So I've been a reader my whole life. I don't remember learning how to read. It's just like I've always been able to. All through high school I read a lot. Mostly Danielle Steele! But I read and read and read and read. As you can tell by this blog, I still read a lot.
Well the other night I was talking to an old friend. We were catching up on what we'd been doing. He was telling me what he does for fun, and he said he plays different intermural sports. Right away I'm like - NO WAY would I do that. See I hated phy-ed in school, so playing intermural sports as an adult would be like choosing to take phy-ed as an adult. I would never ever want to do that!
Thinking about it later a very bright light bulb came on. I realized that for people who hated reading (for whatever reason) and had to read in school it was like me being in phy-ed. And just like I wouldn't want to put myself through that as an adult - they don't want to either. For them reading as an adult would be choosing to sit in that English class again. It's not something they would want to do. That was a huge realization for me. I feel like I understand a little bit better why some people don't read when they leave school. More importantly I have a little bit better understanding of my students - an how it's even more important I give them positive experiences with reading, so they will continue as they get older.
Wow! Maybe you're sitting there going "no duh", but for the first time I really got it!
Ok thanks for listening to my ramblings about reading. Feel free to share your thoughts about this light bulb moment.
What an excellent thought. Makes total sense.
ReplyDeleteThat makes perfect sense-I've never thought of it that way! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI think you could take the metapohor a step further though- just as not exercising and not retaining the lessons from gym class can come back to haunt you later in the form of health problems and obesity and whatnot, not reading and engaging in literate activities comes back too, whether it's in the form of not being as successful as you could be because you don't update your skills and knowledge or just from not being as interesting a person as you could be. Not taking in new information, whether it's fiction, nonfiction or whatever can be just as dangerous as not exercising and living off of Doritos in terms of long term well being.
ReplyDelete