Teacher, Revised

by GABRIELLE LENSCH PLASTRIK

Reading is a solitary activity... not unlike sleeping.

Teachers teach children and teens to read and, then, to read for information or in order to provide analysis.  We encourage students to read in quiet, to lose themselves in the things that they are reading.  I had never really considered the way that we isolate students when they are reading until I had the opportunity to directly juxtapose the experience of 8 year olds reading with that of 14 year olds reading.

Every Wednesday, I have a study hall with third and fourth graders in our school’s library.  Their language arts teacher has requested that they do work for the first twenty minutes of the forty minute period.  The second half of the study hall, students are able to read books of their own choosing.  When I announce that the period is half way over, they shout in excitement and run to the shelves.  Then, they huddle together in twos and threes.  They laugh.  They talk.  They share.  For them, reading is communal.

My observation of their shared reading experiences led me to ask:  When does reading become solitary.  I posed the question to my own students, who have thirty minutes of independent reading built into class time.  Their answers were informative.

Many said that they are taught to be quiet when they and others are reading, which makes it difficult to read communally.  Some said that as they grew up, books became more complicated and required more focus (and, therefore, quiet).  Others said that the books they read are not as funny on the surface as the books the third graders are reading.  These things are all true.  Teachers shush students who talk during quiet reading time—I had to actively stop myself from doing it four different times this past week.  Students do read considerably more complicated works now than they did then, and unless they are reading at the same exact pace as another student, it would be challenging to share in the humor of a novel in the same immediate way that the younger students were able to do so.

While quiet is essential for students to focus, I cannot help but feel that something is being lost here.  Reading is fun because it has the ability to take the reader into a new and private world, but also because it can bring fellow readers there as well.  Reading should sometimes be communal.  Literature, like any art, has the power to create community.  Why would we educate away from that?

While pondering this issue, I have considered the role that technology plays in communal reading.  It allows readers to be selective in choosing their distractions.  I came across a relatively new program available on the internet called Voice Thread, which allows readers to consider, annotate, analyze, critique, etc. a text (or any other artifact) either in writing or orally.  Other students looking at the same text can read or listen to their classmates’ comments as they wish and make their own comments when they are ready.  My students will work through Emerson’s “The American Scholar” using this program.  They will be able to ask each other questions as they read.  They will use each other as part of the learning process.  Technology like Voice Thread may be just the right thing to bring community back to reading without disturbing the focus many students need in order to concentrate.

In addition, I am no longer stopping my students from talking during independent reading time unless they are being outright disruptive.  Some of them have actually started to laugh again, although I suspect that that has more to do with being embarrassed by mature content than anything else.  If nothing else, it is a start.  I have also noticed that they clump together a bit like the younger students now.  Every once in a while, a cluster of readers may take a short break and murmur together.  They are more of a community when I don’t interfere.

Gabrielle teaches English and Drama at a school for gifted students in Madison, WI.