Occasional Paper

Last week I was watching an old episode of The Simpsons. The one where Krusty the Klown becomes very depressed because he has no relationship with his father, and there was a part where Krusty struggles to read a letter written to him, I think by Bart, and it struck me that people can be successful and not know how to read. Struggling readers are everywhere, and you can’t just look at a struggling reader and point them out. We talk a lot about the importance of literacy in our culture, jobs, and our world, but just because someone can’t read doesn’t mean they can’t live a full life or have an interesting perspective on things.

A lot of times I would be confused by my students. If we talked about a book they would understand it and answer questions, but when it was time to take the test, most of the time they would fail. Some of them even read books in their spare time, ran for student government, and had a lot of after school activities. These students were engaged in school culture, not the poster children for illiteracy, yet many of those same active students had 5^th or 6^th grade reading levels. Some of them would read so fast it was a blur, and other wrestled every word of the page, but just to look at them or talk to them was no indicator of their ability. Many times I would shake my head like Dr. Beers and say, “These kids can’t read.”

I used to think illiteracy looked like Krusty the Klown. Okay, not exactly like Krusty the Klown, but someone that struggles with word recognition. It never occurred to me that someone can read words but still not actually understand the text. Before I began this odyssey to become a teacher, I worked at Best Buy for five years. There was an employ there that was a great salesman, very charismatic, popular employee, and could talk to girls like nobody’s business. Basically, I thought he was obnoxious, but nice enough. The guy was a video game freak, but he really liked a type of game called a role playing game.

Role-playing games, or RPGs, are usually fantasy based games that have elaborate storylines and focus on a party of characters that each have their own back stories, histories and side quests in addition to the main plot. These games feature a lot of reading, and while they have a lot of action, it’s more about the plot, stories, and characters than Super Mario Bros. That’s why I was really surprised when PJ came up to me one day, and asked me if I could “see things in my mind” when I read. I thought for sure anyone that played those games would have a good reading ability. Again, here was a guy who was gainfully employed, had an active life, and you would never guess by looking at him, but he had some kind of reading problem.

Not being able to read is a social stigma, while I certainly don’t advocate illiteracy, it’s interesting to me to see people navigate in society to become quite successful or independent with out this cherished ability. It’s always bothered me when I hear someone struggle to read. To me, not being able to read would be like losing a limb. I want people to enjoy reading like I do. It’s my goal as a teacher of struggling readers to help them want to read and learn as much as they possibly can, to take the blinders off their imagination’s eye, and have them join me in the queue at the midnight opening for the next Harry Potter book.

Questions:

1. How can we better identify struggling reader? 2. What techniques do struggling readers use to hide themselves in school? 3. What can teachers do to help promote literacy to those struggling with it? 4. Why in God's name does anyone want to be a teacher? 5. Do you think their should be another Harry Potter book an why or why not?