At the moment the Mystery genre is getting a lot of love from everyone from middle school to adult and a lot of great books are being released. Since we’re in a middle/high school library I wanted to showcase the mystery books that are not too spicy / intense. In our G8 core library we have “We were liars” and “The Naturals” which is probably at the upper level particularly in the later books in the series.
Along the lines of the work I did a couple of years back on Dystopian Fiction, I started to work on doing the same for sub-genres of Mystery. This time around I didn’t have some flowchart work others had already prepared to riff-off and I wanted to focus particularly on books suitable for middle school. I’ve relied on the excellent sub-genre descriptions of Mark Eleyat (who also has great pages on other genres and subgenres) and tried to make some kind of a flow to it. Somehow so many other things have intervened so it’s taken months to get to this point. I would love some feedback / suggestions for improvement on the flowchart.
And I’ve created these Middle School posters. The Canva Template is available for you to adapt to your situation – one day I hope to be able to expand it for YA and even adult, as I’m personally a big mystery/thriller. If you create anything based on this for YA or adult please feel free to share in a comment.
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while. A friend died in February. She was not just a neighbour but someone who had been a part of our lives ever since we started coming here. Being back for the summer means that her absence is a constant presence. We have been fortunate in our lives to not lose many people on a permanent basis along the way. Living abroad has meant the constant temporary loss of person and place, sometimes our selves. For my children the first big loss was that of our wonderful golden lab. After she passed we could not bear to be in the kitchen without involuntarily anticipating tripping over her as we cut vegetables and she was there particularly for the broccoli scraps. The habit of her presence only began to cease when we moved house and the substance of her being was not in the next place.
Similarly the process of empty nesting with first the one child, coincided with us moving country at the same time she did. So there wasn’t a her-shaped space in our new country, even as we created a guest room which wasn’t so much a guest room as a room for her when she could visit. Which covid quickly slashed the delusions of. With the next child to fly, a combination of yet another home and the continuation of covid, life was this weird limbo of presence and absence, being and not being. There was not so much specific as generalised absence and grief for everyone and everything that was familiar and real.
I wanted to combine this with some picture and middle grade books on death and dying and grief. Which of course means a few days delay while I research and search and put a poster together. Publishers have very homogenous and defined ideas of covers and what displays the essence of a book. Unfortunately for death this seems to converge on a blueish aqua. Culturally traditional colours such as black, grey or white are apparently not seen as right for the K-14 crowd.
“The Colour of Death” led me to this interesting graphic by David McCandless (see video below). Which makes me wonder where the dominant colour for the books come from.
Whatever colour death is, it is not anything in pastel hues. If anything it is the absence of colour, of everything. A vacuum. Which brings me to one of the best books on grief and the grieving process – which didn’t come up in my initial search with the keywords of “death” and “grief” – the extremely clever – visually and verbally – “Bug in a Vacuum” by Mélanie Watt.
I’m sitting on my balcony as the light and shade shifts after the rainstorms we’ve had in the last few days watching the clouds gather and separate and the shadows on the lake and in the lake. Where depth is darker and shallow is lighter. The depth of grief can never be lighter, and definitely not a light acqua.
Relationships are part of both mental and physical memory. And part of the grieving process is retraining my impulses to pop downstairs with some food, or to say hi or to see if she needs anything when I go down to do the groceries. To sit and hear memories of her life in Canada, the Congo and Australia and Switzerland. The unspoken lessons of growing older and less mobile and more removed from tactile life. With life experienced second and third hand through media and text. The lessons of the absence of choice in when to let go and the technicalities of a life lived and a life living well. The horror of the creep of the wish to die becoming stronger than the will to live.
And as we in turn age, these questions become less abstract and more real. When to cling on and when to let go, and who decides.
Given the dire state of the nation on reading overall for middle school with each grade reading less than in previous years, this is one small light at the end of the tunnel for me – showing that perhaps we need to narrow rather than continue to broaden our collection and focus on many copies of the most popular books?
