Should You Be a Teacher If You Don't Like to Read?

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1 2005 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp ) doi: /jaal FIRST PERSON Teachers of literacy, love of reading, and the literate self: A response to Ann Powell-Brown Kimberley Gomez Gomez teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1040 W. Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA). kimwillg@uic.edu. In an earlier First Person column, Ann Powell- Brown (2003/2004) asked a simple but provocative question: Can you be a teacher of literacy if you don t love to read? This question led me to do some soul-searching, to query my colleagues and students, and to ask a question of my own: Why would you be a teacher of literacy if you don t love to read? As a teacher educator, with a particular specialization in literacy, I intellectually understood that some people, even teachers, don t like to read. But setting aside intellect, I really didn t imagine that there were literacy teachers who didn t revel in the smell of an old book, shiver in anticipation of a favorite author s newest publication, and find peace in library stacks and used bookstores. And, if there were teachers who didn t love to read, why would they choose to specialize in the support of literacy? Challenged by Powell-Brown s question and its implications for the support of literacy in K 12 classrooms, I hope to instigate continued reflective conversation on this important issue. My informal efforts to answer my own question about the topic have yielded some insights on the relationship between personal perspectives on reading and professional reasons for supporting literacy in the classroom. Students literate selves I teach in a large public institution in the United States. One of its primary missions is to train teachers for urban classrooms. Our undergraduate and master s level teacher education program is highly regarded and very rigorous. Our Literacy, Language and Culture program is particularly well known for its focus on supporting innovative pedagogical approaches to urban K 12 literacy. As a faculty, we hope that students who complete the reading specialist and master s in literacy program will feel confident in supporting classrooms and in guiding their teacher colleagues to support all children s literacy needs. Students come to us from a variety of educational histories and personal and professional literacy experiences. Many attended undergraduate teacher education programs that emphasize some theoretical framing a lot of how to s (e.g., K-W-L charts [Ogle, 1986] and miscue analyses) and basic training in recognizing and applying appropriate pedagogical content knowledge to meet children s needs. Occasionally, we enroll students who were encouraged to think of the child as a literate self and to consider the social, emotional, and educational supports that are 92 JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 49:2 OCTOBER 2005

2 needed to develop the literate self (Carlsen & Sherrill, 1988). Rarely do we see students who were encouraged to engage in deep personal reflection about (a) what it means to be literate, (b) their personal literate selves, and (c) their personal and professional stances toward literacy. Few student teachers seem to have considered the influence of their literacy experiences on their current or future professional roles. Sometimes I informally ask students at my university about the relationship between their personal, historical, and literate selves. One factor often emerges as an explanation for why teachers choose to teach literacy when they don t love to read. Despite their personal literacy concerns, as professionals they believe in the value of literacy and want their students to be readers. Many student teachers do not read for pleasure. They read , scan the newspaper, and do the required reading for their classes, but they do not have a history, or current practice, of reading simply for the joy of it. They don t recall favorite childhood experiences associated with reading. Only a few students remember being regularly read to by parents or other adults. Not many remember their parents reading text other than newspapers or work-related material. Some recall their parents reading the Bible or other religious texts, but these students do not associate reading with fun. In order to learn more about my students literate selves, I ask them, following similar survey and interview studies of college students (Carlsen & Sherrill, 1988), to write down memories of themselves as readers. I ask them to list the people who read to them and to recall the adults and others who regularly read in plain view in the home. I ask them to recall their elementary and secondary reading experiences. Finally, I ask them to write what it means to be literate and to have a literate self. The writing assignment When I first asked students to carry out this writing assignment in class, I was surprised at the expressions in the room. Furrowed brows and audible sighs suggested that this was a difficult task. Yet the silence was only broken by the sound of pens and pencils moving across the page as my students poured their memories and self-analyses onto paper. My suppositions about the challenge of this task were affirmed when I asked students to volunteer to share their memories and reflections of literacy with their classmates. At first a few brave souls started the class discussion. These were primarily the love-to-read students. They had childhood memories of being read to, currently read for pleasure, and shared books with siblings and friends. They were typically placed in the high reading groups in school and described themselves as always having a book in hand wherever they went. They received quite a bit of family praise and recognition from teachers because of their good reading. Their literate selves could be characterized as people who love to read. Other students, though, noted that reading for pleasure was not part of their literacy memories. Some were from large families with little time for reading. Others had working mothers who were juggling multiple responsibilities. Some recalled learning to read as a difficult and sometimes embarrassing public activity. Their memories included struggles with learning to read a particular book one that remained a sore spot in their lives as it represented how hard reading could be. Like the students described by Beers (2003), these students did not know how to approach reading; that is, they didn t have good reading strategies and rarely made personal connections to text. Some described being placed in the bluebirds or other groups with euphemistic labels for the low or poor readers. A few students described triumphant moments when they mastered chapter books, difficult vocabulary, and book reports. Their literate selves could be characterized as people for whom reading is a task to be mastered. Another group can be described as part of the TV generation. Television is their leisure JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 49:2 OCTOBER

