In this long blog post I am going to reflect on my history as a reader, my current reading attitudes, and my future reading goals. In doing so, I hope to gain some insight into the question, how does one become a reader?
As a child, reading was a huge part of my every day life. My mom was always what our book would define as an “avid reader”, someone who reads often and for pleasure. This being the case, she read to me constantly growing up. For as far back as I can remember my mom would read my older sister and I a story before we went to bed. This was my absolute favorite part of every day. We read stories like The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Little House on the Prairie, and countless others. Each night we were transported to whimsical lands like Narnia and the Shire and we couldn’t get enough of it, begging our mom for just one more chapter. This experience helped me to associate positive feelings with reading before I had even begun learning. Like we discussed in class, the more (and earlier) children are exposed to vocabulary the easier reading will be for them because they already have extensive word knowledge. These reading experiences not only helped me become more familiar with words, but also motivated me to learn because I wanted to be able to read, not just be read to.
We discussed in class that most students don’t really remember the actual process of learning to read, they just read. I remember being in Kindergarten going over the letters of the alphabet, learning short words, and practicing skills like writing our names. At this point I could read with relative ease, so going into first grade I was ahead of the game. I do not remember when I realized I could read, however, I do remember when I pretended I couldn’t read. In first grade all the students who were really struggling with reading would be pulled out into the “reading van” which was essentially a trailer set up outside in which they would get individualized attention and more frequent intervention with a reading specialist. I imagine this was probably an embarrassing and very negative experience for these students, but I was not a fan of our teacher so I decided I would act as though I couldn’t read. This lasted for about a week before the specialist realized I was able to read well above our grade level. I did not have any negative reading experiences in school, thankfully. During red robin reading exercises I would often volunteer and read aloud. I was very comfortable with my reading abilities and was able to read fluently very young. 
When I began reading books on my own I was a huge fan of The Boxcar Children Series, The Babysitters Club, and anything mysterious. Each Christmas my mom, who I stated before was an avid reader, would get me, my sister, and my younger brother each a bag full of nothing but books. I think this really helped me in becoming a skilled reader because she would select books that were new, reading level appropriate, and relevant to each of our interests. Since I was reading by myself at this point (and at that age were getting read to was no longer “cool”), I read to myself every night before bed. This was also at the time before every child had a TV set in their bedrooms, so I read to relax and get to sleep.
In high school my work load increased drastically. I got a job and school work was very demanding. I found that I read less for pleasure and almost entirely for school work. At this point I saw reading as a chore and avoided it at all costs. The only thing that really kept me reading through high school were the books I was assigned in class. Through this I discovered my favorite book, The Great Gatsby, sophomore year of high school.
These days most of my reading is still school related. I read a lot of articles, textbooks, and studies. I still find this reading enjoyable for the most part because it revolves around things I am actually passionate about like education and cultural issues. I read for pleasure whenever I can. Lately what I have been doing is trying to read books before they become movies. I read the Hunger Game series, Nicholas Sparks’ novel The Lucky One, and reread The Hobbit and The Great Gatsby. Im currently reading Looking For Alaska by John Green and I love it, I am certainly going to read his other books.
My future goals for reading are to continue reading scholarly articles, to better familiarize myself with my field. I also need to set aside more time to read for pleasure, it is something that often gets pushed to the back-burner in my life. Above all I would like to set an example for my students and eventually my own kids. Had my mom not been such a fervent reader I may not have been so motivated, I would like to instill the importance of reading in my students.
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