The Book Whisperer

Primum non nocere- “First do no harm.” This tenet of the medical profession reminds doctors to consider the negative consequences of any medical intervention alongside the advantages. Quality of life for the patient overrides all other benefits of a course of treatment. I believe that the teaching profession needs this lesson as much as doctors do.

Little children love to read, or at least be read to. Even the most dormant readers in my classes can remember a book they have loved, even if it was Green Eggs and Ham. How sad that they have to reach back to their preschool memories to recall a book which they enjoyed. After years of schooling, book love goes away for many kids. Those of us who are charged with teaching students to read claim not to understand why love for reading and books goes away, but I secretly (OK, not so secretly, now) suspect that we do know. The manner in which schools institutionalize reading takes this love away from children.

What does reading look like for you? For me, reading is not just something I do; being a reader is something I am. In many ways, being a reader has defined my life. I married a reader, hang out with other readers in book clubs and grad classes, and have dedicated my professional life to working with children as a reading teacher. I want my students to see reading the way that I do.

Not only am I a passionate reader, I am a great test taker, too. I can dissect tests on topics which I do not know that much about in large part because I am a great reader. Let me repeat, I am a good test-taker because I am a good reader; I am not a good reader because I am a good test-taker.

Standardized reading test season has descended on classrooms, and the reading instruction in many of these rooms has narrowed to a handful of test-taking tricks drilled into students day in and day out in an endless, monotonous stream of acronyms, chants, and strategies. Make no mistake about it, no matter what we proclaim to our students about book love the rest of the year, this is the message they get from school about what reading is. The focus on test-taking "drill and kill" slowly strangles the joy of reading out of students, and narrows their possibilities as readers forever more.

Is there any teacher in the world who truly, with all of their hearts, believes that they are creating resilient, capable readers with all of this drill? The ugly truth is we know we aren’t, but we are doing what many administrators, parents, and legislators expect from us- get students to pass the test, the test, the test. If our students don’t ever pick up a book again after graduation, it is not our fault.

What we fail to confront in our hearts is the reality that those students who grew to love reading in spite of us still do better on those tests than all of the kids who endured years of reading instruction by highlighter, but never really read. Readers real-I-cannot-wait-to-get-my- hands-on-a-book-readers outstrip their peers on every test, every time.

Isn’t this what students should learn from us about reading?

It is an ethical issue, not just an instructional one. Children, who once sat on a lap and fell in love with a book, trust us and deserve more.

First, do no harm. Do not take away that love of reading for the sake of a test score. There is a reason it's called "drill and kill." It kills children’s love of reading for all of their lives.

Posted by Donalyn Miller at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Schools spend a lot of money purchasing reading programs to increase achievement for their students. The logic behind this quest for the perfect program is that administrators will no longer have to worry about the variables of teacher quality or student preparedness because this “research-based” program will create a level of idiot-proof (that’s us, by the way) consistency that guarantees better instruction. The fact that few, if any, of these scripted programs have been “research-proven” to work consistently with any groups of readers is glossed over by the publishers of these programs who stand to make a lot of money off of our fear.

Granted, many of the newer programs do include a modest supply of real books for students to use along with the program, but I could not find one that supplies the hundreds of books that the most effective classrooms should have. Whether or not the mandated program includes books for students to read is a moot point for the poorest schools, who cannot afford the thousands of dollars needed to purchase these programs for their students, anyway.

When I am out talking to teachers about the need to provide their students with choices in reading material at an appropriate level, one of the first questions I am always asked is, “Where am I going to get the books?” Although many schools purchase expensive program kits for all of the reading teachers in the building, I find very few schools that will fund substantial classroom libraries. The teachers I know that have the best classroom libraries have purchased most of these books with their own money. The government supports teachers in subsidizing our own classrooms by allowing us to deduct $250 a year, but I wish they would just buy us the books.

School libraries receive less and less funding each year, too, with some schools closing their libraries or decreasing library staff to save money. Check out the American Library Association’s updates on funding cuts to libraries and the consequences for communities and schools.

There are numerous studies which prove, not claim, that access to books increases reading achievement for children. The lack of funding or support for classroom and school libraries seems to run counter to common sense. After all, we know that students who read the most are the best readers. What are students supposed to read if there are no books?

Not surprisingly, the poorest schools have the smallest school and classroom libraries, and their students also have the fewest number of books at home. Where can a poor child get books to read without access to quality libraries?

There is one program whose mission has been to give free books to the poorest children in America for over 40 years, Reading Is Fundamental. RIF, founded in 1966, and continuously supported by federal funds since 1975, gives away 16 million books a year. With the federal mandate to increase reading achievement for all children, supporting RIF with federal money makes good sense. So what happened to RIF when the 2009 budget proposal came out last week? The new budget will cut RIF’s funding by $25.5 million. This loss of funding will eliminate the Inexpensive Book Distribution program, and further limit access to books for 4.6 million American families.

I wonder how much federal money will be used to buy those nifty kits next year?

Posted by Donalyn Miller at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)