The Book Whisperer: Instilling a love of reading in our students

The importance of instilling a love of reading in our students

I discovered this book on social media - Instagram, to be exact.  As the librarian at my school site, I know my job is to promote reading.  I picked up this book in order to help generate ideas that I can implement at my school site.  

Miller states at the beginning of her book that the goal of any teacher should be to create lifelong readers of our students.  

Reading culture is not part of my school site or the community the school is located in.  Yet Miller talks about the importance of having reading role models.  This is an important part of teaching students to become life long readers.  She states:  

By allowing students to pass through our classrooms without learning to love reading, we are creating adults (who then become parents & teachers) who don't read much.  . . .  they do not love to read and have few life reading habits to model for children (p.107).

If we as educators don't teach our students the love of reading, then we can't expect when they become adults to love reading.  When these students become parents, they will not have the skills to build a reading foundation for their children.  Thus, the cycle of students who don't love reading is repeated.  We can not lament, as educators, when students walk into our classrooms behind in reading when we are not instilling that reading is a gift.  

Miller reminds us that readers are made, not born.  To help "make" readers, teachers need to be reading role models.  In fact, how teacher's view reading highly impact how students view reading.  Teachers who have an aesthetic view of reading, reading as an emotional and intellectual journey, have a greater influence on their students' motivation and interest in reading.  In fact, teachers who are enthusiastic about reading, have a long term impact on their students life time reading habits.  Studies have also shown that the reading habits of teachers effect the reading achievement of their students.  

Students need lots of practice reading, and lots of modeling of reading.

Some Suggestions:

One of Miller's suggestions is to share your reading struggles with your students.  For me, the love of reading did not come until I was a late teen.  I rarely read, and I could get away with it because I was a quiet kid, never volunteering to read aloud or answer questions about the reading.  Though I do remember getting in trouble for not reading The Separate Peace, (a time I was spotted and called upon by the teacher). TV, Barbies, roller skating and bike riding were much more interesting to me.  I confess that it was bodice ripper books that caught my reading attention, but it was DH Lawrence's The Horse Dealer's Daughter, a short story, that sealed my love of reading.  Since then, it has been rare that I don't finish a book.  That does not mean I don't put books down, or struggle through them.  There have been many books where I surface read (not being absorbed) a book, pushing through it because I refuse to put it down.  There have been a few times I have put a book down never to pick it up again - but those are few and far between..  

Along with difficulties, we should also share our joys and enthusiasm about the books we read.  Being authentic about what we love about the book we read not only builds trust between teachers and students, but it allows for conversation to happen between teacher and students.  If we are reading current books, we also aware become of cultural trends that are important to young people, again allowing us to connect with students.  As students become more engrossed with Tik Tok, and other social media platforms, it is important to have a way to connect with them.  Connecting with students not only helps with classroom management, but also helps motivate students to want to perform better in school.