Relunctant to be reluctant
by Stacey
I am participating (poorly!) in Mother Reader’s Comment Challenge 2011. While I’m not feeling great about my seeming lack of ability to comment on five blogs a day, I am still loving the challenge. I continue to find it really hard to shake my lurker ways but as I break my cybersphere shyness, I am meeting some great new bloggers. As is the case with new friends, I am thinking about new questions and new perspectives.
Lauri fromBookBlogFun posted recently about terminology. She remembers hearing a more positive term for ‘reluctant reader’ and asked her readers to help to jog her memory. In the responses, I was reminded of the great Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. In this book, Miller encourages teachers and parents to remember that readers lie within all of our children. She uses terms like developing, dormant or underground reader.
As I think about the ‘reluctant readers’ that I have known over the years, each of these terms better describes them. For each of these ‘reluctant readers’ did not want to be reluctant. If they could have decoded the words they would have been voracious readers. If they could have read fluently, they would have been book worms. If they knew how to find good books, they would have been bibliophiles.
I so appeciate this reminder to be relucant to call our readers reluctant…
Yes, I am sure you’re right about those being the terms. As I was reading your post, the thought flashed into my brain that I remember Terry at The Reading Tub mentioning how much better she believed Donalyn’s terms were. I like them too. It sounds to me as if as soon as find the key, they will be transformed!
Now don’t get down on yourself for your Comment Challenge participation. I’m not grading the homework, but instead hoping that it will make things easier. I go in and out of commenting habits – but I’m always happier in my blog reading when I work harder to engage. I read less passively as I pay a bit of attention to my own reactions. And I worry less if my reply is too short or if I ramble on. Kind of like this. :^)