The students in our school read one morning a week, during accelerated reader dedicated lessons and during a 30 min drop everything and read session. We tell them how important it is for almost every aspect of their education, yet there are still colleagues who just don’t enjoy reading and hardly ever pick up a book! As a teacher not only do we need to set an example but we should be enthusing students about books we’ve read (I wholeheartedly believe every child should read Harry Potter and some point in their lives).
My favourite days are dropping everything and reading days, because, I get 30 mins to read my own book!
I’ve read a book a week since I was very young (give or take), but it’s only in the last year I’ve started reading the “classics”. I made a list of the 150 books every person should read, an amalgamation of many different top 100 lists. Having barely made a dent in this list I can tell you I have learnt an incredible amount. There are references in everyday language that I now understand, concepts that I never understood (politically) suddenly make sense and I’ve experienced some beautiful, hilarious and emotional stories. How could I not share this with my students?
George RR Martin once said, “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only once”. I believe that above all a teacher must be wise, we can only learn wisdom from experiences, ours or others.
A warning though, no matter how mature you think your class are, or how good a book you think it is, you will never be able to discuss Moby Dick without some distraction.
This article originally appeared in the November 2016 edition of UKEdMagazine
@MsGlynn2014 Teacher of Mathematics – London
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