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A Reading Life: Making Our Literacy Traditions Explicit to the Children We Teach by Dorothy Suskind
Children do not become readers because we tell them to read, but because we immerse them inside of our own reading lives and invite them to create their own. These immersions charge us, as teachers and readers, to tell the story of our roads to reading, detail our daily traditions with books, and create opportunities for our students to engage with words inside and out of the walls of school. Below is the story I will tell my students, all boys, on opening day.
Boys …
As a young girl I struggled to learn to read, and we didn’t talk books in our house. I managed to make it to a doctorate program before I fell in love with words. Before the fall, I found meaning primarily in the pictures I painted of my world, and inside that stillness, I extrapolated a sense of peace within a chaotic childhood. Art, however for me, was a singular story of self. Though I dove deeply inside my thinking, that swimming did not include the stories of others, so for much of my life, I felt less than and alone.
In 1999 I met Jane Hansen at the University of Virginia, and each day in class she told us what she was reading. At the end of her email exchanges she signed ~ “Love Jane (Who is reading …),” and as we sat over lunches, she brought her favorite books. I wanted to join her conversation, so I began to read too. Today, I have a complex reading life, reflective of my broad interests and need to jump amongst topics and genres fluidly to feel content. My weekly reading is housed on seven metaphorical bookshelves:
- Academic and Research Interests
- Print Nonfiction (primarily memoirs)
- Print Fiction
- Electronic Nonfiction
- Electronic Fiction
- Twitter, Blogs, Magazines, and News
- Audio Story
As a teacher-researcher and adjunct professor, I read books that speak to the work I am doing in the classroom and academic articles I am writing. Today, I am reading Abigail James’s Teaching the Female Brain: How Girls Learn Math and Science and Ruth Shagoury’s and Brenda Power’s Living the Question: A Guide for Teacher-Researchers. Not much of a television watcher myself, as my husband soaks up the screen, I dive into favorite nonfiction and fiction reads in print. Today, I am captivated by Barbara Brown Taylor’s search for self inside a vocation she ultimately found by stepping down from the pulpit and into the woods of her own backyard. I first read Taylor’s An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith which led me to my current read ~ Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.
Though partial to nonfiction, I find the journey of story captivating. It situates me in places I have not visited but come to see myself inside. It is also where I notice the writer’s craft, noticings I transfer to my work as a writer and take back to the classroom to the writers I teach. Today, I traveled to Gilead and visited Marilynne Robinson’s Home where I sighed in understanding with Jack the prodigal son. In the evenings, my bedside light awakes my husband, who does not keep my twilight hours, and the grumbling begins. In response to his unrest, I turn off the light and use the Kindle app on my ipad to read books I have downloaded from Amazon and our local library. Each evening, I tend to jump between my fiction and nonfiction electronic selections. Last night, I stretched my conception of genre, as I read the multiple tellings of David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife and then jumped over to Ann Patchett’s memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship because Glennon Doyle Melton told me it was a must read, in her blog post The Storm Before the Calm is a Good Place to Start. That is what reading does, it brings us into conversations with others.
This morning, like most mornings, I started inside those conversations, those recommendations, those proclamations of self. I strolled through my Twitter feed and picked through my Reading List I house on Safari, and I listened to the talk, grumble, and muse of my favorite friends with deep literate lives. I heard Pernille Ripp peel the onion as she spoke the hard truths of transformative classrooms where homework takes a backseat to provocative conversations that raise the voices of students, I heard @jesslif lift our consciousness, and I wondered if my niece and nephew (being raised by two moms) feel welcome each day at school, and I saved to Evernote two articles Alfie Kohn tweeted, because I think we need more revolutionary voices questioning the status quo and painting innovation all over the walls of school.
And as the voices of Pernille, Jessica, and Alfie danced around my head and challenged my preconceptions for a duel, I set out for my morning run where I listen to audiobooks and podcasts on my iphone. Today’s selections were Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a partner with my print copy of Home, and a Ted Radio Hour episode entitled Transformations, because that is what reading does for us, it take us from one understanding of self and other and transforms us into new places, spaces, and ideals.
