on reading for fun.

Choosing between reading a book and watching Netflix is a no-brainer for me.  Last night, I shamefully indulged on three episodes of MTV’s Catfish while simultaneously trolling Instagram, Facebook and posting recipes on Pinterest that will likely never make it to my stomach.  

Who knew the Goosebumps addicted ten-year-old would one day choose crap TV over the new Gillian Flynn novel?  Who knew the literature loving fifteen-year-old who skipped the SparkNotes and fell in love with The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby would one day forgo a Saturday night snuggle with a thought-provoking autobiography to binge watch A Handmaid’s Tale.  (Don’t get me wrong, what a thought-provoking series!)

So what’s changed?  Technology of course.  The voracious reader I once was, slowly faded when smartphones, insta-movies, insta-music, insta-TV and insta-everything broke through in my early twenties.  As an educator, I obviously still love books, somehow though I rarely read for pleasure.  And books don’t make my Christmas list anymore.  

Thankfully that once book-obsessed child experienced a K-12 education with offered perspectives from Huck Finn, Veruca Salt, Ramona Quimby, Hester Prynne, Atticus Finch, The Babysitters Club girls and more.  

Do our students of today read for fun?  Do they like reading, or is it another chore like drying dishes?  Do they choose chapter books over Snapchat?  At home, how do they escape?  

Teachers hope reading logs and Accelerated Reader competitions promote lifelong readers, and for some kids, I think this does work.  In reality though, my guess is that kids do most of their reading at school.  

In the classroom, what is their purpose for reading?  Back in the eighties, pre-insta era, Nancy Atwell (In the Middle, 1987) researched and shared a list of negative things kids learn about reading:

• Reading is difficult, serious business.  
• Reading is a performance for the audience of one: the teacher.  
• Reading is always followed by a test.  
• Readers break whole texts into separate pieces to be read and dissected one fragment at a time.  
• There is another kind of reading, a fun, satisfying kind you can do on your free time or outside of school.  

Atwell goes on to propose Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), also known as Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) where students across a school (or classroom) read for twenty or thirty minutes for pure pleasure.  Students choose their own books, there is no quiz to follow, and they just sit (or stand or lay down) and cuddle up with a good book.  

The last time I worked in a school that did this was 2004 in my student teaching placement.  With so much pressure for bridging the gap and catching up struggling readers, we rarely offer designated reading for enjoyment.  If not accompanied by comprehension questions and graphic organizers, we feel the need to hold some sort of accountability for their reading time.  

I get this.  My teacher friends get this.  We know lack of SSR and DEAR time in many schools hurts everyone’s goal of promoting lifelong readers.  

We know guided reading works, and with so little time to bridge gaps, we pick structured reading practice over unstructured.  

And since we also know kids go home and jump on Snapchat, we know they’re likely not staying up late reading Dragon Ball Z comics rather than playing the video game.

So fellow educators, I propose we bring back reading for fun in our classrooms.  For some of us, we have to sacrifice twenty minutes a day of target instruction that we know our kids need.  

I, too, feel this pressure.  Children though, can learn empathy, self-love, perseverance and relate to characters and real people, that just may inspire them to follow their dreams in life.  

Books can offer an escape into dystopian worlds, foreign countries and magical places that students may not encounter otherwise.  Yes, video games and films provide themes and settings, but is the movie ever really as good as the book?    

Growing up loving books opened my eyes to things before I ever got out of my parent’s house.  Throwing yourself into the human experience through the eyes of others is powerful.  

Hopefully, more schools prioritize the importance of reading for fun, or even to better ourselves as part of an ever-changing society that could use more empathy right now.      

Power to the Teacher!