Yes, I am outing myself. I am a hypocrite. I am not a reader in the way that I expect my students to be. I require that my students read everyday. Without fail. End of discussion. So of course I read everyday, right? Nope.
I haven’t read a book cover to cover in years. Yes, I am embarrassed by that. The last book I read was Pleasure by Eric Jerome Dickey in 2009. Ok, so that’s not exactly professional level or deep reading. It was not difficult and really kind of mindless. And before that, I couldn’t tell you.
So now to defend myself. I do read, everyday. Just not the way I would like to be reading. I read articles from my RSS feed. I read some news. I read things in social media. The kicker to all this is I LOVE to read. I have a stack of books I am waiting to read, and I want to read them. I just don’t schedule it in and time gets away from me. I would love to spend time with those books. I had to stop buying books, because I just couldn’t get to them. I used to LOVE magazines. Well, I guess I still love magazines. At one time I had subscriptions to at least 8 magazines. But then they started to pile up. Last month’s would sit on the month’s before and finally I had to stop them. Now I just subscribe to two and I really have to work not to get behind on those.
But now I want to change the type of reader I am. I have started to get one of my magazines on my ipad. That is really helpful. I am able to read whenever, wherever and I don’t have to lug around a magazine. But I have a long way to go. I have started to download samples of books that I would like to read because I will not buy more books until I have read what I already have. So I am going to be a more dedicated reader as I also become a more dedicated writer. If I’m asking it of my students, surely I can ask it of myself.
What kind of reader are you?
Learning Required 
I found myself in this position a few years ago as well. I LOVE to read, but for whatever reasons it got pushed to the bottom of my list. Then our librarian started the Millionaires Club, which included students who had read 1 million words or more. This incentive got me too, I HAD to be in that club. And it was easy, read a book, take the AR test, the words get counted up. I’ve even started a challenge in my class and I award those who read more than me at the end of the school year (last year I had a girl read 8 million words!). It’s a lot of fun, but has also gotten me back in the habit of reading. I never lost the love of reading, it was just not a priority, and now it is 😀
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I do read books, but not as many/often as I’d like. I have time – this child nurses constantly – but I fall prey to the Internet. At least recently I’ve started reading things online that should be helpful to my business. I do spend a fair amount of time reading all that’s in my RSS feed. I subscribe to too many blogs!
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