I’m appalled, shocked, afraid, and
angry. Kelly Gallagher has created a revolutionizing book that outs teachers,
administrators, and students as the causes of reading being dead. I absolutely
loved this book. Gallagher is flat out one of the most brilliant teachers that
have ever taught on this planet.
His ideas are new and edgy and it’s all backed by classroom experience
and research. I think that his research is so valid because he is actually in
the classroom to observe what is really going on. He gets to see first hand
what works and what doesn’t. As I read further into this book, I realized how
much is wrong with the educational system. It has virtually cut reading out of
curriculum whether it was intentional or not. Readers are struggling, yet we do
little to protect them. It’s interesting to see the reasoning behind why we
struggle to read as a culture, and what we can do to counteract those problems.
When I was reading, I was horrified
with the content of this. Not because it was bad information, but because of
the statistics, experiences, and research that was being put on display for the
world to see. Pretty much throughout the whole book, I was halfway in shock. I
couldn’t believe how poorly we were doing as teachers to promote reading in and
out of the classroom. A lot of the problems aren’t even due to how or what the
teacher wants to teach, but to what the end goals of educators and administrators
actually are. Every chapter provided me with a new shock, but Gallagher
miraculously had an answer or at least some way of offsetting the given
problem.
One of the biggest problems that I
ran into was when Gallagher was talking about testing. He stated, “Students are
reading fewer books to make more room for test prep.” I couldn’t believe what I
just read. More test prep? I understand that we need to be prepping our kids
for the end of year testing, but not at the expense of that actual learning.
Gallagher also said that we should
be teaching to the test. Again, I scratched my head in awe of what I was
reading. Gallagher retracted and stated that we need to be teaching to the good
test, not the shallow test. What he means is that it’s okay for us to be
teaching to the test, but it has to be in a deep and meaningful way. This is a
concept I’d never heard of and was extremely interested in as I read further
on. Teachers must be able to reach the academic standards, but create a deep
level of learning so students are challenged.
The last area that really caught my eye was how teachers are
supposed to fight against summer loss. I’ve always been interested in this idea
because of how test scores drop, knowledge levels drop, and overall academic
achievement drops. Gallagher didn’t dive very deep into the strategies that are
helpful when trying to fight against summer loss, but he inferred that there
are many out there. I believe that Gallagher was write when he talked about
developing reading programs over the summer that isn’t too intense, but will
allow students to maintain the level of reading of which they had before
summer. I remember in high school when I had summer reading plans with
different books that challenged me as a reader. I’m not going to lie and say
that this summer reading list changed my life and made me a better reader, but
I came back to school with more awareness of the texts than Johnny across the
room who decided that playing Xbox was the better choice.
I really enjoyed reading this book.
I think that out of all of the articles and pedagogy books that we’ve read,
this has to top the list as my favorite one. I think that this is one of those
books that are near and dear to my heart because of the relevance it has in our
culture. I plan on going back to this book when I’m in need of answers and in
need of inspiration.
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