If you want your children to learn to read, parents must make it a priority and remove or restrict the modern alternatives to reading. It starts with reading to your kids. Reading is not just saying words on a page. Reading involves developing your child’s mental ability to construct a story in his head. This can be developed long before a child can read the words themselves and is continually fostered by reading levels ahead of a child’s ability to read on their own.
Living in a family of kindergarten teachers and once a first-grade teacher myself I can attest to the fact that many kids arrive in school today without a rich reading history, sometimes there are no books at home.
Compare today’s media distractions with what I encountered sixty years ago. Inside the house was a crappy black and white TV with maybe six stations. Outside the house was our world, we only came in for lunch and dinner. “Be home before it gets dark,” was my parent’s admonition. The same with my friends.
Today when kids are parked in front of the TV or placated with video games and never read to at home, how does their brain have a chance to develop the rich imagination that goes hand in hand with reading? Today’s media is fast paced filling the senses with instant gratification, I’m not sure that a teacher addressing 30 kids can compete with that.
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I worked at one middle school where the learning environment as alive and vibrant due to an excellent administrator. It was a wonderful place to work, and our kids thrived. He was so good they fired him. He inspired our kids to take over the photography from a national portrait chain, that was the last straw.
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