Help Lassie, Reading's in trouble!

     Where's Lassie?  We need her help!  Reading fell down a well!

     I recently finished a book that has rocked my world!  It's called Disrupting Thinking and it's by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst.  I went through what felt like an abridged stages of grief while reading this book.

     I'm not going to give away big chunks of the book, because I don't want to rob you of the experience of reading it yourself (which you absolutely need to do asap).  But there are a couple ideas from it that I'm going to mention broadly, because they describe my transition through this journey to the post I'm currently writing.

Denial
Surely it's not me that did this, my book projects were fun!  My novel studies seemed engaging; the kids participated.

Depression
I totally was a part of this.  All those kids that have been through my classes, and I contributed to this problem, even though my intentions were noble.

Acceptance
I helped maim reading in school.  But I don't have to keep helping.

     Once I finally hit acceptance, I was ready.  And since then I've been brainstorming, generating, and sharing resources and plans at a furious pace because of this book.  And I've been encouraging others to do the same, because to me, this matter has become urgent.

     You know those groans?  Those visible displays of anguish that you see when you mention comprehension questions or novel studies?  Well as this book so accurately explains, we caused that.  Our students' hate of reading is on us.  We can try to blame it on other factors--lack of books, lack of time, state standards, "lazy" students, anything we want.  But we own a pretty big stake in the culpability of this one.  Our job is to teach students to read, to learn, to acquire and retain knowledge. That is our task.  So if we have in some way contributed to the opposite of that, the lack of learning, or even the lack of desire to learn, then the onus is on us.  (See what I did there?)  And by draining the joy from reading with our activities and assignments, we have seriously injured our students' love of learning.  Allow me to explain.

    Firstly, when children are young, they enjoy reading.  They love hearing stories, watching us read books to them, looking at pictures.  They are also naturally curious and want to learn things and know things, which makes them more interested in books for that purpose.  But as they get older and start progressing through school, the purpose of reading changes to them.  When you ask them why they read or if they even like it, you get some fairly disheartening answers.  Can you imagine a student saying they read so they can find evidence?  What?!  Evidence for what?!  The ideals they start with begin to fade away.  And from where do you think they heard about supporting your ideas with "evidence" from the text?

     The next idea that was huge for me asks us what we do when we read for pleasure as adults?  We may enjoy reading or not.  We may devour fiction, peer reviewed journals, or even the magazines we see in line at the grocery store that talk about Bigfoot sightings.  But when we do finish reading something that we particularly have enjoyed, what do we do about it?  Do we do any of the activities that we assign to students to do?  Do we give ourselves unit tests or write summaries for practice?  Do we rewrite the story from a different character's point of view?  No.  We don't.  And why don't we?  ... You can say it.  We don't because that is boring.  Who wants to do that?  Not us, and not our students.

     And yes some could say "but school isn't all about fun" or "we did things this way when I was in school and it was okay."  However I would respond with, "false."  I went through school like that too, and I don't think it is "okay."  I stopped reading for pleasure from grade six up past college, and when I think about why, it's because I was told what books to read by people who felt that reading them would be good for me.  And I was too busy dragging myself through those forced texts to read anything else voluntarily.  That's why this point hit me especially hard.  If you had asked me during that time of my life why we read, I probably would have responded just like the other students.  I'm embarrassed that I didn't make this connection and do anything more to fix it in the last ten years.  How many kids have I helped hate reading?



     I can assure of one thing though, and this brings me to the last big point of the book that I'm going to mention.  I am going to do everything in my power to help save reading now.  There is so much to love about it, and I'm going to help teachers show that to students.  To help remove the negative stigma from reading, we have to stop associating it with all the cold, unfeeling tasks that we have continuously relied on in the past.  We have to show students that the feelings they have by watching news, talking with friends, and the like, they can have by reading.  We have to make the content meaningful for them, and often it's not just about choosing specific texts, but more about showing them how to make connections from the text to themselves.  We all know that students are more engaged and excited about things that interest them, and helping them recognize their own personal reactions to text is how we can build that interest in our classroom.



    I've read this book as a part of an informal book study/club with several educators from my county and other parts of the country.  When we started talking about the framework that this book mentions, one teacher from Pennsylvania, Leigh Anne Geib (https://leighanneteaches.blogspot.com/) mentioned a way that she was going to tweak the framework for her older students, and it hooked me.  So I took her idea and ran with it to start making some visuals that I can share with teachers as they read the book and want to start making changes in their classroom.  With the help of some free background images from http://melstampz.blogspot.com I am on my way to making an arsenal of these posters with all types of themes.  Here are a couple I've started with:

             

    My hope is that as more teachers of all subject areas see this framework and want to apply it in their classes somehow, I'll have resources for them to use.  If a whole hallway or a vertical subject level could get on board with a framework like this, and students were tapping into their feelings from text regularly, we could see some major change.

   I'm excited about this book and the changes it could bring for education.  But I'm also afraid that we are running short on time.  We have spent so long disfiguring reading in education, and we need every  available minute now to help bring it back to life.  With that being said, if you have ways in your class or school where you've begun helping students love reading again, please please comment and share.  Because with a problem this size, we need all the Lassies we can get.