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   A Boomer’s Journal

Since retiring from teaching in 2010, I’ve supplemented the old bank account with substituting. So you could say I’ve spent over two-thirds of my life in schools,     counting the time I was in my own pursuit of knowledge as well as helping others find their own way. But no matter how long it’s been, I’m still left wondering about how kids learn.

Take reading, for example. What a complex brain function!

Symbols and sounds leading to meaning, rules and exceptions to the rules—it’s a miracle how anyone can figure this all out, and yet so many do. But yet again, so many do not as well. I see a lot of kids who struggle with acquiring this skill in special education, but others who also have problems aren’t diagnosed with learning disabilities.

There have always been kids for whom school is painful. In the olden days, we “kept kids back, retained them, had them repeat.” It was all a euphemism for flunking.

There were also a few for whom school was simple and painless. Some of them were “accelerated, skipped a grade.” For those who had trouble, there was no such thing as remedial education. No “learning disabilities” programs. They just had a hard time, and that was that. A kid was just slow, you know. It was what it was. I often wonder what became of some of the kids who fit this category.

I was kind of in the middle, maybe sometimes above average, except when it came to arithmetic, and later algebra and trigonometry. Then I knew what it was to be in a foreign land, where struggles abounded.

I had a lot of energy when I was a budding scholar. My mom and dad would tell the story of my second-grade parent-teacher conference, when the teacher asked what I usually ate for breakfast. My mom told her, “Cereal, eggs… the usual. And a multivitamin.” “ You give him vitamins?” said the teacher, aghast. I guess I had a hard time sitting still. Today, I might have fallen under the category of hyperactive. Luckily, back then I was just called “busy.”

I really don’t remember how I learned to read. I mean, I’m sure it was according to some plan, some text, with worksheets, and drills, and weekly spelling tests, and phonics exercises. But how it was all put into my noggin, I don’t really recall. It must have worked out okay, for today, reading is one of my favorite pastimes. So maybe my second grade teacher wasn’t so bad after all.

I see kids who always have a book in their hands, and others who just don’t get excited about it, even though they’re good students. Not sure what that means, except that I encourage reading whenever I can to the kids I see in classrooms as well as to my grandkids, all of whom, thank God, have picked up the skill with little or no difficulty.

Our society has come to put great value on literacy. The development of a free public education system is one of the reasons America has risen to world prominence. And we are doing an ever-increasingly better job of reaching those for whom the learning process is painful. No price can be put on teaching a kid to read.

In about a month, this school year will end. Those who love to read will continue to do so over the summer. Those who don’t, probably won’t. I plan to encourage my growing clan to be in the former group, as will their parents. As English writer Joseph Addison said, “Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body.” And Mark Twain noted that “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”

But my favorite is this quote from the good Dr. Seuss: “The more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.”

Oh, and by the way, thanks for reading.

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