Chapter 2

In the second chapter Gallagher outlines three major contributors of readicide and possible solutions. I really enjoyed this chapter it confirmed many of my own thoughts and feelings. I value reading so much in my own life and I want my students to see the benefits of reading themselves. Gallagher intelligently outlines these 3 points which endanger our student's minds a dearth of interesting reading materials, removing challenging novels, and not enough reading in school.

I do not remember ever stepping foot into my high school media center to check out a book. I think I only went there to go to the poetry jam they held once a year. Some media centers are not full of interesting materials for students. I think by having a classroom library I can combat this issue. I have already begun to collect books; library fairs, yard sales, and stores like Goodwill all have books at greatly reduced prices. Collecting magazines and newspapers is also something I want to do for my students so they have a variety of reading materials to turn to. I also found summer reading rather tedious while in school. I usually had to make myself read the novel and didn't understand the book. Summer reading should be fun and interesting yet still applicable to what the students will be doing during the school year. By removing these more challenging novels during the summer time hopefully students will at least be able to tolerate summer reading instead of dismissing it outright.

When Gallagher states that removing challenging novels from curriculum he does not mean all of them. He makes the point of liking a text versus gleaning meaning from it. Not everyone is going to like the same novel. However in order to cover certain literary styles and mite periods I will, as a English teacher, have to prepare my students for a difficult text. All students should be challenged to a certain degree yet some will not be able to understand, or relate to, a novel like Moby Dick. To prevent readicide I want to use novels like House on Mango Street and The Brothers Torres, both of which touch on many aspects of literature while still remaining relevant to many students's lives.

Not enough reading in school is the final contributor of readicide Gallagher points out. I personally read very little during school hours, only if we had to read a short story during Literature. Gallagher has a great idea of conducting a survey at your own school to understand how much reading is actually going on at school. I think there is very little reading done outside of the English Language Arts classroom. Many schools are conducting sustained silent reading or SSR I think that is a great idea. However there needs to be more reading in the other courses as well; it is easy to include a novel or short story within a history or biology course.

By providing more interesting reading material form a variety of sources, removing some of the irrelevant and challenging texts, and providing more time for reading in school hopefully we can help to prevent readicide. I know that I will try to do this.