Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

I feel like Readicide is almost a continuation of I Read It But I Don't Get It in a lot of ways, and I think both of these texts are something that teachers across the country should be reading in order to gain a better idea of the scope of this issue. I'll say, as a student teacher, I can see how students have progressed to the point of not being interested in reading, or even being hostile towards the idea of reading, and it's something my master teacher and I struggle with on a daily basis. This is because we are stuck in a difficult situation where the district is asking teachers to meet specific goals using provided texts and assignments, but the students aren't retaining very much because of the sheer volume of the information they have to digest, process, and be able to recall. I have no problem with testing; it's a great form of assessment, honestly. However, I feel like it's not a teacher's job to craft all of their lessons around improving test scores.

I also think there is still a responsibility on the teacher's part to teach complex texts to students despite this challenge and, if possible, even engage students to become interested in reading. However, for this to happen, teachers also have to start analyzing the way we approach texts, and begin to understand that frontloading student knowledge prior to reading and promoting intertextual analysis are key to student understanding, and we can't just teach texts within a vacuum and hope that students make the connections themselves.  Rather, we should be looking for ways to use texts as stepping stones to the skills we want students to develop as stated in the state standards. We should be taking each reading text as an opportunity to build on what students already know, establishing links to previous readings and assessments, so students can actively use what they have learned. Simply put, we have to eliminate this idea of passively reading and engage our students in the text, encourage questioning, lead them towards answers, and ultimately make lifelong readers.