The Reading Teacher

As a language arts teacher, I'm required by the state of Florida to train to teach reading, too. That's a great job for me, because if there's anything I enjoy as much as writing, it's reading good writing.

The two skills are intertwined for me. That's not always the case, though. I love music of all kinds, am devoted to hearing it, but can't make any. I don't even have a shower-quality voice.

But reading is something I love to do as much as writing. It was my introduction to writing. I became a reader in the 6th grade, when I was introduced to a series of historical fiction books about early England. Vikings marauding, Anglo-Saxons battling against Britons, it was fascinating stuff for me. Then I gravitated towards golden age Science Fiction. I read book after book during study hall instead of doing class work and homework, and whenever I went to the library, I found an out-of-way carousel where I could read quietly.

One day, when I reading a particularly bad book, I thought: "I can write one better than this." That was the beginning of my writing.

Today, it's a highlight of my week when I can get to a bookstore and roam the shelves, looking for the new and unread books, and occasionally rediscovering an old reading treasure. I tell myself it's to keep my classroom library updated, and I do buy books for my students then. But most of the books are for me.

In any case, I'm delighted to teach reading. This means taking what amounts to a master's level course in reading theory and practice, and I've been occupied with that task for the last three years. Now I'm close to graduation and am taking the final course in the demonstration of skills.

One reading skill I've learned to teach is reading fluency. That's the art of reading aloud, a wonderful skill to entertain others that my students are acquiring. You can see an example of me teaching a class on a hectic, pre-Thanksgiving Friday. It's a gifted class, and there's a lot of hubub from these fun-to-teach students.

The skill I'm teaching is surprizingly easy and common sense: repeated reading. By practicing the reading of difficult passages, one can improve on his or her reading fluency and master these hard-to-read passages. But you'd be surprized at how few people actually try to practice before they read. My students definitely don't. But by the end of the year, I hope to show them that practicing these passages, they can read just about anything in a skillful way.

The passage we're reading is from a novel we just read, H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, an excellent and challenging work of science fiction.