I like collecting quotations.  In my spare time, I go online and search for quotations about education, literacy, or just life in general.  I then cut and paste them into a word processing document.  I remember when my band teacher posted one music quotation per week around our band room.  We would arrive in the band room every Monday and look around to see what new idea had been placed on the wall.  Years later, during my first year of teaching, I volunteered to decorate the school library.  One of the first jobs I completed was to place a reading quotation above all the computers.  I enjoyed seeing the students walk around to read the quotations as they were perusing the bookshelves.

I realize that collecting quotations might be considered cheating, because why would I want to use the words of someone else when I can create my own?  I would counter that argument by stating that quotations allow me to perfect my own reading analysis.  I can determine what wisdom the speaker is trying to impart, and I can use his or her statement to help my students understand the themes we are exploring in a larger piece of text.  I can use a particular quotation in a lesson plan to add impact to my points.  Finally, I can use my collection to gain some insights into my own life, and learn how I can use these written statements to improve my own thinking and actions.  The quotations might have been said by someone else, but the critical thinking they can provide belongs to the reader.

Last week I was at Chapters, slowly perusing the different selections of books, when a particular sign caught my eye.  A table was advertising a sale with a colourful sign drawing attention to “Books You Loved From School”.  One of the books sitting on the table was Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brönte.  Now, I know that opinions are different, and that this book is a classic because so many people enjoyed it.  However, all I could think about was how much I hated the book when I had to read it in school.  I remember being annoyed by all the cruelty Heathcliff and Catherine committed in the name of their all-consuming, caring-to-the-point-of-insanity love.  After pointing out the display to my husband, we started talking about all the books that were assigned to us in school that we really disliked.  On my list was The Lord of the Flies (the teacher could never answer my question about what an island full of girls would do differently), while my husband appeared to be fairly irritated by the death of Leslie Burke in Katherine Patterson’s Bridge to Terabitha.  I started thinking that there are quite a few books that are commonly presented in schools that may not appeal to students.  How can we prevent these students from equating these particular books to a general dislike for reading?

I believe that one way to overcome this issue is to teach children that it is OK to hate a book they have read.  Let kids know that if they take a book out of the library they do not have to finish it if it is unappealing to them.  Introduce them to the Reading Bill of Rights.  Don’t be upset if a student dislikes a book you have chosen for the class to read.  Teach them that Newberry Award winners are not enjoyed by everybody.  Create lessons where students are taught how to give reasons why they hate a book (this will give you more enjoyable reasons than “It was boring.”).  Give assignments where students review and rate the books they have read, and post these reviews for other students to read.  Share your own experiences of reading books that you have hated.  Finally, let students know that by understanding what books they dislike, they are on their way to discovering what they do like to read and becoming a more discriminating and sophisticated reader.

When I was in school my favourite subject was Language Arts.  Reading was my passion.  Writing was my emotional release.  The ideas, the comprehension, the inferences, and the arguments were just there in my mind, waiting to be articulated.  Conversely, Mathematics was my worst subject, and I struggled to understand the concepts that were shown to me.  As I progressed through my teacher training, however, I noticed something that at first struck me as unusual: teaching Math came more easily to me than teaching Reading and Writing.  After some reflection, I concluded that because I had struggled with Math throughout my educational career, I was better able to understand my students’ difficulties and help them to overcome their mental barriers.  I could teach a Math concept three different ways because it had often taken me three tries to understand the same concept myself.  But because I had inherently understood stories, plays, and poems, how was I supposed to teach reading to struggling readers?  Because I had always been full of ideas on what to write in my own creative stories, poems, and essays, how was I supposed to teach writing to those with low writing output?  How was I going to establish that literacy is crucial to understanding our world, and instill that same interest in my students that I experienced growing up?

Seven years of teaching later, and to be honest, I’m not close to mastering the teaching of literacy.  But I am also working to discover the tools, strategies, novels, and techniques that will assist me in this journey.  These are the ideas I want to share with others who have the same goal of encouraging literacy.  Some posts will be a discussion of curriculum theories and pedagogy.  Others will be reviews of novels for the intermediate grades, and still others will be literacy lesson plans that can be directly pulled from the site during one of those “Whatever will I teach the kids tomorrow?” moments.  To quote W.B. Yeats: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”  If I have a passion for literacy, I want others to share in this passion, and together we can learn how to light these fires for our students.