Kicking it Off

A room without books is like a body without a soul. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

I honestly have no idea who Marcus Tullius Cicero is but I live the truth of these words. I cannot have  room in my house without books in it. I cannot work in an office space that has no books in it. I cannot travel without at least one book with me (usually more like three or four minimum). I don't really realize it, it just happens. After 24 years of marriage, my husband accepts this but he is still bewildered by it. My family has "rules" for going shopping with me and they set time limits if we are going anywhere near a bookstore, let alone inside one. The older I get, the more I realize that I am not the only one with this drive and passion. I also realize that reading, especially enjoying reading, is not a well understood concept.

Reading

In my experiences, I have seen that folks seem to think that there is some way "smart people" read and then there's everyone else. There are certain kinds of books that "smart people" read and then there's everything else. Over the past 20 years, we have learned a lot about what good readers do when they are reading AND with the information they read. We have learned that reading is so much more than being able to decipher text on a page; it is about interacting with that text.

For over 20 years, I have worked with (and lived with) children and adults who struggle with reading. These struggles come in all kinds of "shapes and sizes" and, in my experience, the most common misconception is that reading is an academic task that people either love, hate or tolerate. Reading is often seen as something we have to do all through our school years and then it's an option for leisure when we are adults. As adults, we categorize more: reading for work; reading for pleasure. For children, especially those who are learning reading related skills, reading is all for work. Adults work hard to help children become good readers. Unfortunately, this often translates to dictating their leisure reading choices. The thought process seems to be that if children are reading it should always be to learn and should include some type of challenge. It is less about interacting with the text than it is improving a skill. But which skill? Decoding strategies? Word recognition? Comprehension strategies? Building background knowledge? Developing vocabulary? Reading is a complex process involving multiple skills.

As adults, which skill do we focus on when we read? Most likely, none of the above. We are at the point where we are not using our time to read to improve a skill. We are generally past the work of learning to read all kinds of texts. It is thought that however we read when we are done with school is how we will read for the rest of time. The reality is, that as children, our brains are working to learn many different skills and many parts of our brains are working to sharpen the areas which control those skills. In adolescence, our brains are working to integrate all those areas and create efficient ways for those areas to work together as we process information. As adults, we don't even realize how many isolated and integrated skills go into reading because our brain has worked so well at streamlining the process.

Who Cares?

So what? Why would this knowledge drive me to actually create this space to blab about it? I return to the science of reading: reading is a complex process involving multiple skills and good reading is interacting with text. I think that what we often forget is that it also requires a lot of scaffolding and modeling. Many adults do not feel like good reading models for children because they do not feel like they understand reading well enough. They don't feel like they know how to teach reading. Well, they shouldn't. That is the job of us reading teachers. For adults who are not teachers working with students, our job is to support reading interactions.

Reading interactions are not always complex, in fact they are the basis of that concept that people either love, hate or tolerate reading. You don't have to love reading to be able to support reading interactions; you can just be honest. Supporting reading interactions does not have to be complex but it can be just as powerful as the teaching of complex reading skills. I share this idea with parents and teachers all the time and have been wracking my brain to find ways to help people understand this concept. How could I model this to help share not only my passion for reading but my knowledge on how to help grow better readers?  This blog space is the current result of my musing. I thought I'd try "walking the walk" in public.

What to Expect

I am a reading teacher, but I am also a parent and a reader. This space will be me sharing my own reading interactions as examples for parents and other readers. It will definitely have pieces of reading teacher "hat" but for the most part, it will be related to whatever I happen to be reading. With that in mind, here's a bit of a heads up of how that may play out.

Format

I do not write book reviews. In fact, I have always wondered why I cannot get myself to write book reviews. As I started this post this morning, I realized that it's because I interact too much when I read. Reviews to me are definitely in the category of critiquing and that by writing a critique I could influence some other reader's decision to pick up a title or author. In writing a review, I feel I am making some type of judgement on the writing of another writer, similar to grading a paper. I don't want to do that in my spare time; I do enough grading in my work time! I also know that I could change my mind in the future. Reading is often about context and context is influenced by experience and interactions. That's a long (and semi-therapeutic) way to explain why I have chosen to write about interactions rather than write book reviews.

Style

I have a degree in English and, while I am definitely wordy, I will not be writing as an English professor. I tend to write in a conversational way, particularly when talking about things I've read. It's taken me many years to realize that I am what could be considered an academic but I can pledge that I tend to talk very "real world" as well. Maybe that's the ADHD part of me, but it's also related to the fact that I spend much of my time talking with adolescents and needing them to listen to me.

Content

If anyone besides me actually reads this blog, I may lose some of my "street cred" as an academic since I read so much that would not be considered literature, but reading is about interactions not restricted to genres. I read just about anything, but most often I read brain research, education resources, juvenile and young adult fiction and fiction . . . . lots and lots of fiction. I read while I have coffee each morning, I read while I eat breakfast, I read while I watch TV with my family. . . .  I can read in the car, I read paper books, I read on my Nook, I read on my computer,  I sometimes read on my phone (mainly the news and Facebook updates).

I read to explore other cultures and places. I read to relax. Sometimes, I read because I need to find or learn something specific. I like puzzles. I also like closure and justice so I tend to read a lot of mysteries. I am a member of GoodReads and like to participate in group challenges for fun. The two challenges I am currently keeping track of is an A-Z challenge (reading  a title for every letter of the alphabet) and an Around the World in 80 Books (books set in different countries or cities) and am seeing if I can fill it with cozy mysteries so if you like cozy mysteries, you may enjoy some of the upcoming interactions the most.

My main goal is to shine some light on what reading interactions look like and, perhaps, help inspire some other readers along the way.