Another amazing side effect has been the number of our faculty who are now fans of middle school / young adult literature and who have kept on coming back to finish series (I think it’s really important to have book 1 of as many enticing series as possible in the list). It really matters when not only the ELA teacher but also the PHE/Sports coaches and Drama and Science teachers are reading and recommending books.
Another interesting aspect has been that it seems we’ve arrived at a sort of tipping point of students accessing eBooks and AudioBooks in greater numbers than I’ve previously seen. Since we tend to only buy 3 or 4 of each of the core books (plus whatever ELA has a budget for to put in their class libraries) the most popular books tend to be out all the time, resulting in students then using the digital equivalent. I like AudioBooks as it means I can listen (often at 1.5-2x speed) and do my knitting, and I often have to persuade students that listening to audiobooks is also reading. In a culture where very few students are read to, I think it’s also important for them to hear stories – not the least to avoid embarrassing incidents with the pronunciation of words and names!
Of course I know that borrowing doesn’t always translate to reading (see the amazing way the great Nathan Pyle illustrates this below), but on the other hand I’m also comforted by the fact that our ELA classroom libraries have also stocked up on many of the core books and their circulations are not counted in my stats.
One of the runaway success books I’d like to highlight is “The Academy” by TZ Layton. In common I think with most 10-14 year olds, most of the young soccer players at our school are convinced it’s only a matter of time before they’re scouted into one of the youth leagues and this series feeds their dreams.
Actions & Activities
The actions and activities around the core books this year include:
Culling of the least popular (and some of the most popular*) books from the previous year
Book overviews on the middle school TV displays
Core list on Advisory Slides
“Core Wall” in library
ELA & MS teacher promotion
House points for book reviews
On libguide / recommended to parents during parent conferences
Weekly Kahoot quiz January – May (inter-house competition)
Battle of the Core live quiz assembly – 8 May (moved from January to increase exposure)
* while some of the books were taken out because they just didn’t fly for one reason or another (usually because I’d been misled by a good review without having been able to read the book first, or I misjudged the audience), some have been given wings and are flying on their own without the need to be on a list, or have been adopted by the ELA department as one of their book club books. Of course there is always great irony in choices. After not being able to successfully sell “The thing about jellyfish” by Ali Benjamin all year long, I took it off the list for next year and of COURSE then some young booktokker started recommending it and now everyone wants to read it!
Another side effect has been more faculty coming to me for recommendations for their own reading of for books for their younger kids or nieces / nephews – there is nothing more flattering, no greater gift you can give a librarian than ask for recommendations!
there is nothing more flattering, no greater gift you can give a librarian than ask for recommendations!
In conclusion I’d say if you’re in any doubt about the value of having a core collection, go ahead and try it out. It doesn’t have to be 25 books but it does help to have at least one representative of each genre. Including the first book in a series is always a good idea and I also try to have books that are fairly recent, include books from visiting authors if we have any and to try and tap into the zeitgeist.
We’ve been on summer break for just over a week now and I’m feeling sufficiently rested to sit down and write again.
Book returns
The end of the school year is always a busy time for librarians with the dual task of getting overdue books back and making sure that students have enough of the right books in their hands to entice them to do some reading over the summer. It really is a dichotomy – the students who most need to read more are the ones who have the hardest time keeping track of books – probably because they just borrow because they’re being told to do so and then promptly put the books somewhere never to be found again. And then of course when they become overdue it’s a fuss and bother and they are even less inclined to borrow.
Inventory
The big tasks include doing inventory – something we’ve turned more into a continual process so by the end of the year it’s more just following up on missing items – often they return – from students (or more often returned by nannies or parents) who consider going past the circulation desk as being optional. Unfortunately being in the middle east certain types of books also just disappear depending on the heat of current rhetoric – or in the case of this year actual bombing going on.
Core Collection
With our ELA (English Language Arts) department I’ve been very busy creating our new “Core Library Books” for the coming year (Grade 6; Grade 7; Grade 8)
And, continuing the tradition started last year, promoting them first with our middle school faculty. I’ll do a separate blog on the result of the core collection this year.
