"I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go, don't-look-at-my-Amazon-bill reader. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase." ~ Donalyn Miller, "The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child"
I was that kid who used to almost fall asleep on the bus. I dragged myself into school in the morning and I swear I learned nothing until at least 9:30 AM. I was mopey, hypersensitive, and asked to go to the bathroom simply because I couldn't stay awake in class and needed an excuse to get up and walk around. As a teacher, I judged students like I was. I judged their parents, their nutrition, their sleep habits. I forgot, when I first got into the classroom, about the sleepy reader.
The sleepy reader is the kid who cannot put their book down. They sneak a flashlight to bed and end up with poor eyesight as an adult as a result. They read and read and read, not noticing that a day has gone by and there is no light in the room. They read in social situations where it's actually unacceptable, like at a family dinner party or (once) at the movie theater. The sleepy reader is not tired because they are neglected or their parents don't care. They're tired because they were too busy reading to sleep.
I don't see many students like that these days. I'm surprised by this because I work with strong, early readers who are identified gifted. As I've been working with a team to improve our remediation tutoring this year, I've been giving this a lot of thought. What happened to the sleepy reader?
When I stumbled upon Donalyn Miller's book in our school's professional library, I found some answers to my questions. I found this part, in Chapter 1 "There and Back Again" to be particularly inspiring:
"I transformed my classroom into a workshop, a place where apprentices hone a craft under the tutelage of a master. I learned that being the best reader and writer in the room is not about power and control. Instead, I must be a source of knowledge to my own young charges, I should guide them as they approach their own understandings. Meaning from a text should not flow from my perceptions, or God forbid, the teaching guide; it should flow from my students' own understandings, under my guidance."
I imagine Miller's classroom is full of sleepy readers. This is a classroom where I would want to be. This is a classroom where reading is taught as a craft, not as a set of isolated skills needed to pass some arbitrary test. Students in this classroom learn that reading is important for readings' sake, but also opens doors and windows to so many other things. These children learn that reading is joyful.
As the holidays approach, I have been encouraging my students and their parents to find ways to bring learning outside the four walls of our school and into their homes and communities. But when I think back on my own childhood as a sleepy reader, I realize I did this for myself simply because I got a whiff of the joy of reading. Maybe the best thing we can do for some early readers is just get out of their way.