3 activity of choice, not reading. This habit developed in early childhood and continues today. These students talked about the challenge of identifying a genre, an author, or a subject that they might enjoy as much as watching television. Many of them noted that they ve tried to enjoy reading by borrowing a book from a friend. In most cases, the books did not generate excitement, passion, or interest. This disappointment fueled these students confirmation of themselves as people who don t enjoy reading. The professional self Many of my students (urban, mostly elementary teachers) find it ironic that they advise the parents of their students to improve their children s reading by (a) reading to children daily; (b) letting children see them, as adults, taking pleasure in reading; and (c) creating special family reading time in the home at least once per week. My students note that almost every day their students are encouraged, cajoled, and advised to read for success and for enjoyment. In classroom discussions I have encouraged these student teachers to reflect more about their understanding of what it means to love literacy and to read for pleasure. And they have come to realize that teachers, even those teachers who are identified as people who love to read, need to spend much more professional planning and teaching time considering the following four things: (1) the obstacles, beyond decoding and comprehension, to pleasurable reading; (2) the opportunities that can be designed in the classroom to develop a love of reading; (3) the influence of the teacher s love (or lack of love) of reading in support of his or her students reading; and (4) what young students comments can tell us about why they don t describe themselves as lovers of reading. 1. Obstacles to pleasurable reading might include a lack of books in the home, a parental view of book reading as a school-related activity, or a limited knowledge of text genres that attract reader interest. These obstacles stand in the way of pleasurable engagement with reading. 2. Teachers who value and enjoy reading sometimes arrange their classrooms to foster children s in-school and out-of-school reading. For instance, they create libraries and comfortable reading spaces so that students can associate enjoyable reading with relaxation (Lesesne, 1994; Pavonetti, 2004). These teachers argue that students must have regular, pleasurable opportunities to engage with texts. 3. As noted earlier, many of my graduate students had not explicitly discussed, in school, with colleagues, or in their personal lives the relationship between a teacher s love of reading and an ability to model and support a love of reading for students. 4. Once the subject became a part of classroom dialogue, my students also began to consider what children can tell us about who they think they are as readers. Few indicated that they d ever explicitly asked their students about what, when, how, and why they like (or don t like) to read. All made a commitment to learn more about their students literate selves to better support reading. Personal development efforts My students want to follow their own professional advice as well as their professional knowledge about the value of reading. Those who don t identify themselves as lovers of reading still want to develop a love of reading for pleasure in their personal lives. They want to place themselves, more solidly, on a personal development pathway toward pleasure reading (Sheehy, 1976), but they re not quite sure how to change longstanding personal practices. Two obstacles seem evident in their lives. First, time is a commodity that is in short supply. Time to read seems unavailable, and time to learn to love reading seems to be impossible. Those who don t love to read describe evenings of grading papers and watching television, while lovers of reading describe a regular practice of reading a few pages or a full chapter most evenings before they retire for the night. 94 JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 49:2 OCTOBER 2005

