A Potion for What’s Ailing Reading Achievement

I have taught language arts for nearly seventeen years. During that time, interest in reading has without doubt eroded. To me, that comes as no surprise. Most of what we have offered to kids for reading (instructional and pleasure) has not been interesting or entertaining–at least not to them. Frankly, I don’t read if the text doesn’t offer one of those two hooks.

Most of us in the trenches realize that kids and even adults don’t read unless there is an intrinsic motivation. Oh, some may think grades are an extrinsic motivator, but the fact is, reading a text isn’t required to earn a decent grade, if a grade even matters. My own brother used to boast that he had earned a Master’s degree in genetics, graduating with honors, from a very noted university (whose name will go unmentioned) and never read a book cover to cover.

Middle school, high school and college kids have ways around reading. They watch the movie of assigned novels or buy Cliffs notes and do some collaborative cramming with friends and lots of soda. For science and social studies…they become Discovery or History channel watchers….or again, collaborative test crammers. Better yet, in their minds, they chum up with students who have taken the class before or are familiar with the test structures and ride the wave.

For years, I have worked both independently and with colleagues to develop curricula that puts engagement at the center of learning and makes reading and writing natural products of activities that don’t appear to be contrived for the sake of grades. You know the kind of contrived non-real world assignments I mean: read the first three chapters and take a quiz…like who in real life reads the first three chapters of book in preparation for a quiz? Or assignments that ask kids to read the first two sections in the Expanding Democracy unit and prepare an outline to use as a study guide…

The Washington Post recently reported on an East coast county school that developed a engaging initiative to build their middle school curriculum through technology. Instead of asking kids to read texts in the “old fashioned way” and rewarding them with mindless days of watching the movie at the end of the unit, these teachers integrated screenplays and published public texts to teach kids how to be critical readers and even make their own movies! The kids became engaged with text and technology and wereallowed to use skills that have too many times been ignored in the institutional halls of American education. Like dramatic skills and technology skills…and social emotional skills of passion and collaboration!

You Tube is an online hit–we all know that. Yet, I cannot believe how many teachers and adults don’t have a clue when I ask them what they know about it! Teachers, we need to get serious about our own learning. One of the potions to the reading lethargy that we are seeing in our students is directly related to us. Our lethergy to learn is contagious and the symptoms are apparent. Too many educators (and I mean that in the broadest sense: parents, administrators, role models and leaders) do not want to invest the energy to learn about essential changes in communication and modernization, yet they complain that kids don’t want to put forth the effort to learn. Kids are putting forth an effort and learning about many “things” of which we are still ignorant. We need to learn about what interests kids and what motivates their learning so that we can harness that knowledge to help them acquire and hone the skills they will need for the future, our future.

What I like about the change in the Rockville school is the willingness to put themselves on the edge and learn while teaching, changing the direction of their curriculum to one that invites kids and learning. I suggest they not stop at middle school…high school kids want the same things: collaboration, engagement, relevance, challenge. Frankly, as an adult, I want the same things in my learning! As learners, we are more alike than different.