I hear stories all the time of people who set up their stuffed animals and played school all day long and dreamed of being a teacher.Many educators grew up as readers and loved school. That’s awesome but that wasn’t my story. My mom was a teacher and I spent time in her classroom. I saw her do amazing things but I never thought I wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t really enjoy school aside from the opportunity to hang out with my friends. To be honest, in school, I never felt like I mattered or I was really seen in my classes.  (As a side note, that changed completely once I got into college and got to learn about and explore topics that interested me but I’ll save that story for another blog.)

Based on my experiences as a learner, I couldn’t imagine choosing to spend more time in school when I was younger.  Although I did fine in school because that is what was expected of me and I didn’t want to let my parents down (or lose my privileges and hang out with friends), my aversion to reading began in third grade when I had to read the Mouse and the Motorcycle. I am sure I was overreacting and my “hate” for the book was not likely warranted, but the fact that my teacher was making me read certain chapters and respond to certain questions turned me off I still have an adverse reaction when I think of that book.

My experiences with reading continued this way through school and I quickly learned how to play the game of school and give the teachers the responses they wanted to get by with As and Bs without ever reading a book. I shared this fact when was recently tagged in a game on Twitter by my friend Annick to share three random facts.  I usually ignore these games but for some reason, I jumped in and wrote down three random facts: 1) I was born to Montana 2)  I was born on Halloween and 3) I never read a book from 3rd to 11th grade.   

Shortly after I shared these there was a flood of reactions. They ranged from horrified educators who loved reading and they commented on how horrible that must’ve been and how much they loved reading. On the other side, many shared similar experiences to mine and that they too had hated reading. I am also fairly certain that there are many experiences in between these extremes that weren’t shared.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

– Anais Nin

What the range of reactions highlighted for me is that we have such varied histories and identities as learners that we bring with us to the classroom and to our practice.  Because of this, I never assigned a whole class novel or book and provided lots of choice for readers. Other teachers have certain books that they loved and make sure that each of their students reads them too.  I’m sure there are positives and negatives to both extremes- There is not one right way.

What these strong reactions highlighted for me is how much our practice is shaped by our experiences.  These experiences make up who we are and we can’t ignore them but we have to remember that we have kids in our classes who don’t see the world like we do. No matter if you loved school or you hated school, you have kids from all walks of life with all different experiences talents and questions waiting to be the answered. Our jobs are not to recreate the experiences that we had or recreate the experiences we wished we had, our job is to create the experiences that honor and celebrate the learners that show up every day in our classrooms. Our job is to meet learners where they are and get them to where they need to be to improve the trajectory of their lives and all of our collective futures.