Summer reading
This also feeds into our Summer Reading Libguide which we try to promote as much as possible with students and parents. A few of the ELA classes had their students explore the guide and the various reading lists in detail and then make their own reading goals based on the lists and then email their parents with their reading plans and either borrow the books or request parents purchased them for the summer. I was also on hand with Sora Marketplace open to purchase the eBook or Audiobook for the students who wanted a digital copy. Our summer reading borrowing guideline is “as many books as you need and know you can take care of and return after the break“
Annual Report
The most arduous task at the end of the year, and one which it seems many international school librarians have more or less given up on, is creating the annual report. I can see why people stop doing this. With declining borrowing / reading it can be quite a depressing exercise. It’s also remarkably difficult to get good data our of our systems. Follett Destiny is a dreadful platform to get good data from – in contrast with other systems. I was reading Rutger Bregman’s “Moral Ambition” (see video below) around the same time, and came across the concept of vanity metrics – basically just putting together data that makes you look good. With that at the back of my mind, putting the report together (Annual Report 2024-25) became this exercise in trying to show both that the situation with reading is not great while trying to show that as librarians and teachers we’re doing our darnest to turn the tide and hopefully all is not lost. And even when we lose in reading perhaps we’re making inroads in research. Much as I hated studying business / accounting and was glad to escape being financial person it did put me in good stead for being able to work with data.
I’m planning on doing a bit more blogging this break, so keep coming back! Comment on any topics you’d like to see covered.
I’ve been meaning to do these posters forever (canva link) and not had the time. One of the things I like to have in our core collection is at least one picture book per grade. This week I’ve had all our G7 classes coming in to have a look at the books again as we move towards our Battle of the Core assembly and have our weekly quiz kahoots on the 75 books.
I was showing the group Mel Tregonning’s “Small Things” and one student latched onto it and was really interested in the concept of a wordless or silent picture book. He read it and then went on to this week’s display of wordless books and read a couple more.
Wordless or silent books are an amazing resource to have in your collection. You can read more about IBBY’s Silent Book project. They provide excellent prompts for creative writing, for quiet contemplation and for vocabulary and sentence structure development for language learners.
The posters are of a few in our collection but there are many more to explore.
I’m super late in sharing this presentation I gave the the L2L (Librarian to Librarian) workshop that I co-organised in Dubai in 2023.
Having worked in the Middle East for the first time, and with a predominantly muslim demographic meant I needed to get up to speed on what ensuring our collection mirrored our students would mean. Here are some suggestions – I’m no expert and have suggested links to people who are and whose guidance in this area was invaluable.
Here is the slideshow with some suggestions of books to add to a collection.
For a while now I’ve been wanting to highlight the curation of books related to the countries and cultures of our students, and finally this year I got around to creating posters “Celebrating xxx” which I post to our school bulletins for students and adults respectively. It’s been a bit of a chicken and egg project – knowing how many students we have from each country / culture – which in itself is truly not as simple a task as it may appear. We use the proxy of first, second and third passports, but as anyone who lives internationally knows, life is a tangle of multiple strands with immigration, migration, expatriation, languages, refugees, fleeing and arriving, births and marriages and transferences and identities. So in the last two years, using this list I’ve been scouring book lists, book catalogues, recommendations, book prizes to where we finally have, for most of the countries with more than 2 students, at least a couple of books besides a travel guide.
A couple of books. How easy that rolls of the tongue. But anyone with a conscience and an iota of empathy will know that that is another potential landmine. I have carried shame for my country of birth, South Africa, for decades, and still often have trouble admitting to its citizenship since I still feel the personal burden of all the wrongs committed by people of my race. It is right that a representative sampling of literature of my country includes reference, analysis and depictions of the pain and despair that apartheid has wrought. But that is not all we are as a nation and people.
