Cleary Wisdom

In honor of Beverly Cleary's 95th birthday, I celebrate her timeless characters I loved and identified with as a child.  My heart smiles when I still see kids today glued to her books and laughing out loud as they turn the pages.  It was Ramona Quimby who first introduced me to the concept of D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read).  In the increasingly rare event that classrooms I visit as a substitute teacher make time for sustained silent reading, I  often tell them the story of Ramona's class deciding together that Sustained Silent Reading sounded rather dry, and needed a new name for something they loved to so.  Thus, the acronym D.E.A.R. was born.

In an author interview on her website, the interviewer asks her what patterns have emerged in children over time as she receives thousands of letters from her young fans each year:

"Well, I think that the emotions of children don't change.  Their life situations change.  But inside they are just like they always were.  They want a home, they want parents that love them, they want friends, and they want teachers that they like.  And I think that's rather universal"(Cleary, 2011).

This morning, I read an an interview in Education Week with Kelly Gallagher, a veteran high school teacher an author of several published works on the subject of building deep readers and writers. In the interview, Gallagher reflects on change he's noticed in students' reading over the past 25 years of teaching:

"Students are reading a lot less. And here’s the compounding problem: That lack of reading has created a gaping hole in students’ prior knowledge and background, which is very, very important to bring to the page. A lot of times my kids can read the words on the page, but they can’t comprehend the text because they don’t have requisite prior knowledge and background information"(Gallagher, 2011).

Without an opportunity to read student-selected, high-interest text, schools are robbing young readers of the opportunity to learn how to read for pleasure, which is essential for developing a lifelong love of reading. "It’s ironic because school should be the place where kids go to learn to love reading. But school has become a place where kids go to hate reading."


 A lot of this, of course, is driven by the testing pressures. Gallagher discusses the fact that his 9th graders in class today were in 1st grade when No Child Left Behind was enacted, so they have reached high school with a belief that the real reason you should read is to pass a test or respond to multiple-choice questions. As an adult who loves to read, I would say that if I learned to read in that context, I probably wouldn’t like reading either. Though the subject matter is rather dismal, the article is refreshingly optimistic, offering hope that the pendulum will swing back "into richer, deeper instruction—away from the inch-deep, mile-wide curriculum created to meet testing mandates." Teachers, parents and students themselves need to remember that Cleary wisdom reminding us that students learn naturally when their basic wants and needs are met.  As long as we provide them with a safe and comfortable place to spend their days and plenty of high interest books to identify with, and learn from, they will thrive.