Paper or Plastic?

When my alarm went off on Monday, January 2, I was less then thrilled to get out of bed. It was dark and cold. And of course, I was still in vacation mode, having just had 5 days off from school. However, there were some perks of returning to school on the 2nd – one was absolutely no traffic on my commute and the other was reconnecting with my students. In homeroom on Monday morning, I expected a quiet bunch, and I got what I expected. However, as the day went on, I also got the run-down of gifts that Santa brought the good boys and girls I teach. I expected to hear about the video game systems and video games they got. Instead I got quite a surprise.

Santa brought a large number of my students e-readers, and they proudly showed them off to me. I got to hear not only about the gift cards they got to go with their e-readers but also about their libraries which were filling up. One of my boys, I’ll call him Tim, was so excited that he had to immediately open his library, show me the titles he downloaded, tell me what he read, and then tell me what’s on his wish-list. As Tim excitedly talked to me about his e-reader, I “oohed” and “ahhhed”, remembering what it was like two Christmases ago when Santa brought me my Nook, and asked Tim about his reading time over break, but all the while I was really perplexed. See, if you came into my room and looked at my students, Tim is not someone you would assume to be a reader – let alone an excited and pretty avid reader. Tim spends as much time talking about Fantasy Football, the NFL, and college Bowl games as he does talking about reading. He’s an active kid, and there are times I have to let him stand up to do his work, or I don’t get any work out of him. In lay terms, he’s “all boy.” Pre-Christmas, Tim was a student I would have considered a reader. He had no trouble finding books to read, and he used tutorial time to read instead of study or complete homework. Post e-reader (granted it’s only a week), Tim has become a voracious reader. And he’s not the only one. He’s truly one case study of the myriad of students who received e-readers this year. Their noses are in their “books.” Reading has become a small distraction in my room; they’re reading instead of doing their language arts work.

As I watched the e-readers parade through my room this week, I thought about the discussion that’s been raging for the last few years about whether paper books are dying. Honestly, I don’t know. I have an e-reader and read both paper and electronic books. I have my reasons for reading on my e-reader, and I have my reasons for reading paper. I suppose if I were in the publishing industry or a bookseller, I might seem to care a bit more about this discussion. As a language arts literacy teacher, I think what’s most important is that my students are reading. If you subscribe to the digital native vs. digital immigrant idea, my students are digital natives. I suppose e-readers feel better to them than paper. I also suppose the idea of having a new gadget makes reading fun and more exciting. What’s more is if they finish a book, they don’t have to wait for someone to take them to the library or to the bookstore (which for my students is quite a drive now that Borders closed). They can have something new to read instantly. If they’re waiting for the next installment of their favorite series, they can have the minute the book is released. And yes, this is important to them. One of my seventh graders last year kept a running countdown to the release of City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare on my board. And on Wednesday one of my eighth graders informed me of how many days we had until the release of Insurgent by Veronica Roth.

From an educational standpoint, independent reading builds fluency and stamina and increases test scores. And hopefully, it will create lifelong readers. I derive a lot of enjoyment from reading, and I want my students to find that same pleasure in the pages of their books that I find in mine. There were times when I was an adolescent that reading really helped me through some lonely times. We can all remember how tough adolescence is – especially early adolescence. Those times when I felt like no one understood me, or my friends suddenly decided I wasn’t cool enough for them to eat lunch with were pretty rough. And while books didn’t fix the situation or even give me the tools to deal with my particular situation, opening up a favorite series and spending time with a character who felt more like a friend than a work of fiction helped a bit.

From a psychological standpoint, reading is far more important then fluency, stamina, and test scores. After analyzing brain scans, psychologist at Washington University found, “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative.” The brain synthesizes these situations with real life situations and creates new neural pathways. Reading changes our brains, and this study explains why studies show that reading – losing ourselves in a book – makes us more empathetic.

I would like my students to be more empathetic. However, recent research has found that western teenagers have had a dramatic decline in empathy. While politicians worry about test scores and leaving children behind in reading, writing, and math, I worry about whether my students will grow up to be good people – the type of people who care for others as they do themselves (and some critical thinking and problem solving are good too). So does it really matter if my young adolescents are using e-readers or paper books? Or does it simply matter that they are reading?

If you’d like to read more about the information included in this post:

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/13325.aspx

or

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/30/humans-hardwired-read-books

Posted in Guys Read, Independent Reading/SSR/Reader's Workshop | Tagged as: , , , ,

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