Shelly Cain

            The first day of kindergarten, I came home and asked my mother why I didn’t learn to read that day.  My whole life until that point (only five years) I had been told that I would learn to read when I started school, so the question came naturally.  I had been read to by my parents for years, and I had learned all my letters in preschool.  So why didn’t I learn to “read” that first day of school?  I guess that I thought reading was being able to pick a book and know what story it contained, and I definitely did not do that during that first day of school.  Now that I am the teacher I have a unique understanding  of the complexities of becoming a fluent reader. 

            When I asked my mother about my early reading experiences before school, her first memories were of her and my dad reading Dr. Seuss books to me over and over again.  She said that we had read so often together that I memorized the books and “read” them to her.  She recalled favorite Christmas books, Little Golden books, and the first school readers that I brought home.  Although neither of my parents went to college and my mother barely finished high school, they apparently knew the value of the gift of reading that they gave me. 

            My own first memories of reading include lots of letters.  “A is for apple, alligator, and Alice.”  If only it had been that simple.  Once the letters starting make sense, I can remember one of my first school readers.  It was about a seeing a deer eating.  That must have been the book about long e.  As far back as I can remember, in first and second grade I was taught to read by phonics.  I still find myself “sounding out words”, and sometimes I hear myself telling my students to do the same.  The method of sounding out the words seemed to work pretty well for me, but it doesn’t seem to work as well with my students.  I think it is due to a lack of a consistent phonics background.

            When I do something well, I strive to be even better, and that is what happened with me and reading.  By the middle of second grade, I was reading longer chapter books.  I can remember my favorite from that year was My Brother the Creep by Janet Adele Bloss, because around that time I thought my little sister was a creep too.  My mom says that I would come home from school and tell her I read a whole book that day.  Yes, it was that bad:  I was the girl who never put the book down.  Although most of the time, I would put it down to get good grades on my other work.  Today I encourage my students to read daily, but I do insist that they put their books down while I am teaching. 

            In third grade when most of my peers were finally picking up chapter books, I wrote a book report on The Diary of Anne Frank.  Although I was too young to completely understand the complex emotions and events in the book, it forever sparked an interest in WWII and the Holocaust.  It was about that time that my mother couldn’t spend another cent on books, and she decided it was time to make a trip to the public library.  The library opened a whole different world of reading to me.  I met Nancy Drew, the Babysitter’s club, and ghosts in R.L. Stine books.  I was definitely still a bookworm.

            In sixth grade, our librarian had a contest.  There was an important dinner with a new author, and she could take two students with her.  The contest was to read the book Matilda and write a short report on it.  I loved that book (of course I did it was about a little girl who loved to read).  My name was drawn to go to the special dinner.  Who was the author?  He was a new author who had just written There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom.  That’s right, it was Louis Sachar who is now famous for writing the Newberry Medal winning book Holes.  I tell this story to my students every year and try to show them that reading can really take you places.

            Somewhere halfway through seventh grade I began to realize that reading wasn’t considered cool by most of the other kids anymore.  I didn’t completely stop reading, but the days of my constant reading were over.  I really can’t recall many books that I read for pleasure between 7^th and 12^th grades, and I think that is extremely sad.  What I can recall is the endless number of books that I read for school.  Being in Honors English, I read Heart of Darkness, The Giver, The Crucible, Night, The Grapes of Wrath, Candide, and many more.  I truly enjoyed reading most of these books, but what I hated was the endless analyzing of the texts that we were called upon to do.  In five pages, compare the books Heart of Darkness and The Lord of the Flies.  Why did Elie Wiesel feel compelled to write the novel Night and be sure to include specific quotes from the book?  The questions came on and on, and they seemed to take away my pleasure of reading these classics. 

            The summer after my senior year of high school I happened to pick up one of my mom’s books by Nora Roberts.  What?!?  There were still books out there that could be read purely for pleasure?  I probably read twenty books that summer.  Some by Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and even Margaret Mitchell (yes, that’s right Gone With the Wind).  Finally I felt like I was myself again!  But I soon discovered that with my freshman year of college, the time for pleasure reading was slim.  I was back to textbook reading and endless journal articles.  Not that I did not enjoy some of these, but as I now know, it is a totally different kind of reading with different types of skills being used. 

            Now I am what I guess you would call an avid “summer reader”, because especially with graduate school I just can’t find the time during the school year.  I devour as many books as I can in those two precious months when school is out, and I even splurge a bit during Christmas break with a book or two.  But old habits die hard, and I made a promise to myself when I became a teacher.  I would read as many books as I wanted to during the summer, but I would also read at least one professional book and one classic.   I feel like this keeps my reading varied and useful, as well as being pleasurable. 

            Because of my childhood and adulthood love of reading, I guess I would say my goal now is to pass that love on to my students.  I read to and with them every chance I get.  Now I will say that we do dissect our weekly reading story, almost like my teachers did (and I hated every minute then).  But I also read aloud from a chapter book daily to the students “just for the fun of it”.  As a matter of fact, we are reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8 right now.  During the day, we also have a free choice reading time where students can read whatever they want.  I can only hope that my love of reading will affect these students’ lives the way that books have affected mine. 

            I believe that reading is an integral part of life, and that those that cannot or do not read on a regular basis are missing out.  Whether it is a fictional novel, a recipe, an owner’s manual, or a restaurant menu, being able to read is important for all people to do.  I wish that all children could grow up in the literacy rich environment that I did, but because some do not, I intend to try to provide them with that “reading” environment in my classroom.