I recently re-read this article over at NYTimes from 2009 about reading in schools and even though it’s years old, I wanted to throw in my two cents.  When it comes to the subject of reading and teaching our kids to love reading, I am opinionated.  Deeply.  And In order to understand some of that, I want to share my own history with you, at least a little.

I do not remember a time when I couldn’t read, or even didn’t love reading.  I look at my book shelves and remember many parts of my life based on what I was reading.  I can pull out a book, hold it in my hands, and say “Oh, I read this in sixth grade.  I was reading this when I met so-and-so.”  Or maybe “This is the book I borrowed from Ms. Barts, then forgot to return… oops!”  My books hold my memories.  They are the story of my life, written in a language, a script, an alphabet that only I can read.  They are my history, my friends, a warmth on cold nights and a light in the dark.

In spite of my clear love of reading, and books in general, I’ve had my own fair share of good and bad experiences with reading and teachers.  My absolute worst experience was actually in fifth grade.  We had free time every day to read, and we were supposed to bring our own books in for this or check something out of the library.  I brought in my copy of Roots.

Now, when I say “my copy”, what I mean is this:  not long after I was born, my mother worked for a tv station and arranged an interview with Alex Haley.  When he came in, she asked him to sign a copy of Roots for me.  It is still a treasured possession, and from time to time I open that book just to see what he wrote to me.

Reading time comes, I pull out my massive tome, and my teacher wanders over – who wouldn’t?  I mean, this book was fairly massive for a ten year old, I must admit.  So she took a look at it, and instantly became deeply upset.  She took the book away from me and made me sit, twiddling my thumbs, during the reading time so I could think about why she’d done this – and her reasoning was that the book was on a subject far too advanced for me.  Slavery, the dark and awful acts inflicted on human beings by other human beings, is apparently not something for a ten year old to be reading about.  And I admit, it was a dark topic, made darker by the truth of it.  But I had read dark stories before, and long stories too.  This was not the reaction I had expected my professor to have.

At the end of the day, she wouldn’t return my book.  I came home in tears and explained what happened to my mother.  My mom, bless her, came in to school with me the next day and spoke to my teacher, got the book returned to me, and explained in no uncertain terms (thus making my mom a hero in my eyes) that my teacher was never to take a book away from me again, under any circumstances.

I doubt I would have finished reading that book if my teacher hadn’t taken it away.  It was, I admit, a bit thick even for me at that age.  I skimmed bits here and there, but I read it.  I’m sure there were parts I didn’t and couldn’t understand – but I read it.  And I remember.

Over the years, there have been other moments when someone has been upset with my choice of reading material – my grandma when I read a handmaid’s tale, a classmate when I read Drawing Down the Moon.  If I hadn’t had that first experience, I can’t say how I would have reacted to these people telling me I shouldn’t be reading something. But over time, I learned what I liked and what I didn’t and, because of that fifth grade experience, I was able to voice that fact.

Fast forward to Junior year of high school and my awesome English teacher.  I loved that class for so many reasons – we did creative writing, it linked in our other classes so we could understand and discuss the social background in which a story was written, and in off hours, he’d discuss Sandman with me and my friends.  All that being said, we came to a point in the class where we were assigned a book that I out and out hated.  I read the first third or so before I said to myself “hey – he knows I love reading, he knows I’m not trying to get out of work… why don’t I just go talk to my prof and see what we can do here?”

What we ended up doing was this: I was given a new assignment.  Go find a book from the same time period and the same style of writing.  Go do some research.  I was able to read that book instead, and write my paper on it.  Now, I can’t remember what I picked to read – after all, that was… what, 15 years ago?  I do remember very well the book I hated, but I also know that was just personal opinion.  That being said, I think I got more out of the experience because I went to my teacher and spoke up, because I was given the chance to read and write about something of my choosing.

Now, you do lose something by going this route – you lose the class discussion, the throwing around of ideas and debate about what something might mean.  But you gain a lot too.  Would I say that this is the only way to do things?  No.  Not at all.  But I do think there’s a level of personal development that happens when you choose your own book.  And I think it helps to instill in kids a love of reading.  This is choose your own adventure at its most basic.  And this is a level of student-teacher interaction most kids don’t get.  This sounds a lot like a typical night growing up, when I’d discuss my reading with mom.  It sounds a lot like home.

That’s my two cents.