You know what? I’m not a guy — so I didn’t know that it’s common that young guys struggle with reading. My oldest guy (he’s 11 now) wasn’t a reluctant reader; my youngest guy (9 years old) is. It’s been quite a challenge to light that spark in him — to instill a desire to read and explore books. Since I didn’t struggle to find reading fun when I was younger (left to my own devices, I would choose reading over almost any other activity), I didn’t quite understand until recently that some people would never “choose” to read. Now I’ve found that there are a lot of “guy” authors who identify with and write about their struggles and end up growing up to write excellent books for guys. Gary Paulsen, Dav Pilkey, Jon Scieszka and Jeff Kinney are just a few wildly successful authors who’ve shared their childhood struggles with reading. And I found this website today: Guys Read via this blog entry at The Book Whisperer (finally — a Texas language arts teacher who totally gets it!)
And the son who loves to read? He has a reading teacher this year who has emphatically stated that she doesn’t LIKE reading. I think she even said this on his first day of class. And her expectations and lack of understanding of “guys” is evident in the assignments she’s given to the class and in my son’s sudden lack of desire to read good books. This is a kid who will gladly read 5,000 pages over the summer without any external motivation or reward and now her criticism of reading as an enjoyable pastime is ringing in his (and my) ears.
I’m SO ready for some changes to the reading curriculum in our school district.
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3 comments ↓
Oh, that is so sad!
I hope that you will be able to help him keep reading at home – audio books or books on subjects he is interested in…? As a child I loved to read (I don’t remember not being able to read), and usually read through the excepts in my English textbooks within the first few days of school – often didn’t enjoy the class- and home-work, to put it mildly.
It was reading at home, where there were few limits and little direction of my reading, but many options (including some that were and would be considered “over a child’s head” – but which I read anyway!), that gave me a ready escape to other times, other places, and fed my curiosity about so many topics.
Besides books – fiction, non-fiction, classics (Little Women, Thomas B. Costain novels, Delderfield novels, Shakespeare paraphrased, Ayn Rand among others), new works, several of the Time-Life series, Dad also subscribed to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and several magazines (including Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, which had my attention by age 8 or so, and Smithsonian which I enjoyed when a bit older). I can still remember stopping by the county library as a teenager, trying to check out a book, and being told that I could not check it out because “your mother wouldn’t like you to read that” (Mommie Dearest – Joan Crawford). I was absolutely furious as neither of my parents would have minded!
Oh, good luck!
Reading is so important. My son , luckily, is a bookworm like me and the schools he has been at have really encouraged reading. they even bought all the children a book each for their leavers present when they moved onto the High school.
My friend sent me this link that you might like
http://www.readkiddoread.com/home