From: Cynthia Grady <gradyc_at_sidwell.edu>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:53:19 -0500

In my 20 years in middle schools, I've come to think of reluctant readers as those who haven't yet discovered themselves as readers. They are different students than the ones who have difficulty reading and the ones who choose other activities over reading.

As has been said here already, the spark that ignites a reader is another reader. But what dismays me most (at the risk of starting a firestorm), is the number of teachers and librarians working today who are not readers themselves. At the conferences and meetings I attend, I find fewer and fewer educators above the primary level who read children's literature for pleasure or professional development. If there is no passion for, or worse, any evidence of, reading in the classroom by their teachers, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, there is not a chance for these students to discover and explore their reading interests.

Access to libraries and media centers or good classroom libraries is not enough. And I don't know if the politics of education reform are enough to explain things. I would love to know the correlation between non-reading children (who are capable) and the reading habits of their teachers and librarians.

Cynthia Grady

Head Librarian

Sidwell Friends Middle School

3825 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20016

(202) 537 - 8157

gradyc_at_sidwell.edu
Received on Wed 09 Feb 2011 12:53:19 PM CST