February 2, 2017 - 20:47
Recently, our class conversation has delved a lot into the way that we are taught to read and write. While this is certainly not surprising for a course titled "Unsettling Literacy," I still have found myself surprised at the visceral emotions I have been feeling recently. It is probably due to sitting in a class full of thoughtful and passionate people while talking about how we learned to read, write and be literate.
I have always resented my education for robbing me of the love of reading I feel I should have. In a similar way to a lot of my peers in class, the last time I remember being shown how to write "for fun" or "for reflection" is in elementary school. I remember that within a year of getting into middle school, reading and writing both became a horrible chore, a task that sucked the life and fantasy from books I used to love. During elementary school, I would read plenty of books. My dad always loved reading, so when he noticed me reading less and less in middle school, he asked me about it. I spoke with him on the phone today, and he told me that my answer way back then had been something along the lines of: "I read enough boring stuff in school, dad." I know now that a lot of the struggles I was having were due to ADD; I could never focus on reading for more than an hour and a half, and that time was drastically shortened if it was something that bored me. Looking back on this, it makes my heart ache, but moreso, it makes me angry.
I almost lost my love of writing along with reading, but through my friendships, writing continued to be a powerful mode of expression. My friends and I would write stories, and in high school, we chose to write creative pieces for a mandatory project all 10th graders had to do. Ever since then, writing creatively was fun and I would drift in and out of phases; some weeks I'd keep diaries, others I'd write a story and stop halfway through - but every word I wrote was from my heart and it was for me, because I never really expected anybody else to read them. I wish I could spark that old love of reading in me, the same one that everyone in my immediate family shares... except for me.
The most frightening part of all this is that I know how dangerous a dislike of reading can be for a student. There were times where I thought to myself, "Oh, maybe I just don't like learning like everyone else seems to." It was hard to avoid thinking things like that! Reading was how so much of my homework was done, and homework was for learning, after all (right?). I know now that I have a huge love of learning, but it's still so, so hard to learn in any setting where I'm required to delve back into reading. Every time I do a reading for a class, that same old feeling of frustration because I can't focus on the paragraph for long enough to get my head around the damn sentance, and then I'm thinking about whether or not I forgot to take my meds that morning. Reading has its moments, and those moments are always colored by surprise, because who knew I could actually read something and enjoy it?
We've talked a lot about the balance in teaching. It's no secret that there is a delicate balance between institutional pressure to help students succeed on standardized tests and teaching students what one actually needs to know. I'm genuinely worried that every time I hear a student say they don't like reading, it'll burn, because on some level, wouldn't I be to blame?