Cows Don't Read

Why, oh why, is reading so frustratingly hard for some children to master?  Is there a more magical question in all of education?  What riches would befall the bearer of the answer?  And just how many questions can I use in an opening paragraph?

I have taught primary aged students for 18 years.  I spent 16 years teaching either first or second graders; this is my second year as a K-2 Title I teacher.  I spend my entire day with students who struggle to read, many of whom will probably never truly “master” the skill.  Occasionally a parent will vent frustration over listening to her young reader stumble through a book.  Cry me a river, sister – try spending six hours a day, every day, with dozens of clumsy readers.  I’ve hidden all the scissors in my classroom for fear of plunging them into my eardrums the millionth time I hear a kid read “Mick’s sister licked his dog” (No, genius, she didn’t – but she probably liked Mike’s dog).

I feel great sadness for my struggling readers…I really do.  I fully realize that for every ounce of frustration I feel over their lack of progress they are feeling several.  I know many of them were not read to, or properly visited with, prior to entering school.  A large percentage of my clientele is poor.  In most cases the root cause of below average reading is beyond the reader’s control.  Or is it?

While watching hundreds of readers, of all abilities, move through my classroom over the years I’ve noticed physical traits shared by fluent readers that are absent in struggling readers.  This is a completely unscientific observation that I cannot quantify or prove, but I am firmly convinced that the body is as much a key to strong reading as is the mind…perhaps more so in some cases.  For example, struggling readers…

            …have terrible physical self-control.  They don’t sit still.  They don’t use a tracking finger correctly.  They don’t keep their eyes on the text.  Their heads bounce like a bobble head on horseback.  Think this stuff doesn’t matter?  Ok then, grab an unfamiliar text and go read it…on a lawn tractor…while driving over a freshly plowed field.  Be fluent while reading and answer questions 3-8 when you’re finished.  Good luck.

            …put their brains to sleep when it’s time to learn.  Poor readers are never, never, sitting up and sitting forward with a learning posture.  They lean back and slide down in their chair, a perfect posture for The Sitting Dead auditions.  They lay their head down on the desk or table, or they prop their head up with one or two hands.  These actions give one clear signal to the brain – naptime!!

            …are content with life in the slow lane.  Whether it’s being last during a transition or the final kid at the lunch table, poor readers are sluggish in most aspects of their lives.  They walk slow, they talk slow, they write slow, they sneeze slow.  And since they live in slow motion, why then would they read any other way than slow?

            …read like a cow.  My paras love this one.  Ever notice how poor readers struggle to read a word but then don’t let go of the word once it finally comes out?  “Has” becomes “hhhaaaaaaaaaaassssss”.  Very early in every school year I give my “don’t read like a cow” speech.  Slowpokes don’t recognize their own lack of speed, but when I ask these same kids to explain how a cow talks (a looooonnnnnngggg drawn out mmmmmmoooooooooooooooo) and relate that to slow reading, something usually clicks.  Especially when I stand by a slow reader and starting mooing while he reads.  And make him eat hay.

I find these physical…glitches…intriguing because I believe I can fix them.  I can’t change a kid’s socio-economic status.  I can’t roll them under a new apple tree.  I can’t reverse time to fill the voids created by an underwhelming upbringing.  But I can make kids sit up often enough to make it a habit.  I can make them understand how listening to their own voice can keep them more human and less cow.  I can coach them up day after day……after day…..….after day, and slowly create a little bit of drive to become more than a slowpoke.  As I break down their physical barriers these struggling readers get more reps on passages, move more words out of their mouths, and begin to transform into an emergent reader.  Just in time for summer vacation.