Chapter 2 post

Chapter 2 was a very realistic and honest assessment of how students view the act of reading. The act of physically being able to read or sound words out versus being able to comprehend texts are two very different things that yield very different results. I spent my whole life up until my senior year of high school only physically reading the words in books; it wasn’t until we read Of Mice and Men that I truly started comprehending the words of a text. That was the beginning of my transformation from a dependent reader to an independent reader, and it took nearly 18 years, I had had hundreds of books put in front of me before, and I struggled through them reading the words at face value and not comprehending. The idea in the book that once students can read, they will want to read is idealistic and not reality, you have to give students a reason beyond their grade for wanting to read, you need to show students that knowledge is power. As for George and his not getting it, I don’t think that a teacher who responds to student’s questions with another question is really doing their job, I understand getting a student to look into their own issues and making them self-reliant learners, but the teacher might have to spend some extra time with George or get him a reading tutor, but don’t just keep giving him questions when he’s struggling.