Is reading scary? Face your fears!

“The man who doesn’t read is no better off than the man who can’t read.” ~Mark Twain.

I was a Literature major for about a semester. I thought that Art and Lit. would be a great combo. Something happened that semester though. I don’t think I read one story or novel all the way through. Somehow, just by skimming I managed to pull a ‘B’ in my Literature classes.

I felt terrible. How could I have any integrity as a high school English teacher if I hated reading? How could my professor let me get by with a decent grade, when I hardly read anything completely. That’s when I switched to History as a second major.

I thought I was lazy. I was convinced that I had Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.). As it turns out, I’m just a guy. Research shows that males prefer non-fiction (like history). We like newspapers and magazines better than books, especially articles on things hobbies or sports. We like short chapters, humor, suspense, and sometimes gross.

How do I know this? Mostly because, me, an Art teacher was appointed to a Reading Achievement Leadership team at Boyer Valley. Our job is to initiate strategies for helping students learn to read, read better and enjoy reading more.

Once a month we attend a course offered by our Area Education Agency on things like literacy and using test data to determine better teaching strategies too. One of the things we’ve started is a D.E.A.R. time in the high school. Every day, every class has to Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) for at least fifteen minutes.

One student complained to me, “but I don’t like to read.”

“Why don’t you?” I asked as sincerely as I could.

“Because I’m not good at it,” was their reply.

Fair enough. No one enjoys doing something that’s difficult. Think of it like exercise, or a sport. At first you hate roller skating because you can’t seem to keep your balance and you fall down a lot. But eventually- the longer you do it and the more often you do it, the easier it gets. The more you do it, the easier it gets. The easier it gets, the more you want to do it, and so on, until two things happen; you get really good, so it’s really easy and you like it so much that you want to do it all the time!

What makes reading more powerful than roller-skating is that the more you read, the smarter you become. Some people have this messed-up idea that there are just some people who are smart, and other people who aint (aren’t). As if there are some people who can skate and some people who can’t. Okay, not everybody is going to be Dorothy Hamill, but unless you don’t have legs, you can wobble around a rink holding on to the rail until you get your “sea legs.”

One of the most wonderful things about America is our freedom to read and our freedom to learn. Libraries are free, Public Schools are free. Anyone can strap on a pair of skates and get wobbling.

I wanted so bad to be an avid reader like my folks. I tried getting into the John Grisham, Tom Clancy or Michael Creighton mysteries like my parents. I thought I’d like Tony Hillerman since his books take place in my native Arizona, but it just didn’t do it for me.

Finally this year I found an author I could get into. J.A. Jance. Her series of mysteries takes place in Southern Arizona and follow the adventures of a thirty-something insurance adjuster who’s husband is shot down by a drug cartel. Maybe as a way to deal with her loss, she runs for Sheriff and is elected. The only experience she had was that her father had been Sheriff, but he was killed in the line of duty when she was a teenager.

You may prefer magazines or newspapers to novels, you may want to just read comic books, but everyone can find something they like to read.

The latest adventure I’ve had with reading this year, is that one of the other members of our Reading Leadership team twisted my arm to attend a meeting of the West Central Iowa Reading Association. There were teachers, librarians, and school administrators there from Denison, West-side, IKM, Battle Creek, Mapleton and Dunlap.

The keynote speaker was Jacquie McTaggart the author of a book called ‘From the Teacher’s Desk.’ She spoke about her experiences from 43 years of teaching First Graders to read. It ended up being a lot of fun, even if I was the only high school Art teacher there. I even won a free membership as a door prize!

They’re next meeting will be at Cronk’s in Denison on October 21st. Anyone and everyone is invited, you don’t have to be a teacher, you just have to believe that reading is important.

A great way to encourage your kids to read, is to let them see you reading. Of course, you can also read with them. That’s not just something for little kids either, big kids get a kick out of reading something with their parents. If you’re not comfortable with your own reading out-loud, ask your kids to read to you. It will be a fun role-reversal over the days when you read them bed time stories when they were little.

Teen Read Week is coming up October 17-23, the theme this year is “It’s alive @ your library.” I guess that since it’s October they want to appeal to the kids who like scary, spooky, and gross stories. You can find out more about it at the American Library Associations website at www.ala.org/teenread