Reading

I love to read. I think it is becoming a lost skill. Too boring I keep hearing. In another post I will talk above how I acquired my passionate love of reading. Before that I want to share with you a couple of paragraphs from an amazing book I am reading. A colleague recommended it. The book is Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire – Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith. I sure wish I would have had this book 41 years ago when I started teaching and coaching. It is a must read for teachers, coaches, and parents. I am thinking about buying some copies for our local school board. I wonder if Arne Duncan has read this?

"Teaching our children to read well and helping them develop a love of reading should be our top priorities. People seem to understand this. Millions are spent on books and other reading material, celebrities make public service announcements, and thousands of hours are spent training teachers. The spin-doctors at various publishing companies tell us that our students are doing better, but honest people know this is simply not the case. Concerned teachers have learned not to bother raising their voices, because powerful textbook companies have carefully prepared answers to anyone who points that the emperor has no clothes. Young teachers are afraid of being crushed by bureaucrats whose only real mission is to keep selling their product. As testing services compete to rake in millions of dollars, nervous school districts anxiously await the latest results. And year after year, most children do not become passionate lifelong learners."

"It’s complicated. There is a lot of finger pointing. But to borrow a phrase from another big fat book that won a Pulitzer Prize, our children are victims of a sort of “confederacy of dunces.” Powerful forces of mediocrity have combined to prevent perfectly competent children from learning to love reading, these forces include television, video games, poor teaching, poverty, the breakup of the family, and a general lack of adult guidance."