From Loving to Read to Learning  to Read (A Literacy Narrative)

From Loving to Read to Learning  to Read

I consider my literacy narrative to have two major sections: loving to read and learning to read. Perhaps counterintuitively, I consider my “loving to read” stage to come first, and my “learning to read” stage to come second.

Loving to Read

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to read. I don’t remember learning to read. I remember getting better at reading, but I don’t remember the struggle or frustration from grappling with reading that I know well from teaching kindergarten and first grade. My memory is that I entered kindergarten already having learned to read a bit, and I picked it up and ran with it. I have memories from kindergarten of reading picture books that I pulled off the classroom library shelf or checked out of the school library. I remember the early feeling of enjoyment and complete absorption I got from reading a book.

First grade was the first time I really noticed that there was a spectrum of reading levels within my class. I was fairly obsessed with The Boxcar Children books in first grade, both because I loved the stories and because I felt proud of reading chapter books. A classmate of mine loved the book Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka, and my little first grade self felt a mixture of pity, confusion, and disdain that he adored the book with a single large word on each page. This was almost certainly the beginning of self-identifying as smart, feeling pride at being smart, and avoiding tasks that threatened my self-identity of “a smart kid.”

All throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, books were a safe haven for me. I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I read books more than once if I liked them, but I was not picky about what I picked up. I was a bit of a weird kid – I had friends, but I didn’t quite fit in. When I was reading, I could fit in anywhere. I loved reading, and I did a lot of it. I didn’t think too much about it, and I didn’t have to, because I always read above grade level. I just got to enjoy it, and to use my surface level understanding of what I read to engage with academics. 

Learning to Read

My college experience was a shock to the system and a crash course in reading. I attended a small and rigorous college, and gravitated towards text-heavy courses – English literature, Spanish literature, political science, philosophy. However, I quickly discovered that although I had always read a lot, read fast, and read above grade level, I had never learned how to read well. I had never learned how to go back and re-read to make sure I understood something, to think about what I was reading and make connections, to take notes and ask questions and draw conclusions about what I was reading. I had never learned how to struggle with reading.

I learned all of that in college. In doing so, I also learned how to change my fixed mindset into a growth mindset. I learned that it was okay to not fully understand a text the first, second, or third time that I read it; that this didn’t make me a bad student or a dumb person, but could – if I stuck with it – make me a good learner.

As an educator, I now try to teach my students to read before they get to college. That is to say, I try to teach them to be willing to take their time, go back, ask questions, think about their connections, dig in, and suck the marrows of the text to get the most out of it. I try to teach them that I am not just saying it for their benefit when I say, “Good readers do…” I am on a constant mission to show them and to make them believe that reading easily and quickly isn’t, ultimately, what will make them read well; that if they stick with a text long enough to read carefully, think deeply, and be willing to have ideas that are wrong or incomplete, they, too, can be good learners.

What About Writing?

Yes, I know that writing is also part of literacy. To be perfectly honest, writing has always come second to reading for me. That is not to say that I don’t enjoy it. In elementary school I loved writing stories that a parent volunteer would sew up with wallpaper scraps to make bound books. In middle school I took up journaling and also kept notebooks with elaborate notes and stories I shared with my friends. In high school I learned how to write an essay with a strong thesis statement, and took creative writing and poetry writing electives. In college I became a comparative literature major and rarely took a test; everything was essays and papers. In the years since, I’ve written realistic fiction stories and how-to books for my students, endless emails and progress reports for parents, and the odd piece for the local online newspaper. 

Reading, for me, is a way to explore and learn about worlds, both real and imagined. I love learning. Really, really love it. Writing is a way to synthesize and reflect on what I’ve learned, and for me that is both more difficult and less interesting. It’s possible I still have a bit of a fixed mindset left, after all.

Reflection

For the purpose of this reflection, I read Jelica, Janelle, and Shiva’s literacy narratives. There were some interesting themes across our narratives as well as some clear distinctions. One thing that Jelica and Janelle both described was a fascination with writing all around them around the time they were learning to read. They described reading signs, cartons, and products, fueled by an intrinsic desire to be able to read and to use that reading to access more of the world. I shared that intrinsic desire to be able to read, and early on learned the joy of getting lost in a book. To this day I feel confused any time I hear someone say, “I don’t really like reading fiction.” I truly cannot comprehend not ever experiencing that immersion while reading.

Another commonality was the theme of reading to learn, as well as learning how to (and finding enjoyment in) picking texts apart. Both Jelica and Shiva discussed a moment when they learned how to analyze a text, seeking symbolism, themes, and deep meaning. I talked about something similar during the college years in my own literacy narrative.

In terms of the process of learning to read, one commonality was going through a continuous process of learning to read; we all reflected a sense that there wasn’t ever a point that we “knew how to read,” but rather learned new and different approaches and strategies at different points in our lives. For each of us there was, at least somewhat, a moment when everything kind of fell into place – either prompting a deeper understanding, appreciation, or interest in reading.

There were also many differences in our experiences of learning to read. Jelica and Shiva both first learned to read outside of the US, while Janelle and I learned to read in English as our native language. Jelica describes the great difference between the alphabet and phonic system in Serbian and in English. Another major difference across our stories was that Jelica, Janelle, and I all experienced an innate desire to learn to read and, once we knew how to read, to continue reading. Shiva’s journey, on the other hand, was more of a roller coaster, with his interest moving towards and away from reading at various points in his school life. He also described benefitting from external motivation such as reading competitions.

When I think about how all of this might influence my teaching of reading to multilingual learners, the first thing that stands out to me is the need to embrace the diversity of reading experiences students have. Some students will have an intrinsic motivation to read, but might not really hit their stride until they learn some techniques for truly getting the most out of a text. Others might be best motivated by integrating reading with another interest or offering incentives to meet certain goals. Approaching these different experiences without judgment is important so that we, as educators, can truthfully meet each of our students where they are.