are left behind. Generally I’m the one who travels, and often I will bring home at least 1 picture book about the location where I’ve visited. We try and buy picture books for places we visit together as a family. It is so great to have these treasured books in our family library, and to have our kids love to read them.
Teachers can and do have powerful influence over our kids, but it would take a MAJOR act of destructive influence to kill a love of learning… if that happened and it could be attributed to a single teacher, I’d certainly think that would be grounds to switch classrooms and/or schools, hopefully before the end of the year.
Good luck as you continue to cultivate your family literacy club!
My daughter, who is now heading into high school, just told me yesterday that she really hates reading.This was while we were waiting in a theater for a movie to begin. The theater has a Read for a Movie program. Read a book, fill out a book report form, bring it to the theater on Wednesdays and get a movie ticket. My daughter was dismayed and told me her feelings about reading. This came as quite a shock to me, since I have always seen her reading. We share books, enjoy going to the library and book stores. How can it be that she hates reading? Then she clarified…”I hate having to do anything after I read a book. Why can’t we just read a book and discuss it? Why does there have to be writing or reports involved?” I told her how I use blogs for book discussions during the week. She said she thought that would be fine, as long as there was no required amount of writing to be done. Just commenting on a blog. But still, why not just talk.
Makes me wonder. She doesn’t really hate reading. She loves books. She hates the work that goes along with them. How many of my students feel the same way? And what can I do about it?
So much to consider. Good luck with your twins.
[...] this year I wrote a post on my professional blog reflecting on my fear that my 18 month old twins — who currently LOVE to read books — may someday lose that [...]