GEN: Reading Teachers...

["ELIZABETH A. KAMINETZ" <EAKAMINE@HENRICO.K12.VA.US>]

As I have been reading the postings about the reading teachers who want books
removed from the collection because they read them in class, and I thought
that I would post this list from Nancie Atwell, who during my life as a
reading teacher, really opened my eyes about some of the messages that I, and
other reading teachers, were sending to our students about reading.  This is
definitely not bashing reading teachers, because I have been guilty of
teaching students these lessons too...

Food for thought.
Liz K.



TWENTY-ONE LESSONS TEACHERS DEMONSTRATE ABOUT READING

1.  Reading is serious, painful business.
2.  Literature is even more serious and painful, not to mention boring.
3.  Reading is a performance for an audience of one:  the teacher.
4.  There is one interpretation of a text:  the teacher's (or the teachers manual's)
5.  "Errors" in comprehension or interpretation will not be tolerated.
6.  Student readers aren't smart or trustworthy enough to choose their own texts.
7.  Reading requires memorization and mastery of information, terms,
definitions, theories.
8.  Reading is followed by a test (and writing often serves to test reading)
9.  Reading involves drawing lines, filling in blanks, and circling.
10. Readers break whole, coherent, literary texts into pieces, to be read and
dissected one fragment at a time.
11. It is wrong to become interested in a text that you read more than the
fragment the teacher assigned.
12. Reading is a solitary activity you perform as a member of a group.
13. Readers in a group may not collaborate;  this is cheating.
14. Rereading a book is also cheating:  so are skimming, skipping, and looking 
ahead.
15. It's immortal to abandon a book you're not enjoying.
16. You learn about literature by listening to teachers talk about it.
17. Teachers talk a lot about literature, but teachers don't read.
18. Teachers are often bored by or tired of the literature they want you to read.
19. Reading is a waste of English class time.
20. There is another kind of reading, an enjoyable, secret, satisfying kind
you can do on your free time or outside of school.
21. You can fail English yet still succeed at and love the other kind of reading.

- Nancie Atwell, In The Middle, Boynton-Cook 1998.
--
Elizabeth A. Kaminetz
Information Specialist
L. Douglas Wilder Middle School
Richmond, VA 23227
eakamine@henrico.k12.va.us

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