The Book Whisperer (14 page)

We have created a culture of reading poverty in which a vicious cycle of aliteracy has the potential to devolve into illiteracy for many students. By allowing students to pass through our classrooms without learning to love reading, we are creating adults (who then become parents and teachers) who don't read much. They may be capable of reading well enough to perform academic and informational reading, but they do not love to read and have few life reading habits to model for children.

Who will be our future role models for reading if we don't produce any from our classrooms? It is popular to blame parents for their children's disengagement from reading, but even parents who read to their children, take them to libraries, and model good reading habits at home have difficulty overcoming a reading wasteland in their children's classrooms, where teachers may not read. Under these circumstances, there is little opportunity for their children to develop lifelong reading habits at school. When I walk into my daughter's third-grade classroom on Meet the Teacher night and don't see a single book for students to read in sight, I know that this year role modeling for independent reading is going to come from me, not her new teacher. What about students who do not have parents who read? What about the parents who never learned to love reading themselves and have little to offer their own children in the way of being a role model for reading? Who takes responsibility for them?

Teachers bemoan students' lack of reading experiences before they enter school and students' lack of support for their reading at home. But teachers never seem to take ownership of the fact that the parents of these students, the very individuals we believe should be role models for reading, were once our students, too. When students walk into my classroom having never read a book or when their reading diet consists solely of
The Day My Butt Went Psycho
and Garfield cartoons, I know that there is an absence of knowledgeable, enthusiastic role models for reading in their lives—not just in their homes, but in their classrooms, too. Readers are made, not born. Few students spring out of the ground fully formed as readers. They need help, and we cannot assume that they will get it from home, but they should always get it from us, their teachers.

There is evidence that a teacher's views on
what reading is
affect students' perceptions of reading and their long-term interest in it, too. Rosenblatt's transactional theory—which analyzes how readers approach a text and what purpose they have for reading it—defines two types of readers: efferent readers and aesthetic readers. Teachers who take an efferent stance see reading as a way to acquire knowledge, diving into a text for the purpose of getting information out of it. These teachers present reading as a series of skills to be mastered, processes to be fine-tuned and applied in order to collect information. There are a million and one books that show teachers this nuts-and-bolts approach to teaching reading. I see this skill-based approach as an outside-to-inside way of reading, a method of attacking each reading event with a to-do list of strategies in the hope that this will lead students to comprehension.

Teachers who take an aesthetic stance to reading—in other words, those who see reading as an emotional and intellectual journey—approach literacy instruction differently. This inside-to-outside look at reading considers each reader's personal impressions of what they read and their tastes and preferences. Both methodologies have benefits when working with young readers; after all, readers access texts for different purposes, both informational and experiential, in turn.

You needn't look any further than a classroom to see these alternating philosophies at work. Are the children capable of reading well enough for academic purposes? Do they spend much time pleasure reading in class? How many of the students choose to read outside of school? Do the teachers read? Most teachers who are not readers themselves take a skills-based approach. They may never talk to their students about loving books and craving reading, but tell them instead about the need to read well to get along in school and in life. But when you consider that the teachers who have an aesthetic view of reading have the greatest influence on their students' motivation and interest in reading (Ruddell, 1995) and have more impact on the long-term reading habits of their students than those who see reading as a skill to be mastered, the instructional edge goes to the teacher who sees reading as a gift, not a goal.

Motivation to read and attitudes toward reading are not the only areas in which teachers' reading habits and views on reading affect their students' reading behaviors. Lundberg and Linnakyla (1993, cited in Applegate and Applegate, 2004) found a link between the reading habits of teachers and the reading achievement of their students. When my principal interviews candidates for a teaching position at my school, regardless of whether it's a language arts position, he always asks them to discuss the last book they read. He recognizes the importance of putting role models for reading in front of students every day. While teaching preparation programs impart methodologies for reading pedagogy to teachers, my principal recognizes that our lives as readers are a powerful component in our ability to teach reading, too.

Students need lots of modeling and practice in how to read different types of texts, but showing them how to read is not the only act we must model for our students. If we want our students to read and enjoy it for the rest of their lives, then we must show them what a reading life looks like. If our reading experiences inform our views on what reading is, it is helpful to evaluate our reading attitudes and behaviors.

In taking a look at your self-reflection responses, what have you learned about yourself as a reader? Is reading just a tool to access information and be successful in school and work, or is it also a pleasurable escape for you? Consider how your view of reading seeps into your classroom and colors your instruction. Is your view of reading reflected in the literacy activities you use with students? If you see reading as a tool, try to incorporate opportunities for your students to read for pleasure, too.

If you have negative memories of reading in school as a child, how do these experiences show up in your teaching? You may not see the value of reading as a pleasurable endeavor because you were never inspired to read for enjoyment. It is also possible that your negative experiences as a young reader have steeled your resolve to do a better job of motivating your own students. It may be the reason you became a teacher! Share your reading struggles with your students, and describe how you overcame them.

If you have fond memories of reading as a child, how do you share these memories with your students? How has your early love of reading carried into your adult life? If it hasn't, why not? Take a look at why you no longer enjoy reading as much as you did or no longer carve out time to do it.

If you are still an enthusiastic reader, I imagine that you can point to some positive experiences with books as a child, even if these encounters did not occur at school. I can close my eyes and bring up Garth Williams's illustrations in my much-read copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Little House in the Big Woods
. My sisters and I still laugh when remembering our attempts to live like pioneers in our backyard after reading the Little House books. When recommending
A Wrinkle in Time
, by Madeline L'Engle, to my students, I share with them that I did a book report on it in seventh grade, complete with a demonstration of a tesseract—using string to represent the folding of time and space, just like in the book. My lifelong obsession with fantasy and science fiction began with this book. I still list both books on my top ten favorites list, although I have read thousands of books since.

If you do love to read but never share this with your students, why not? Don't do what I did in those first few years and leave your inner reader at home because you are afraid that no one at your school will get what you are doing. We don't want our students to compartmentalize their reading lives—one for school and one for home—and we should not do it, either. Your love of reading is the best part of you. You can use your knowledge of reading and books to forge connections with students who are still forming a self-concept as readers and need a strong role model to follow. It is the most important resource you bring to class each day.

Even if you have never been an avid reader or have lost your zeal for reading over the years, it is not too late to develop a love of reading. “Fake it until you make it,” and take an academic stance if it helps. Craft your own reading plan. If you're having trouble getting started, here are some steps you can take: