A letter from the Executive Director, Dawn Miller
When schools sent students home for remote learning this spring, my mind immediately went to a 1951 Isaac Asimov short story The Fun They Had. I won’t ruin it for you. Just know that it is set in a future where kids are taught at home by a “mechanical teacher.”
We turn to stories for comfort in times of stress and challenge. Looking for help, our minds riffle through a lifetime of lessons, including those we “experienced” in books. The week before schools closed, I could not have recalled that story. But there it was, waiting in my head when the situation arose.
That well of experiences is filled over a lifetime. Volume matters.
Asimov was not the only past-read that has offered insight for the times we’re managing now. Here are a few things I have been reading (and rereading):
- The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller is the story of how a sixth-grade Texas reading teacher requires students to read 40 books in the school year, and offers all kinds of choice and help for students so they find books they enjoy. Then she watches their confidence, grades and test scores rise.
- Reading in the Wild, also by Donalyn Miller, is her follow up on efforts to raise “wild” readers, or those who read because they are motivated from the inside, not because a teacher or parent is nagging, grading, rewarding or punishing them.
- Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina and Passion in Adolescent Readers by Penny Kittle is the advice of a then-high school (now college) instructor who echoes that volume matters. Children, and then adolescents, and then adults develop those very qualities — depth, stamina and passion. It takes volume, which is possible if students find books they enjoy.
- How Humans Learn by Joshua Eyeler informs on that precise subject. The most relevant chapter at the moment is the one that says anxiety turns learning off.
Students, like all of us, are learning things, whether consciously or not. If children are reading or hearing books they enjoy, they are learning words and facts. This certainly helps them to read better on their own, or when they must read something they don’t particularly enjoy.
Children exposed to at least one book every day also learn how language works, how it fits together, which helps them to write better when it is their turn. They learn empathy; and social and emotional maturity are factors in school success. But children, like adults, also store up insights and lessons. If they read regularly and hear books read aloud, they fill a well of wisdom they don’t even know they possess. But it will surface when they need it, like the Room of Requirement.
That well is filled a little every day. As with compound interest or growing a tree, time is an indispensable ingredient. So, if there are children around, and your family doesn’t have a reading habit, now is the time. Every day matters. Little kids, big kids, grandkids, it is not too late to start. Reading will look different for different ages and families. That’s OK.
Take it from Mary Kay Bond and Sara Busse. I love that interview for the permission to not be perfect. Don’t think reading or reading aloud really looks like a carefully posed Pinterest shot. It usually doesn’t.
No one knows exactly how the fall semester will go, but it will go differently in different places. Some days, if all that parents, teachers and volunteers can manage safely and angst-free is reading to the children in their lives, or helping them to find books they enjoy, then everyone will be on task and making progress. Research shows reading for pleasure is the most effective way for students to prevent learning loss when school is out. Just as importantly, those students will be adding to their lifetime volume of experiences to draw on some day.
That moment of need could be coping with a pandemic. Or it could be a school writing assignment. It could be navigating a death in the family, or it could be navigating a job opportunity.
Students are soaking up knowledge about something every day. Sometimes, as with me and Asimov, they won’t even know they are carrying the lesson until they need it. Then it will just be there. But only if their wells have been diligently filled in advance.