books, reading and deep love

This article about teachers in some schools letting kids choose the books they read caught my eye for a number of reasons. It is a terrific article and it isn't just kids reading catalogs. There is a theme of teachers encouraging kids to try more difficult work and stretching themselves when it comes to what they write about. It also discusses variations on the theme of offering kids a few choices vs. free choice. I had the experience in school of all three. There were teachers who had us read the exact same book, there were assignments where we had the choice of three to five books and of course "read anything dammit". Now there were books I read years before that were later assigned in high school, so it was kind of an interesting experience having to read it again in a more academic environment. I liked being able to discuss the book swith other classmates and the teacher. Getting other people's thoughts on a particular scene or what something might have represented. I hated having to do a quiz on books. That would just make reading the book an irritation. I recall in junior high a teacher who would only let us read so far each day because she had built a whole assignment where we had to "predict" what was going to happen next in a short essay. That royally pissed me off because A. I have never liked being told I can only read so much and B. I would rather read at my own fairly brisk pace. And there is C. what a dumb assignment. I took to being extra difficult and involving robots from space coming to visit the Jim Crow south as a possible plot device in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. It should be noted that my grades in Miss Jones' English class were not stellar. She and I did not get along in the slightest.
I had another teacher (the glorious Ms. Meiggs -probably one of my favorite teachers ever.) who gave us the option of a few books to read in our U.S. history class. I remember not being enthused about the choices at the time. I ended up picking Johnny Tremain and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was an older book and surprisingly fast-paced and entertaining.

Now I loved being able to choose my own books to read and I would willfully write the essays or do whatever else was required for the project at hand. But I also had the leg up of enjoying reading in my spare time. It was definitely fostered before I could read. I was raised in a house where there were books everywhere. My Mom was usually reading something or other, we had free reign at the library and when we had a bit of money; books were definitely bought. It was a home where there were constant examples of the pleasure that could be found in books.
( an at home common reader )