Aliterate Teachers

Okay. So I'm sitting at a "Literacy Institute" and I'm surprised by a comment from a teacher who says she doesn't like to read.

Doesn't like to read? An elementary teacher, in charge of teaching kids to READ, doesn't like to READ herself? What's up with THAT? That's like a boat salesman who doesn't like water! Or a astronaut who doesn't like space travel, or a baker who doesn't like bread... (Feel free to add your own analogy in the comment box!)

How can you teach kids how to read if you don't like to read yourself? Sadly, this is NOT the first time I've heard something like this. (Thankfully, the work of Karen Kingsbury has been nothing short of life-changing to many of my former non-reading colleagues and friends. I even had one teacher somewhat upset with me because she had such a hard time putting those books down after being introduced to them that she was losing sleep!)

So, here's my plea to school administrators around the world: Please ask EVERY interviewee if she considers herself to be a reader and what books she's read lately. Then ask her if she considers herself to be a writer and what types of things she's written lately. Seriously, ASK!

What do you think? Can someone whose main job is to teach literacy do so without being actively literate themselves? Can someone whose main job is to teach mathematics (or any other given subject/content area) do so without being actively literate?

Update June 2009:
I still think that to teach reading, and teach it well, you NEED to be a reader! And by reader, I mean a reader of MULTIPLE texts and genres, including novels, magazines, AND online reading. Would still like to hear your thoughts.
:-)

Tags: Karen, Kingsbury, aliterate, reading, teachers, writing

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Comment by Melinda Pongrey on July 16, 2008 at 4:16pm: From an educational therapy perspective -

When someone tells me they don't like to read books, I first encourage them to have a developmental eye exam . Frequently, visual inefficiency might be present.

Then, I check their spelling. Are they whizzes at spelling? My guess is, usually not. Can they spell phonetically based words? Can they spell the other half - the words that must be remembered from an accurate visual memory ( requiring accurate attention and visual processing)?

How is writing? Any fine-motor issues or handwriting or written language delays as a child or adult?

What kind of sentence structures can the student produce - both orally and written? Do their sentence structures match the type of grammar in the materials they are reading?

OK! Saying that one is not passionate about reading can be a clue into a learning profile. Simple multi-sensory activities with children and adults increase reading fluency and make reading more automatic and accurate.

But meanwhile, I also think that "reading" and "writing" involve all sorts of activities that do not have to be paper-pencil based---as Lisa mentions, which keeps the PASSION flowing!

Comment by ddeubel on July 29, 2008 at 3:58am: I just wrote a very quick blog post about an article in this weekend's N.Y. Times. Lots of questions and the arguement is layed out well regarding reading and whether other forms besides "paper" are really "reading" or beneficial.

Our blogs/network need registration or I'd link. So here is a copy and paste.... But please see out Stories page for the world's best list of stories for students (all with audio).

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

The N.Y. Times article below describes different sides of the reading debate regarding online vs books.

A nice general read highlighting both arguements (though missing some points I believe). Also, I don't think it should be a debate of "either / or". Both have their merits and are necessary.

Youth today, read online and there are so many forms of reading now. And reading is much more "information" based and temporal. Skitty and skimming and scanning are what's up. I think in a very profound sense, our youth are MUCH better readers than we older folk ever were. They read in more ways, they read much more "efficiently".

BUT, there is the downside of NOT being engaged with character/story as much online. This consciousness changing event, starting with the first mass publication of "novels", really changed the world more than just the printing press. "Pamela" was the first but this ability to take story out of the oral tradition and scatter it into the quietude of our minds/our own conversation was a seminal event in history (see McCluhan's Gutenberg Galaxy for a good read on this). I don't want to see our youth lose this type of engagement.

My own opinion is we must foster both. I really miss my N.Y. Times! In my hands, its smell, texture and how I relate to it as an object. (sounds like I'm in love :) ) But I also like my online reading.....

What do you think about this debate?

From an EFL and learning perspective, I HIGHLY recommend getting and reading Frank Smith's "Understanding Reading". All you need, well written, accessible, clear and tells all and destroys so many myths about how we learn to decode and how we interact/use text...... Get this in our bookstore!

David

Literacy debate: Online, r u really reading?
By Motoko Rich
Published: July 27, 2008

BEREA, Ohio: Books are not Nadia Konyk's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A's and B's at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Konyk said, "I'm just pleased that she reads something anymore."

Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.
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As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Even accomplished book readers like Zachary Sims, 18, of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, crave the ability to quickly find different points of view on a subject and converse with others online. Some children with dyslexia or other learning difficulties, like Hunter Gaudet, 16, of Somers, Connecticut, have found it far more comfortable to search and read online.

At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.

Setting Expectations

Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Pride and Prejudice" for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.

Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy, but the United States, for now, will not.

Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author's vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Young people "aren't as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn't go in a line," said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. "That's a good thing because the world doesn't go in a line, and the world isn't organized into separate compartments or chapters."

Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and parents. Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sounds, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games or sending instant messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.

Last fall the National Endowment for the Arts issued a sobering report linking flat or declining national reading test scores among teenagers with the slump in the proportion of adolescents who said they read for fun. Full Article here!