I have not yet made the list for South Africa. But that was the dilemma I faced when curating the poster for Germany. A country with a 1000 years of literature beginning with the Nibelungenlied. Whose literature I studied in translation at UCT while ignoring my true passions suppressed doing a commerce degree. Yet looking at the books we have in the library, it appears that the war years, in particular the second world war, and specifically the war atrocities, is the primary lens through which our students form their Germanic world view. Again, it is right and proper that authors, beginning with people like Günter Grass, who, in his time was vilified for daring to address the near past, should shine a light on a terrible past. But that is not all by which they should be known. And more than anything students need to become aware of nuance. By the realisation that it is possible to hold two opposing views in one’s mind simultaneously. And if not through literature, how will they learn that? How sad is it too, that all the books we have about Armenia are about the genocide?
So far I have received nothing but gratitude from our community for both curating / purchasing these books and highlighting them as their national days come by. It is I who is filled with doubt and desire to be able to offer more. And despair that in many cases there isn’t more as countries are ravaged by war and poverty – at times literally with bombs and other times with the devastation of censorship, cultural and monetary poverty and lack of access to publishing and translation of the words that need to be heard by their people, its diaspora and the rest of the worlds children and young adults / adults. We deserve more than the “lonely planet” and “countries of the world” as nice as it is to at least have that.
Yet again an article despairing how kids are not reading “For Too Many Kids, Books Are Uncool and Unread” with all sorts of “reasons” and little in the way of solutions. So here are a few people / places / organisations who are trying to do something and a little on the work I was doing recently.
Engage everyone
While language arts / language and literature teachers and particularly librarians are often called upon or take it upon themselves to play a role in turning out literate students who hopefully also enjoy reading – it is a mistake to pigeonhole the efforts onto a few people. Just like I spend quite a few hours of my week engaged in coaching students in sport I like to think that my colleagues in other subject areas – including Physical Education etc. could spend a bit of time encouraging students to read. Particularly PHE teachers – since as my now young adult son (previously reluctant reader middle school son) told me “give up mom, middle schoolers don’t listen to anyone except maybe their PHE teachers and sports coaches”.
Last year I started having a core collection (an idea initially started in the UK by CLPE, and carried on internationally by Katie Day) of 25 books per grade for our middle school. We invested in at least 3 copies of most of the books and the books were promoted in the ELA (English Language Arts) classes and the library. Having a narrower selection of books to focus on meant that as a group we could try and read as many of these as possible and “sell” them to students. The news crew of our “Falcon Flyer” also helped with promotion by featuring the books, and they were also displayed on our internal TV screens in the library and MS corridor. A weekly quiz via google forms and the “Battle of Core” assembly were less successful than I’d have liked – but let’s say it was something to build on. However when I analysed the circulations from these 75 books I was positively surprised and just how many had circulated. As can be seen – kids still prefer print, and audio is their least preferred medium.
In my discussion with the ELA department about declining reading there was a strong feeling that promoting the books shouldn’t just be on them – and I took that thought to heart and just before the summer in our last staff meeting with the support of our admin launched the “staff summer reading challenge”
This involved quite a bit of preparation work, starting about 6 weeks before the end of term, including updating the lists for the new year, taking out books that weren’t popular or didn’t resonate with students, getting suggestions from our most avid readers (and asking them to pre-read where I wasn’t sure which book would be better) and making sure we had coverage of genres, levels of difficulty and format (verse novel, graphic novel, nonfiction, memoir, fiction) and our books were reflective of our community – each grade having at least one book with a muslim perspective as we’re in the UAE. Our new list can be found on our reading libguide. Next up was making sure all the books were ordered so that they were available before the meeting and then making new posters, shelf-signs with a summary, badges and a “mini-book”.
The shelf talker signs were based on inspiration from Kelsey Bogan but I wanted them to convey a little more information that I thought would be relevant in the “selling” process – first to our staff and then to our students, so I amended them a bit – the colouring corresponds to the grade, I added the book image and the genre image. Kept the blurb to 20-25 words (combination of publisher blurbs, Magic School AI summary powers and my knowledge of the book – AI can really get things badly wrong with what trigger words would encourage readers and be very repetitive with some phrasing!); I also added whether we had the eBook or Audiobook and the duration of the audio; pages of the book; whether it was part of a series, and the pacing.
