in the article from teachers about their nightmares rang true with a lot of the things that people said in our discussions.Mr. Bintz did get into some detail about trying to solve this problem. He didn’t, though, address what I feel are the two biggest obstacles to making reading instruction a priority. They are apathy and funding. It isn’t necessary to go into details about the difficulties of providing funding for new programs. Apathy we can comment about. As a teacher in one of the poorest high schools in Brooklyn, I am constantly reminded of the apathy of students, parents, and, unfortunately, teachers. Our administration does try to make reading a priority. We have a 20 minute period everyday (instead of a homeroom) that we call RAG (Read and Grow) time. The students are supposed to read a non-school book. Too often, I hear the teachers mock this time. I have also heard that our union insists that we shouldn’t have to enforce the reading period, because that becomes an extra ‘teaching’ period. I am not certain if that is true, but I am certain that I heard teachers discussing this. I have also called home to parents to explain RAG time, and to ask why their children refuse to read, and I get the same dumbfounded answers I get from the kids. This leaves me in quite a quandary. I am certainly untrained as a reading teacher. Being a first year teacher, I am untrained in many of the pedagogical skills. How am I to combat this ? I guess that my aspirations for the information that I would get from this article were too high, and that can only lead to being let down. I had hoped to be enlightened on how I can help these kids gain the love for reading that I have. As my aspirations were high, the first reading of this article left me feeling like it was incomplete. After going through it over and over again, I found that this article is very well written, and gives a clear foundation for more...