4 Second, those students who aren t lovers of reading have few frames of reference for adult literature genres. Most of what they know about text genres has come from their preservice courses on children s literature. As adult readers, they know little about what genres they might enjoy reading. In our classroom discussions many students were heartened to learn that some of their nonreading peers had attempted to begin serious novels (e.g., The Da Vinci Code [Brown, 2003, Doubleday]) or fun chick-lit novels (e.g., The Devil Wears Prada [Weisberger, 2004, Broadway]). These efforts represent an attempt to merge the public literate self with the personal one. Yet those students asked, How many examples of a genre should be sampled in order to learn whether it is an enjoyable genre? How often do people who like to read really read a book from cover to cover? and How long does it take to learn to love reading if you don t love to read? In short, many of my students don t know how to read for pleasure. They don t know but want to learn how in order to create a new personal literate self. They want to reconcile the irony in their personal ( I don t like to read ) and professional ( I support reading, facilitate reading, and advise parents about reading ) lives. Preparing teacher educators My informal queries of graduate students in literacy have provided some insights on the challenge many teachers face as they try to merge their private literate selves (i.e., loving reading, struggling with reading, or disliking reading) with their public literate selves (i.e., guiding children s reading, encouraging reading for pleasure, and advising parents about reading). The final reconciliation of these two selves is a matter left up to each teacher, but gentle support for and skillful guidance toward that goal should be a responsibility of literacy-focused, teacher training programs. The guidance and support can come in three forms. First, students can be encouraged to reflect on their literacy histories. Opportunities must be made available, throughout training, for students to analyze their personal views of literacy, their experiences with it and their literate paths. These opportunities for reflection will allow students to build background connections and tap into their own funds of knowledge (Moll, 1992) about the meaning of literacy in children s lives, in family experiences, and in their own profession. Next, student teachers, especially those who are already practicing, should be encouraged to consider their schools view of literacy. That is, what characteristics do the school administration and faculty view as evidence that a child is literate? Students should consider how their local schools characteristics are compatible with their views of literacy and how school views could be cultivated or, perhaps, refined. Given their expected roles in a school (i.e., as literacy coordinator, literacy facilitator), it is important for these graduate students to understand what they believe about what it means to support literacy, promote it, and enjoy reading. They should apply a critical lens to the school s view of the literate self and their own, because in their professional lives these views will be reflected in their classroom literacy instruction and in their support and guidance of other teachers. Finally, students in literacy education programs need opportunities to consider pathways toward reading enjoyment. They should have a clear sense of how a love of literacy can come from many avenues, genres, and texts (Lesesne, 1994, 2002). So why would teachers be teachers of literacy if they don t love to read? I believe it is because those teachers are on a path of self-discovery and reconciliation between their public and personal literate selves. Faculty in literacy teacher education programs can support students in this effort and, in so doing, send into K 12 settings coordinators, facilitators, and classroom teachers who are more aware of what it means to love and to support literacy for all. JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 49:2 OCTOBER

5 REFERENCES Beers, K. (2003). When kids can t read, what teachers can do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Carlsen, G., & Sherrill, A. (1988). Voices of readers: How we come to love books. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Lesesne, T. (1994). Forming connections and awakening visions: Using short story collections in the classroom. The Alan Review, 21(3). Retrieved May 19, 2005, from scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/alan/spring94/lesesne.html Lesesne, T. (2002). Whose life is it, anyway? Biographies in the classroom. In J. Elliott & M. Dupuis (Eds.), Young adult literature in the classroom: Reading it, teaching it, loving it (pp ). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Moll, L. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), Ogle, D. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39, Pavonetti, L. (2004). Children s literature remembered: Issues, trends, and favorite books. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Powell-Brown, A. (2003/2004). Can you be a teacher of literacy if you don t love to read? Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47, Sheehy, G. (1976). Passages: Predictable crises of adult life. New York: Dutton. First Person provides space for opinions, commentary, creative examinations of contemporary issues in literacy education, and personal reflections on classroom practice. We seek submissions for this department that have lively writing and a strong authorial voice. Authors should follow JAAL s instructions for authors when submitting manuscripts. Submissions should be 6 to 10 typed, double-spaced pages (1,500 to 2,500 words). Questions or comments about the department content should be directed to the editor of JAAL, F. Todd Goodson (tgoodson@ksu.edu). See www. reading.org for information on submitting. 96 JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY 49:2 OCTOBER 2005

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