Readicide by Kelly Gallagher

In his book Readicide, Kelly Gallagher coins the word “readicide” and defines it as the systemic killing of the love of reading. Unintentionally, teachers across the US are destroying the potential for students to fall in love with reading though over-teaching, under-teaching,  not providing opportunity for authentic reading, and overemphasizing testing. For me, it was nice to have my eyes opened to the concept of “readicide;” growing up, I was fortunate to have a lot of interesting reading material around me and parents and teachers who helped me develop a love for reading. Not all students will have that privilege and will not do much--if any--reading outside of the classroom.

                Gallagher mentioned a lack of interesting material for students to read in schools and lack of authentic reading. He proposes sustained silent reading to encourage students to develop recreational reading habits. When I was in middle school I had a social studies teacher who would have the class use the first ten minutes of class for silent reading; each student got to bring in any reading material of their choice, whether it be a novel, magazine, or an article. It gave students who didn’t have the opportunity (or motivation) at home to read something without having to academically analyze it. This is something I will definitely implement in my own classroom to help my students develop recreational reading habits. I also want to use Gallagher’s suggestion of providing a flood of reading  material and do my best to build a classroom library with a variety of material to meet the interests of many students.

                I am glad that Gallagher brought up the topic of authentic reading. When I was in high school, I usually dreaded academic reading because of all of the requirements. I would spend more time ensuring I wrote in enough annotations, highlighted everything I was supposed to, and answering reading questions. It took away from the authentic reading experience and it was difficult to get into the reading flow. I want to ensure that I don’t interrupt my future students reading flow with copious amounts of busy work to accompany their reading. I think it can be difficult teaching a difficult text when you need to be conscious of both over-teaching and under-teaching. What I have enjoyed as a student is when the teacher communicates the purpose. This can be done through a few deep study questions or even statements that communicate with your students what you want them to be thinking about as they read. There needs to be more emphasis on helping students to understand the text rather than superficially testing them on whether or not they did the reading.

                Reading Readicide made me think about the issue of students not reading in a new light. It’s not always the students fault for being a reluctant reader, as teachers, we need to help students to develop a love for reading. We need to help them find material that interests them, give them a chance to read without constant interruptions, and help them find purpose in reading outside of the classroom.