I have a question.
When we meet someone for the first time, do we immediately create a deep, lasting relationship that we are willing to take to the very end?
No…
The Current State of School Age Readership
When I work with high school English students, I always ask them what they enjoy reading. The answer is typically “I hate reading” or “Reading? No!” In response, I ask “What was the last book you read?” After much fidgeting, they normally name a book from third or fourth grade.
What is it about this gap between third or fourth grade and high school? According the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Report for 2020, 42% of fourth grade students read for pleasure while only 17% of eighth grade students read in their free time. The data for 12th grade is not available for that year due to COVID-19’s closure of schools. However, in NAEP’s 2012’s report, only 19% of 12th graders read outside of school. It can be reasonally inferred that 12th grade’s percentage would have been significantly lower based on 4th grade’s eight percentage point drop and 8th grade’s ten percentage point drop between 2012 and 2020. Other than COVID-19, there are many things that happen with students during the years when they last enjoyed a book and when they sit with me at The Learning Team table.
The demands placed on 4th-8th grade learners’ cognitive, regulation attention skills are quite daunting if they are not accompanied by supports as learners develop them. QED – All Kinds of Minds identifies these regulation demands as the following challenges:
- Explosion of decontextualized details
- Less predictable information flow
- Growing Social distractions
- Need for attention in low interest contexts
- Demand for planning and self-regulation
- Reemergence of importance of bottom-up processing
All of these challenges play a role in whether learners continue reading for pleasure or revert to less cognitively strenuous forms of entertainment. Why would they dive into books in their free time when they already have to do the mentally strenuous work of engaging with books that hold no interest for them during the school day?
Starting in fifth grade, students begin to have required reading in school. If reading as a hobby is not HIGHLY encouraged, supported, and modeled by families at home, students will begin to stop reading independently. In the classroom, no matter how hard teachers work to create engagement with reading, students develop a “box checking” mentality when it comes to books. If it is not required, it will not be read. Jump forward to seventh or eighth grade. It doesn’t even matter if it is required or not; it REALLY will not be read.
The result of this burgeoning behavior is a “non-reader”— the student sitting with me at the table.
Rethinking How We Engage With Books
What do I do? What do I say? Honestly, it comes down to a single word: relationships.
Our students who have not fostered reading as a part of who they are cannot be expected to embrace a relationship with books willingly. As a matter of fact, they may already have a relationship with reading—a toxic relationship. That is where understanding that books are like people comes in.
There are a lot of different people out there. Do we like all of them? Would we want to spend time with all of them? Please, at this point there should be a few choice people that are coming to mind that we would do well to never see again. Or even better, we wish we could emphatically empty the cache on that encounter and have it disappear forever.
Many of our students feel this way about reading.
Instead of launching into a monologue about the virtues of reading, I frame it like this:
Meeting a book for the first time is much like encountering a new student in the hall at school that very first time. Do you know anything about that person? No. What do you know? Maybe the cover art was like a polite smile. The title could ring like a friendly “good morning” or an abrasive glare. Either way, you have your first impression. At this point, you have an idea about whether you want to see that person or book ever again.
Now, say that first encounter wasn’t too bad. The friendly “good morning” comes and asks if he can join your lunch table. “Sure” you say as you make room for one more. Before you know it, you are a third of the way into that book. At this point, you have an idea about whether this person will simply be part of the lunch crowd or if you would be willing to hang out after school. Maybe you discovered that this new person is different than anyone you have ever encountered, and you actually like him! There are shades of cool that mesh with other things that you enjoy. Maybe he speaks like you do and his humor reminds you of someone close to you.
Or…
The friendly “good morning” comes and joins your table, but he will not stop talking about something that either bores or irritates you to the core! You are a third of the way into the book. You try everything you know to get over your sudden aversion to it, but nothing is working. By the end of lunch, you are itching to get out!
What do you see with these two scenarios? What I want you to understand is that it is okay to suddenly like a book because you see elements that you enjoy in it. What you enjoy is important. I also want you to see that it is okay for you to not like a book. It doesn’t matter how many people love a book. You don’t have to. Either way, you have given the book a chance. Just like people, you know if things have the possiblity of being something worth while about a third of the way through. If at that point you discover that it is a bad fit, don’t finish it (unless it is required…then you are out of luck). Our society has this strange, intellectual theory about books. One camp believes that if you start a book, you have to finish it. The other camp believes that if you give a book a chance and it becomes a slog, it is okay to walk away from it. When it comes to my free time reading, I am firmly in the latter camp.
Now, you have discovered that the first third of the book has actually drawn you in. Before you know it, you aren’t just meeting at the lunch room. You are making arrangements to meet up outside of school, and you have made a genuine, new friend. That is what happens when you have found your book, your genre, your authors… They are probably nothing like what you have ever been required to read in school.
They are different.
They are cool.
They are a reflection of your interests outside of school.
And they are just as unique as you.