Here are the canva files for our Grade 6; Grade 7 and Grade 8 lists – feel free to use or adjust as necessary.
The badges were made thanks to the loan of a badge maker by our design department and the “mini books” are images of the books on a piece of foam that the teachers can stick on their classroom door.
For the meeting, I put all the books on display with their paraphernalia, and the teachers were invited to select a book to borrow for the summer, commit to reading it and to help be the books “key account manager” for the coming year and promote it to students in the coming year. Our communications department helped by taking pictures of teachers with their chosen books (hiding the face) so we can use that for a little promotion guessing game in the new year); teachers borrowed the book and could put the badge on their lanyards. They “claimed” the book by putting a sticky note with their name on the poster. In the end, only 6 out of 52 staff members declined. Several teachers selected more than one book and our drama teacher selected 5 (and sent me a very enthusiastic voice mail last week to say she’d read them all and enjoyed them so much she’d also read all of the rest of the books in the various series, coming to a total of 17 books!).
So, watch this space and we’ll see if this has more of an impact in the coming year.
Other people / organisations making a big difference
Although not always realistic, I am a secret admirer of the “go big or go bust” approach to things. I suspect some times we are actually underestimating the abilities of our students by setting very low goals for them. There is a balance however between something being too daunting versus to infantile. Generally I suggest students should try and read a book a week – something quite manageable if one is truly spending 20-30 minutes a day in focused reading, perhaps combined with audiobooks and some manga / graphic novels. Also, our top readers (ironically – or not – none of whom have mobile phones) manage 2-3x that.
The Neev Reading challenge 2024 of 30 books over 3 months for grades 4-6 combined with author interactions, and a live quiz during the literature festival is a great example of setting a stretch goal, having competitive and noncompetitive tracks and a great starting point to select books. I just love how ideas grow and evolve. When I moved to Beijing in 2018, I was part of the 50 books Reader’s Challenge which I think the librarians at ISB started. In my role of juror for the Neev Children’s Book award, I was chatting to Neev about the challenge, and what worked and didn’t work quite as well – and they grabbed the ball, ran with it and now it’s this amazing thing!
I’ve blogged about the Global ReadAloud before, and still think this is a phenomenal way to involve students and teachers with books and connections with other readers and most importantly the “smelling salts” of reading aloud to them. Here are the selections for 2024. I particularly love “As long as the lemon trees grow” a book that’s on our core list and a fantastic read for older students.
At the end of the school year we have 6 library sessions involving our “upcoming” grade 5 into 6 students to introduce them to the Secondary School library. This year as an exit ticket I asked them to write down their favourite book / author / series. As I roamed around talking to them while they were doing this, I’d say that at least 75% of the books they said they loved the most were books that had been read to them by a teacher, parent, grandparent etc. Reading aloud matter.
Besides her work on the GRA – Pernille Ripp also has some great posters (and books) on encouraging a reading culture, such as the one on “Helping Home adults support adolescent readers”
That’s all I have time for today – if you’d like to have your initiative featured, please let me know!
One of my book related highlights this year was being able to attend the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in April 2024. It’s been on my radar for years and the fact it took place during our school vacation and I could join a bunch of fellow librarians who were similarly disposed made it less of a “thing” to attend. For I am not fond of very large crowds in overwhelmingly big exhibition spaces (thank heavens for the Latvians who are proud to be introverts and celebrated that in their stand!) . Below are a few of my thoughts on the event.
