Gallagher’s Readicide

Gallagher’s Readicide was interesting to me because all of what he says is true. It was eye-opening to me that he mentions whatever reading strategies are going on in the classroom today, are leading to the death of reading. As teachers we know the importance of reading, but the students’ are struggling to read outside of the classroom. I completely agree that the elephant in the room is that students’ are only being taught to read for standardized tests. Students’ are also in desperate need of reading skills for how much we do as adults. Students’ today at this rate, it will be hard for them to even read the newspaper. On the other hand, if you over teach books, this will also be a struggle for readers, like high school seniors. I know as a teacher I want my students’ to read somewhat of a hard text so their reading skills will grow. They may struggle with it at first, but I think they would be very proud of themselves in the end. Assigning reading and teaching reading are two different things according to Gallagher. He explains that you can’t overload students’ with too much of one of these because this won’t make them life-long readers. As a teacher, I want to find my balance when it comes to this. I never want my students’ feel as if they are struggling with reading. I will teach them reading, but at the same time I will assign them reading so they can get better on their own time. Having a good teacher or a bad teacher can really affect a student down the road. This is because this will determine how the student plans to learn along the way. I hope to have the best influence on my students so they can look back and realize that I did help them become stronger students. People who do less reading and do less work, he claims these are the people that do less in life all around. This reading was very eye-opening to me not only as a teacher, but as a person as well. I will not only strive to be a great teacher but an even better person for my students.