Your turn! So, tell me about your reading life …
Dorothy Suskind has taught numerous grades from JK-graduate school and currently is a fifth grade teacher and action research coach in Richmond, Virginia. Her research interests include critical literacy, gender studies, and writing and reading across the curriculum. You can find her on Twitter at @dorothysuskind.
This is a beautiful blog post that really shows the variety of our reading lives. I love how you easily switch between genres in your daily reading life. I just finished the audio book of The War that Saved Me (FANASTIC, by the way). I’m downloading Echo next. I’m also reading The One I Was on my Kindle.
Oh wow, I need to add these to my list. Is the War that Saved Me the one about Vietnam or the one by Bradley? I will make sure to check it out.
Dorothy,
I loved reading your post this morning. After your visit to our school last year I often thought about how I can share my own reading life with my students.
Currently I’m reading a book called The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Adieh. My student gave me this because her aunt wrote the book! I love moments where students share their own reading lives too! I’m also listening to Sweetwater by Christina Balker Kline. I choose audiobooks by what is available at my neighborhood branch of the public library.
I love those moments too. I have two students who stumbled onto Bill Bryson last week, and now they bring me pages each day to share and laugh over together. I downloaded several Bryson books from our Henrico Library, so I could join their conversations. I just added Sweetwater to my “to read” list.
I read a lot of YA to keep up with my students’ interests. I occasionally sneak in an adult fiction for fun. Right now, I am finally reading Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. I am also reading a book with my 6 year old (Upside Down Magic) and a diet book since giving up processed food (It Starts With Food). I usually have an education book going (Jeff Anderson’s Mechanically Inclined) and an audiobook to listen to in the car and during housework (currently North and South by John Jakes because my mom always loved the book and I love epic historical fiction)! Whew! I still try to manage to squeeze in a few education blogs (like this one:)
I almost forgot the book I am reading to my students – The Eighth Day by Dianne K. Salerni. My students beg me to keep reading as does the special ed. teacher in my room that hour.
I am a big YA book lover too. We have the world’s best librarian at our school, and she welcomes me with awesome titles every week. I love Jeff Anderson too! I need to revisit North and South. You might really like Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Boo, and it is indeed beautiful in every way.
Thanks for the recommendation. I will definitely look for it.
Gracias Dorothy!
Yo estoy leyendo en el bus de casa-trabajo-casa Rayuela, que dicho de paso me está tomando mas tiempo de lo debido porque lo estoy releyendo. Por las noches antes de dormir leo The Wizard of Oz impreso en el 2005. Lo compré hace un seman en Strand en Nuev York, es un libro usado con ilustraciones de Scott Mc Kowen.
Durante el dia me dedico a la lectura academica, derecho ambiental mayormente. Hoy leí un documento interesante sobre la identidad y diversidad sexual. Y para alimentar mi blog leo libros infantiles! Que me encantan!!!
When I was a college professor, I would commute an hour each way, and I would get in tons of reading/listening that way. It has been a long time since I read The Wizard of of Oz. I need to revisit that. With the name Dorothy, I grew up hearing, “Did you bring Toto?” Your academic reading sounds fascinating. We just watched the documentary The Mask You Live In. It is a fascinating look at the socialized life of boys and the impact of that socialization on their emotional selves. It is heartbreaking, yet offers pieces of hope.
´Me vi la película del Mago de Oz cuando era niña y no me acuerdo muy bien del desenlace, por eso lo estoy leyendo.Tengo una sobrinita de 7 años pensé que no conocía la historia, así que empecé a contársela y me sorprendió que saber que sí a conocía. Lo mejor de todo fue que cuando le pregunté dónde había escuchado esa historia me dijo… “tu me regalaste el libro” jajajaj y yo la verdad no me acordaba. A sofi (mi sobrinita) le gustó tanto la historia que buscó en google y encontró l película y por eso se sabe muy bien la historia.
Es fascinante cuando un libro nos conecta con alguien importante en nuestras vidas.
Suena super interesante el documental. Voy a buscarlo para verlo!
Reblogged this on Vagabond Librarian and commented:
What a wonderful way to begin a conversation about reading enjoyment and literacy! I’m so glad my reading life includes my morning reading habit of checking out blogs (like this one) that inspire me to “[paint] innovation all over the walls of school” and that keep me energized to strive to be the type of dynamic & engaged librarian our high school students deserve.