A Literacy Litany

First Lady Laura Bush was a school librarian and she has always been a proponent of literacy.....Barbara Bush, too. http://www.getcaughtreading.org/

I have been enjoying time at home. My sister, Marcia, called me a "home body" when I was a kid. I had never really thought about it, but yes, I spent more time at home....and specifically in my bedroom than the average teen. I didn't have a TV in there and this was before cell phones and computers. I pretty much had books and I had my stereo and my albums. So what did I do in there all the time? Yes, Lora, it would have been good if someone would have turned me on to running or something...but we had no cross country team and no girls doing track team....I think I would have taken running.

Some of the things I did in my room was I wrote in notebooks....sometimes like a diary.....sometimes poems, but I liked to write. I read magazines, books, plays, and yes, even the encyclopedia sometimes as I would find myself curious about something or other and would check it out. (I would have LOVED Google!!!) I remember we had a complete set of Mark Twain and I enjoyed short stories. Marcia would come home from college and she would have books. I read all those hip 60's and 70's books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull...haha. I remember reading Siddartha and The Prophet. I read Far from the Madding Crowd, A Separate Peace, The Magus and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Slaughter House Five. I rarely read anything from the Bible. (I just thought it was old and antiquated. Hahahha...yes, I was a young skull full of mush for sure.)

But all the mush aside, I did like reading better than most kids. I was not a voracious reader by any means and because of living on Dimetapp for allergies, I did my share of sleeping in my room, but when I found something I enjoyed it was hard to quit before it was finished.

I was fortunate to see reading modeled before me all my life. I think I got my first library card before I was six. My birth father read all the time, my mother has always liked to read, my grandmother, my aunt, and big sis, Marsh, always had several books going. Her boyfriend, Fred, who later won the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Award given to one young writer per year, read things like William Blake, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams and Shakespeare. My boyfriend, Doug read non stop. He read ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! I used to hide anything he could read so he would talk to me. I once caught him in the kitchen reading the outside of the cereal box when I had put up all the magazines and newspapers away. He enjoyed whatever he was reading and talked about it which then made me curious and want to read what he had just read. He also REMEMBERED everything he read. It was amazing. My Dad was the publisher and editor of the newspaper and when he got home he rarely read anything cuz he wrote and read all day, but he now reads a lot. (There is a family writing gift...his uncle Paul Boller has written several books dealing with the US Presidents and their wives. They have them in our library and most libraries...check them out! I enjoy these books very much!) Anyway, I have always been around people who read and enjoyed what they read. I have been so blessed. I guess I have always thought reading was like breathing...just something everyone did.

Literacy is THE word/concept our Parish Schools are going to be focusing on this year and for many years to come. It is reading across the curriculum....that means reading will be a focus of each class. Our goal is to turn the non-reading population of our school into readers....and not just readers, but people who enjoy reading! This is nothing new...what is new is the "across the curriculum" part.

I don't believe reading is taught as much as caught and I am going to be straining my brain for ideas in this area. The focus is going to be on those who were not as blessed as I was to learn the joy of reading at an early age..... for those students who live in a nearly literature free zone. I am always shocked to learn how many students have never even heard of Reader's Digest Magazine...a mainstay at our house and my parent's house. Also, they have not been read to as a child. I was read to all the time and my parents were aware of the importance of exposure to books when I was small. As I have said....I was truly blessed by this.

Reading is the key to learning. Those students who read well usually do well in school and test well, also. Words and ideas go hand in hand and if you can't think an idea in words I am not so sure you can actually produce that idea....that is a whole other topic, but you get my drift. SOOOO any ideas you have concerning reading would be great. I may want pictures of people in our community reading.....so hang on I may need me to email pictures of yourself reading to post in the library. I will start out getting pictures of teachers "caught reading" and branch out. I may call on you to come and give your "testimony"...tell how you learned to love reading.

Please pray for our efforts to show fruit. It will be life changing and life saving for some kids.