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What is the last thing that you read that really stuck with you and why?

It’s with this question that I begin my secondary literacy class.  I also begin by posting my own response to this question.  I want to use this discussion board to get a sense of who my students are, what they read, and what sticks with them.

I also want to challenge their ideas about the relationship that a literacy professor (at least theirs) has with text.  In that spirit, I might as well publicly out myself on this blog since I’m going to link this to my discussion board post:

I am not really a “pleasure reader” anymore. And, I rarely read fiction.

I know this seems odd, particularly if one knows my literacy history.  I used to love libraries, and knew the exact day of each month that Ann M. Martin’s new Babysitters’ Club book was going to arrive at my local independent bookstore.  I read ravenously throughout middle school.

At some point in high school, I stopped reading for pleasure, but I continued to revel in literature, and in college, I was a literature major for 3/4 of my undergraduate career (I eventually graduated with an American Studies degree in Childhood in America and a minor in French, but that’s another story for another blog).  In college, while I remained interested in people, I moved from fictional stories to facts, figures and memoirs.  I moved from novels to short stories, and eventually to journal articles and blogs.

It used to be easy for me to challenge perceptions of “literacy professor” as reader because I would often cite a blog post or a social media post or a quote as the last thing I read that stuck with me.  Nowadays, I cite audiobooks (which are the only way I feel somewhat literary, but still somewhat as an imposter…), but I worry that this is still too traditional and limiting to challenge my students’ ideas of what is okay to post on an initial discussion board post to “impress” the “literacy professor” with whom they’ll be spending the next 15 weeks.

Maybe my students won’t really care about impressing me.  I could just be projecting, but this is for those that, like me, when I was a prospective teacher (and an ENGLISH teacher at that!), may be worried that I will judge them for citing a quote or a blog as the last text they read that stuck with them: no judgment.  Who am I to judge?

And for my academic colleagues (especially those of the literacy ilk) that may be silently judging the fact that I don’t read for pleasure anymore, the cat’s out of the bag.  Please don’t deny me tenure 😉 I’ve been busy reading empirical studies…or maybe a few too many blogs and Facebook posts.