Kids should read, read, read — but run, too

Published 11:07 pm Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Several times this summer, I drove past elementary schools with signs displaying this single-minded command: “Read read read.”

That was the sole message, not “Have fun” or “Stay safe” or “Be nice to Mom.” And nowhere did I see the one-word-thrice summer mandate I’d have delivered. Nowhere did I see a school sign saying “Run run run.”

Kids spend all school year cooped up in classrooms. They have homework. Through much of the dark fall and winter, they’re in front of TV and computer screens.

Shouldn’t kids spend summer catching up on what’s most lacking the rest of the year? Shouldn’t they be out in the sun and fresh air, and in constant motion?

Clearly, I’m all for reading think about what I do for a living. I encourage my 8-year-old to be a reader, just ask him. His second-grade teacher required “reading chains,” paper strips signed by parents assuring that a certain amount of reading had been done at home.

We started summer with good intentions, too. This was going to be the year my son filled in all the blanks on the Everett Public Library’s summer reading form. With a pile of math workbooks, I even planned to entice him to figure a page each day.

Then came summer. The day-camp schedule was packed with outings to parks and beaches. They went to the library, but also took swimming lessons at the YMCA.

By the time I picked my boy up each day, he had just enough energy for dinner, a bath and to listen to me read from one of C.S. Lewis’ “Narnia” books. He loved the story, but mostly he’d doze off before the end of a chapter.

For a week, he went to Camp Don Bosco, a Catholic Youth Organization camp near Carnation. I packed a book, but it was untouched. He came home instead with a suntan, bug bites, and his own crazy camp stories to tell.

Most of the summer, I felt guilty about all the books I wasn’t making him read. I’d ignore a stack of flashcards, then sit on the front porch and watch him zip away on his bike.

His godfather took him camping at Baker Lake, where he caught and ate a fish. We went to Coeur d’Alene Lake, Idaho, where his uncle let him drive a boat and took him inner-tubing.

On a trip to British Columbia, he liked the paper money that isn’t green. We spent an hour at the Grand Coulee Dam Visitor Center, where I tried to teach him about an engineering wonder. His favorite thing there was the praying mantis he found in the 100-degree heat.

My boy learned plenty this summer, including how to jump off the diving board at Everett’s Forest Park pool and show no fear. Some things aren’t in any book not even “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” a current bestseller that taps into kid culture from a bygone time.

Read, read, read?

That’s how I spend my time. I’ll share a few things I’ve read lately.

Friday’s Herald had this headline: “WASL results show gains, losses.” Read it closely, there’s a puzzler: Children in fourth, fifth and eighth grades who took the Washington Assessment of Student Learning this spring slipped in their passing rates for reading yep, reading.

All that emphasis, all those required hours, yet younger kids’ reading scores dipped?

The WASL results reminded me of something I read earlier this year in Newsweek. Published in the Feb. 19 issue, the article was titled “Fourth-Grade Slump.”

The gist of it was concern by some teachers that kids who’ve been pushed and tested since implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act are burning out. “We kill them with tests,” fourth-grade teacher Gina Defalco, of Fredericksburg, Va., said in the Newsweek story. “By fourth grade, they’re tired.”

If that’s true, how sad.

I was a born reader, couldn’t get enough. For kids who aren’t hooked on reading, maybe there’s a better way than force-feeding books like they’re bad medicine. For my son, it has helped to share reading I read a page, he reads a page. Lately, he’s been wanting to read on his own.

Watching him haul his heavy backpack into school Tuesday, I was happy he’d had the summer to run, run, run.

Now, kiddo read, read, read.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.