Igniting a Passion for Reading

Maggie Schumacher contributed this post. Click here to access more of Maggie's thinking.

“It should be the teacher’s aim to give every child a love of reading, a hunger for it that will stay with him through all the years of his life. If a child has that, he will acquire the mechanical part without difficulty.” - E. Mayne

There’s nothing more important to me than helping to develop a culture of literacy in my school and fostering of love of reading within my students. It’s so important that teachers all feel that they have the tools they need to be successful teachers and supporters of literacy. It’s equally if not more important that students feel they have access to the resources and environment appropriate for cultivating a joy of reading and learning.

If you’ve never read Steven Layne’s Igniting a Passion for Reading, pick up a copy as soon as you can. I had the privilege of seeing Layne present at WSRA a few years back, and his message and enthusiasm have stayed with me since. Layne speaks to the importance of teaching our students the value of books and reading. I work with the teachers in my building regularly on ways they can incorporate literacy strategies into their instruction and talk to kids about reading. Every teacher gets a chance to read alongside their students during our weekly school-wide “Drop Everything And Read” period. Multiple times throughout the year, teachers in the building update their “Hot Read” posters and share their personal reading with their students. We discuss why it’s important that all students view all teachers as teachers of reading and models of pleasure reading. We understand that, for many of our students, the school day may be the only time they have access to books or see adults modeling reading.

As a middle school educator of struggling readers, I often will have students come to class at the start of the school year unmotivated and self-proclaimed as non-readers. I make it my purpose each year to show these reluctant readers what they are missing. I read aloud to them; I choose books that are engaging and a little bit edgy so they feel that there is some scandal involved in what we’re reading in class. I model my enjoyment of reading in front of these students; every day when I ask them to read for twenty minutes in class, I read right alongside them and I talk to students about what I’m reading. I get to know my students and their interests and I choose books that I think will appeal to them. Any budget I am allotted for my classroom is spent on new books or reading materials, and my students get to request the titles they want me to buy.

I have also utilized technology as a means of helping reach unmotivated students. I don’t get hung up on my students need a physical copy of the book in their hands. I have one reluctant reader this year who couldn’t focus on reading a book by himself to save his life, but I gave this same student my iPod and he now listens to audiobooks that he requests. He laughs out loud at the funny parts and every day tells me what he’s reading; he gets excited about how far he’s gotten in each book, and he has asked to borrow the iPod to listen to the book he was reading on a family road trip. To me, this was a success. Some might say that this student isn’t really reading, and I disagree. This was a student who was perfectly capable of reading the words and understanding the content, but who was disengaged and unmotivated. He now views himself as a successful reader.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always have this level of success with every student that comes into my classroom, but each success story keeps me energized and reminds me that it IS possible to engage the disengaged and motivate the unmotivated. Every time a student asks me to keep reading aloud or for more time to read in their own books, I know I’ve done something right.

“I may not reach everybody, but every time I reach somebody, I’m doing more than I would be doing if I were doing nothing. It’s one more thing to try, and it surely can’t do any harm.” - Steven Layne, Igniting a Passion for Reading