The place of librarians
I’m not sure how to say this politely, but, like any other system, the publishing world for children is its very own special little ecosystem – this being the European version – I guess a kind of sub-species of the dominant USA version, where of course all the neighbours and relatives were free to join. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy where-ever books and reading are celebrated, but I was quite fiercely put in my place during one of the sessions “PISA IN BOLOGNA. HOW TO FIGHT LOW READING SKILLS”. After the session – not during (I would not have dared) I asked the moderator Daan Beeke, Network Manager EURead, Stichting Lezen, how it could be that libraries and librarians were not mentioned once during the whole panel session and I was rebuked for thinking that this event was for anyone but publishers and marketers for the sales of books. Bam. And there I was thinking that us librarians were at the forefront of encouraging reading and fighting low reading skills. Or maybe could it be that there is a correlation between low reading skills and lack of support and funding for public and school libraries? Just maybe?
The place of the environment
I was extremely happy to see that “the environment” was featured prominently both in the exhibition spaces and on the event programme.
The events: “READING FOR A HEALTHY PLANET: INSPIRING CHILDREN’S BOOKS TO HELP ACHIEVE A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE” organised by the United Nations, and “UTILIZING STORYTELLING IN PRODUCT, MEDIA, PUBLISHING AND CONTENT TO CATALYSE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE” moderated by Helena Mansell-Stopher of Products of Change, and “SEA OF STORIES”
For 2024 the Special Category for the “BolognaRagazzi Award” was THE SEA. WINNER: Gianumberto Accinelli, Giulia Zaffaroni, Giù nel blu – Dalla superficie agli abissi: viaggio sottomarino sfogliabile. Nomos Edizioni, Italy, 2021 SPECIAL MENTIONS Antoine Guilloppé, Pleine Mer. Gautier-Languereau, France, 2018 Masakatsu Shimoda, 死んだかいぞく (The Dead Pirate). Poplar Publishing, Japan, 2020
One thing that super saddened me was that the whole event didn’t have the environment at the forefront as plastic bottles abounded and I didn’t notice any water fountains or water filling facilities – we brought our own bottles and of course the tap water from the bathrooms is 100% fine, but it would have been wonderful to see the events – in particular the ones on sustainability featuring reusable rather than plastic bottles.
The fair had two events around this topic: “ORIGINS: INDIGENOUS VOICES IN CHILDREN’S BOOKS” Moderator Dolores Prades, Founder, Director and editor, Istituto Emília, Brazil Panel Nat Cardozo, author and illustrator, Uruguay; Adolfo Córdova, author, Mexico; Jason Low, publisher and Co-owner, Lee & Low Books, USA; Aviaq Johnston, Inuk author, Canada; Victor D.O. Santos, linguist and children’s books author, Brazil/USA; David Unger, author and translator, Guatemala/USA; Eboni Waitere, Director, Huia Publishers, New Zealand.
The representative of The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) of Australia who won the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) and is the 2024 ALMA Laureate, is a late inclusion on the panel and her discussion at 45.06 of the video below about the work they do, is worth listening to.
and “THE MOST PRECIOUS THING: VICTOR D.O. SANTOS IN CONVERSATION WITH VERA GHENO” – I wish the English publishers had retained “the most precious thing” as a title instead of “what makes us human” – just a personal quibble.
The place of dissent
Following the issues around the 2023 LiBeraturpreis which was to be awarded to Adania Shibli, at the Frankfurt book fair last year, I was interested to see how and if dissent and awareness of geo-political issues would be handled in Bologna. There appeared to be a guerilla type of image bombing in the illustrator walls, some of which seemed to appear and disappear. Both Isreal and Palestine had representation.
It saddens me that while children are expected to live and die through wars, they have very little representation and “place” in children’s literature – yet – and what there is still focuses very heavily on the second world war experiences.
I find this type of header in the NYTimes to be quite disturbing “Teaching Young Children About War Without Frightening Them – Four new picture books tackle the subject in sensitive, reassuring ways.” I literally have no words about how insensitive that heading is.
I’ll write a whole separate blog on this some time – in the meantime please have a look at the lists created by Dr. Myra Bacsal on her Gathering Books Blog.
Given my own geo-location at the moment, I was interested to see that IBBY France has created a list of 100 books for young people in Arabic – here’s the link for the English version.
