Reading Needs Marketing

            In the spring of 2011 I attended a Professional Learning Community vertical alignment meeting where all of the language arts teachers in the school convened to talk about the state of reading at North Davidson Middle. Our sixth grade teachers said that kids did not want to read, the seventh grade teachers said that students refused to read and the eighth grade teachers said the students wouldn’t crack a book. We determined that the common denominator between the three grades was that our students have no motivation to read. From a behaviorist standpoint if there is no motivation to perform a behavior then it becomes extinct. As much as we want our students to be intrinsically motivated to read, the current norms in our society force us to rethink our expectations.

              

            As teachers do we identify high interest text or do we place demands on our students to read only what we feel is both scholarly and educational? I submit that we need to look at a way to intermingle these strategies to create a love for reading. Fostering students to be passionate in self selected reading and reading outside of school is the best way to promote sound literary habits. I am sure many of you remember the race for Harry Potter books every time they emerged from the boxes at midnight of a fun filled Friday night. Kids would grab the books and not put them down the whole ride in the car and even deep into the morning hours. Where is that passion only 5 years later? The Twilight series create somewhat of a craze, but none like the Potter series. As teachers we have to learn to market reading not as just part of academics but as a means of entertainment. The only way that I see us doing this is to become agents of change.

                  Often we explain to students the benefits and the enjoyment gained from reading. The problem in education today is that this statement has a hypocritical air to it. We have to tell kids how to read, what to read, and when to read. This is not necessarily what we as teachers want to do, but it is what the “professional” consultants tell us works best. I am not a firm believer that there is a “one way best way” to teach reading. In fact just like building muscle mass, it is better to be diverse in your styles of building knowledge. My experiences as a teacher over the last 10 years has shown me one thing, reading has become a job not an experience. It is imperative that we begin this change now.