I wouldnt classify myself as an awesome reader. I think that on a scale from one to ten I am about a 7. I think most of this is because usually what I am forced to read does not interest me and therefore I read it very slowly and cannot concentrate on the content because my brain is thinking the entire time, "no one talks like this, so why are they writing like this." Generally its textbook or a journal I am force feeding myself for a class assignment.
I dont remember enjoying reading stories as a kid as much as I liked the competition of how many pages I could read compared to the other kids in class. Sophomore year of high school however ignited my interest in some of the more classical books. I enjoyed having discussion of deeper meaning and symbolism in class guided by the teacher. I enjoyed trying to find the alternate meaning behind the words of the author. This was brought to an abrupt halt when I started my Jr year of high school and the book "heart of darkness". I am pretty sure that I am one out of two people in the class that actually read the book and not the spark notes including the teacher. I lost interest trying to discern meaning on my own, followed the crowd, and did excellent on my books exams thanks to spark notes. It wasnt until college that I found a true appreciation for reading. I had sprained my ankle badly and was unable to run on it and had to use the elliptical machine. I found this machine to be extremely boring. To fight off my boredom I grabbed the first book I could find and it was "The Good Earth". It was not the most exciting book but it definitely kept my interest and I found that I wasnt reading so I could work out, I was working out so I could read. Now that my ankle is healed I moved back to the treadmill but have still continued to read on my own for enjoyment. Now that I am at the end of this blog post I realize that was an awful long way to simply state that I use to not like reading but now I do. Thanks.
There are times when the "alternative" meaning in a book can be fun to discover and discuss, but the books where the whole point of it is the alternate meanings drive me nuts. Just like I DESPISE going to an art museum and having the "What is the artist saying in this piece?", I LOATH when that is forced on me in a book. If I liked the book and want to make it into more I will, but don't push me into it.
ReplyDeleteYour posting is a good reminder of the behavior that students can engage in to get OUT of reading. They can just read SparkNotes, or they just read the questions at the end of the textbook section and then find skim to find the sentence in the textbook that has the answer in it.
ReplyDeleteSo--reading in school can turn into "reading to get a good grade" and not "reading as a legitimate source of knowledge." As a health teacher, how can you move students to the latter kind of reading? I think a lot of it relates to the kinds of assignments that you give, and if you rely too heavily on textbook questions, you might get students who do the first kind of reading instead of the second kind.