My Strengths as a Reader

I have come to think of “literacy” as a multifaceted and living thing, encompassing the skills of reading texts, the surrounding world, and the movement through those experiences. In an adolescent’s life, this is often the foundational moment where they will form their relationship with reading that will stay with them into adulthood. Will they see themselves as having a seat at that book circle table? Will they have skills to critique, question, and speak back when needed? Will they be able to learn and engage in community, pursue their passions and interests, solve the problems that matter most to them?

My own relationship with literacy was a rocky start. I was a late reader. There were concerns about me acquiring the skills to decode and gain fluency and comprehension at the same level as my peers. I have a core memory of an amazing first grade teacher turning my attitude around. She brought in her sewing machine and let us pick fabric to bind books we wrote ourselves. My book was written completely backwards, like letters formed from right to left - a sane person would need a mirror to decode. A classmate made a comment but she quickly shut them down and sewed my book with the same care and attention as all the others. I felt SO much pride holding MY book that I wrote in my hands with the pretty fabric I had picked. I belonged in the literacy world. What’s crazy is reading skills actually did come to me not much later, in a sudden epiphany. It clicked one day, and I became a voracious reader. I loved writing as well, and language arts became my strongest subject. 

I loved reading but I FELL IN LOVE with reading when I started reading the Harry Potter books. Only a few had come out, so many pivotal summers were spent anxious at summer camp for July to come more quickly because I knew the next book would drop and my mom had orders to mail it to me immediately. All night would be spent under the covers with a flashlight. That world changed me.

So all of that was a long way to say, that from experience, I think YA literature has an important job of showing kids they can do more than read, they can find belonging, meaning, inspiration, poetry, all of the things that make the human heart beat, in the pages of a book. It can teach lessons and values, and can also be a little punk rock and show what it looks like to resist evil and be brave for justice. 

Even now, with the right story, I can still become that kid under the quilt with the flashlight, and that’s a gift that has enriched my life and made me who I am. I want to share that experience with the young people I teach. I want them to connect and fall in love with other worlds and love their fellow human more and better in the process. 

I am still a slow reader and a distracted reader. But when I find that connection, I can still get to that place. Reading at this breakneck speed required for this class is really not playing to my reading strengths, which when first asked that question, I felt like I didn’t have any. But after thinking a bit and wanting to look at myself through an assets lens instead of see my deficits, I realized that while reading quickly will never be for me, what I can do and can model is reading deeply. I have been on a poetry kick since my last Maymester class Writing as Teachers (amazing!!!), and without realizing, I jotted a little poem in my notes app:

My Strengths as a Reader

I will stamp my passport and go to this world for a while

I will let this book become my personality for a while

I will use a new accent

Dress a little different

Tell everyone, “I’m reading this book…”

I offer myself up for possession

I’m a conductor

Electricity from other worlds runs through me

I inhibit the story

But also

The story inhabits me