Forming Reading Identities

My grandkids are forming their reading identity early!

Yesterday I didn’t follow my lesson plan. It called for deviating from the pattern of starting class with 10 minutes of independent reading as we had the first 4 days of this first week with all students at school, masked, for shortened 35-minute periods. But when I looked over the room 2 minutes before starting time and all but 1 or 2 students were deeply settled into their books already, well, who wants to disrupt a beautiful thing like that? We’ll do 10 extra minutes of grammar next week.

What have 6th and 7th graders been reading? They’ve been reading about a variety of people, like and unlike them: a modern Black American boy (New Kid), a Chinese-American boy (American Born Chinese), young people in Meiji-era and World War 2 Japan (Samurai Shortstop and Grenade), and a boy with severe facial deformities (Wonder). They’ve been reading not only about identity, but also about perseverance (Hatchet), empathy (Because of Winn-Dixie), making choices (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), working together (The Mysterious Benedict Society), and growing up (Pay Attention, Carter Jones).  And most of those stories address multiple significant topics. 

Why is reading so important? For many academic reasons including expanded vocabulary, improved writing, and better college preparedness. And right now, reading is important because as a human being, I am physically limited to one experience of the world. But reading expands that possibility. Currently, it is helping me see a perspective of the world shared by many of my fellow citizens—Black Americans. In the last year 2 books that did this were The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz. In the last month, I’ve been reading Stamped from the Beginning. 

There are still many voices for me to listen to, many experiences to hear. My identity as a reader has allowed me access to those voices and stories. My goal as students develop their own identity as readers, is that they also will find, now and throughout their lives, that reading provides access to the stories of all their neighbors who they need to love, and to what doing justice and loving mercy for those neighbors looks like.