The place for silence
There is a special place in my heart and every library I’ve had the pleasure of working in for “wordless” or “silent” books, and the fair didn’t disappoint in that regard. Of course the highlight is the Silent Book Contest – Gianni De Conno Award and the exhibitions of the artwork around the award, as well as the previous years award winners. These are just the best books to have in your library for accessibility, thought provoking conversations and writing prompts.
I had lunch with an old friend of mine yesterday. We’ve kept in touch over the last 20+ years when we did an MBA together. She’s had a successful career in finance while I’ve had a liquorice all-sorts type of constantly changing occupational therapy for a mind that can’t stay at rest too long.
Anyway, she of the child-free existence still dotes on the children of others and takes a keen interest in how the offspring of her friends are doing, and, knowing both my current librarian / teaching situation and the background of the fact that I have a SEN (ADHD) teen asked me about the potential dyslexia of the son of a close friend. The issue was typical and one that I come across often enough that I could be quite wealthy if I got a dollar each time I encountered it, or a variant in any area of educational need.
Child has an undefined issue with reading / spelling / learning. Otherwise bright. Mom / school / teacher thinks that he should be tested. Dad is totally against it. Because he doesn’t want the “label”. Because he’s going to take it upon himself to teach his 8 year old to read.
My friend stressed this was a father who truly loved his son. Who had the means, financial and otherwise to get the best help for his son if it was needed. As long as it didn’t involved testing and a diagnosis. She was asking me of the ways to make sure the son got what he needed.
I gave her the usual. The positive messages. You wouldn’t prevent a child from having an eye-test and getting glasses if they couldn’t see properly. The earlier you understand what is going on the better in terms of interventions, help, accommodations etc. We know so much more about the reading brain than we ever did before, that it’s not a calamity. I also mentioned that I’d just been through some of Microsoft Education’s Educator courses on inclusive and assistive technology and that he may want to have a look at the interventions available.
And then I hit hard with the real issues. At 8 years old, you have a compliant child, willing to please the adults around him. You have a surrounding where children are all over the shop still with reading. But you have the beginning of the big academic sorting. Between those who are learning to read and those who are reading to learn. And that divide just keeps on widening. And kids know it and are acutely aware of where they stand in this sorting. I saw those kids in primary when I was teaching there and now I see them in middle school. They’re no longer 8, they’re 14. And they know every trick in the book to deflect attention from the fact that they (still) can’t read (well). They are the class clowns, the exasperating kids who are still falling off their chairs, annoying the teacher and the rest of the class. They will do anything to not appear stupid. They are not stupid. But in their minds they equate the reading issue with intelligence. They may or may not be talking to their parents, let alone being compliant with any reading intervention. They’re frustrated and angry, not hopeful any more.
There is so much that can be done when you have an 8 year old. Of course you can help anyone at any age, but why let your own darn ego get in the way and not do things earlier?
There’s another very important piece to all of this. Children, even “your” children, are not yours. They need to know themselves and their learning. They need to become their own advocates. To know what they need and have the strength to stand up for it. For all the wonderful teachers and administrators out there, there also are a lot of very harmful people. So even if you have a diagnosis, and interventions and recommendations, there are enough people who will take the attitude that “it’s not an excuse” and that the child is “lazy” or “naughty” or “bad”. I speak from very bitter experience in that respect.
The last presumption makes my blood boil. People spend a life-time specialising in teaching children (and adults) to read, with or without dyslexia. People like the reading guru Pernille Ripp whose daughter has issues reading do not deign to come up with easy platitudes in this area. If you’ve ever read the first few chapters of “Reader, come Home” you’ll be in awe of how anyone ever learns to read. And yet this parent, this father who professes to love his child is prepared to squander another 100 days to muddle around, just so that he can save face or something.
How do you, my readers, deal with this type of question? Are there other resources out there that are “parent” friendly? Are there better ways of broaching these conversations?
Informative Flights - Musings of a Teacher Librarian 