C Patterson Strategies for Motivating Student

I currently teach High School History, Government, and Economics, have taught High School English, and have only ever taught at the high school level. Our survey results were very striking to me and a little saddening. I was in Green Group, by the way. In our survey, we first asked what was the favorite genre for students today and, with the popularity of the Hobbit, Twilight, and Harry Potter, the fact that Sci-Fi and Fantasy was at the bottom of the most favorite genres was very surprising to me. What was not so surprising was that adventure was at the top. Very few students seemed to like non-fiction, which diesn't surprise me as a high school teacher. High School students are required to read so much non-fiction, and with the new Common Core standards in Arizona requiring 50% + of their reading to be non-fiction, I would think that they are so overloaded by nin-fiction they probably don't find it very enjoyable.

What surprised me the most was the total lack of enjoyment of reading. The majority of students read less than two hours a week. I say that surprised me but I guess it really doesn't. Kids are so visually stimulated in our contemporary society that the portion of the brain that helpes with the human imagination while reading actually don't develop like they use to. So when I read, I see green hills, vast mountain ranges, the exact facial features of a character, I smell flowers, hear birds, but many of our students today see grey. They don't have the opportunity to envision all these things because of all the visual stimuli they recieve on a daily basis. What also surprised me, and this really surprised me, was the lack of time devoted to school related reading. I don't know if it is because information is so much readily available or just a general sense of apathy. I do know that my students, at least the majority of them, come from a middle income area with both parents involved, even if the parents are not married. And yet, still, a lack of attention to reading.

What I did find refreshing with our resuts was the number of students that read with someone else. What I gathered was that for the high school students, that was probably a younger sibling, but nonetheless, that is a good sign. And in addition to reading with others, they saw their parents read and for the most part, it seemed like their parents were reading edifying texts, such as religous texts (most notably the Bible) and the newspaper as well as fiction. We certainly have our work cut out for us as teachers with such a lack of attention paid to reading.

So how do I help instill that love of reading into my students? Being a history teacher, I alsways try to pull in history related texts that are congruent with the time period or people we are studying. In addition to that, I am never opposed to showing a movie with a book, either in parts or at the end. Whatever I do  with a book, I always take steps to make sure they are visualizing, like drawing what they are reading. Even with the emphasis on non-fiction reading in Arizona, Whenever we read a history related text, I always have my students read fiction. They need to see how others imagine the historical events they are reading about. Watching a movie, having a discussion, and having students draw what they are reading are some great strategies I use to help engage students in reading. These strategies have worked well. What hasn't worked is having students read big chunks on their own. How can I expect students to go home and read a 300 page book in a couple weeks when they can't even read ten pages from their text book. That just doesn't work.

Some great books to use for both English and History are Uncle Tom's Cabin, Scarlet Letter, Night, Stephen Lawhead's Hood, Stephen Lawhead's Byzantine among a number of others. I also like teaching Animal Farm in government when we are talking about political systems.