Aesthetic Readers Lurk in Us All

While reading Chapters 13 and 14 in When Kids Can't Read, by Kylene Beers, many of the ideas resonated with me. Initially, I thought of a few specific students of mine, as Beers provided anecdotes regarding George, from her own experience. The insecurity of adolescence is an enormous barrier to learning and to developing a safe emotional environment in a classroom setting. I briefly recalled some of my own classroom experiences. During my junior year in high school, I took Journalism, which was an elective that many low-achieving students took in place of a general English class. In that class, I often noticed my own feelings of social insecurity. I was crossing the academic boundaries between the nerds and the jocks, by being the "smart kid" in this class, and many of the guys in that class knew me as a former athlete, which made the class slightly more bearable (I played basketball in 9th and 10th grade). The class was taught by one of my favorite high school teachers, which was part of why I chose it as an elective (in addition to my regular English class). Mr. Foisy, during the first week, asked why I was taking the class. I told him I was interested in sports journalism (which was true). Anyway, my general unhappiness during most of high school made it so that the insecurity I felt in this class wasn't all that much more pronounced than it was in a class like Honors Chemistry, where the "cool" and "smart" kids acted like they were all mildly retarded so as not to give any hint of their intelligence. It bothered me throughout junior high and high school. It bothers me when I see it in my own students today. So, I feel Beers when she talks about George, and his stifled responses, and his fear of standing out as "the dumb kid."

Beers' explanation of the difference between aesthetic and efferent stances toward reading intrigued me. I don't read for pleasure enough anymore. Perhaps once I am finally done with student work, I will be able to move on and develop a love of reading again. I found the "Questions to Encourage..." boxes extremely helpful, and plan on using some of them with my students. I have been an efferent reader for far too long. Beers provides writing and ideas that pull out the aesthetic reader in me, as I'm relating to her information and concepts. I talked with a student last week about why he was having trouble with Night. He said it was boring. I asked him what he reads that interests him. He said skateboarding magazines. I said if there was a skateboarder in Night, would he have been more interested. Not surprisingly, he said yes. I suppose the memoir would have been slightly different if Elie was doing tricks on his board at Aushwitz, while everyone else starved to death and headed for the crematorium.

I always got excited to read about sports when I was young. Unfortunately, there aren't all that many great writers who write about sports. Bill Simmons isn't a great writer, but he is hilarious. I'm always excited to read about music and film today. I still enjoy memoirs more often than fiction. But so much of the fiction that I've read in my life has been assigned to me. That plays a huge part in it.

I've become an efferent reader over time. Maybe the busier you are when you are reading, the more difficult it is to be an aesthetic reader, just as appreciating music takes time and emotional involvement.

If we read texts to our students with an aesthetic stance (as I have currently been reading Night aloud to them), it seems noticeable to them. On the other hand, as the other class is reading Romeo and Juliet, the efferent readers who volunteer to read just because they want to be on stage (in front of the class) and stubbornly refuse to read with any emotion (I've scaffolded, but their insecurities combined with Shakespeare's confusing verbiage is insurmountable!) make the language that much more difficult to decode for the class. I wonder if having them perform the words is doing more harm than good sometimes.

My state of mind often makes it difficult to really dive in to anything I read these days. Knowing that I'm keeping the aesthetic reader in the shadows is reassuring. He's in there somewhere.