Reflections on Readicide

My colleagues joke about my “inner German,” but to be honest, my German is pretty much on the outside too. I don’t apologize for my love of order and my dedication to rules. If there is a rule, it should be enforced. We need structure: It is a building block of society. My students often don’t understand what this has to do with chewing gum, but they kindly acquiesce and consequently my trashcan is a pile of gum at the end of each day. This love of order also instructs how I teach English. There are ways for us to approach texts; we will have homework and we will analyze together. Kelly Gallagher’s new book Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What We Can Do about It challenges my inner German. His argument that in order to fuel the love of reading that is often lost in students sometime between third grade and seventh grade, we need to have unstructured reading time with texts that will not be closely examined. He wants students to experience the “flow” if reading. This much freedom would send me into a swivet. How will I know if my students are actually doing the reading? How will I hold them accountable? How could I possibly take classroom time to let students sit around and read and not feel like I am reverting to elementary school tactics? Despite this discomfort, I really think he has a point.

Right now I am trying to drag 43 reluctant 10th graders through A Tale of Two Cities. I think it would be easier to take them all to the dentist and then off to do some yardwork. They literally have looks of physical pain while we are doing this. And that leads me in two directions. First it is causing me to articulate my approach to this novel more carefully and secondly, seriously consider Gallagher’s suggestion. These students would not be in so much pain if they were better readers. Dickens’ is tough and, as Gallagher argues, they should not be tackling this text alone, but when this may be all they read, their skills are not improving. It is like trying to train a high school pole vaulter by setting the bar at the world record. They aren’t going to like the sport for long.

So Gallagher’s 50/50 suggestion makes sense to me. We need to find a balance between structure and the freedom to explore. And I hope my discomfort will lead to some newly engaged readers. I still will not be about to embrace this with 100% certainty. I look forward to the online discussion with others across the country. Locally, I would like to try to invite the other members of the 10th grade team into this challenge and perhaps create some Nings that are moderated by each of us. Each semester we can select a list of books that we have read and then moderate these groups throughout the entire 10th grade class. I can get to know some new students; the students can engage with each other across the classes and we can all read some books together.