—Annette Santana—

TEACHER EDUCATOR

Annette has been a classroom teacher for six years,

teaching in a variety of classrooms from prekindergarten
to fourth grade. She taught children’s literature and
language arts methods classes to preservice teachers at
the University of Georgia for two years while she worked
on her doctorate. During the course of the seminar,
Annette decided to go back to teaching in the elementary
classroom. Her love of books and sharing of that love were
evident in her discussions and in her commitment to
return to the classroom.
Annette’s favorite reading from the Readers as
Teachers and Teachers as Readers seminar was MEMOIRS
OF A BOOKBAT by Katheryn Lasky (1994) because it
highlights what Annette wants to share as a teacher—
the books she reads, what she loves about them, and
how those two things connect.

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 CHAPTER 17

Dear Teacher:
You See I Love to Read
Annette Santana

D ear teacher colleagues,

I need your help. Help me think through this. You see, I love
to read. I cannot remember a time when reading was not a regular
part of my daily life. Now that I am a teacher, this love has grown to
include a love of teaching reading. This love came later in life,
however, and did not guarantee I could teach reading well. Initially,
I think I taught reading badly, and I recognized this flaw in every
student I lost to the water fountain, the bathroom, or to pencils
they sharpened into 2-inch distractions during our designated
reading time. Now, I’m trying to discover what I love about reading
and figure out how to share what I consider to be an emotional and
intellectual advantage.
As a reader, I spend time building my power of understanding.
Sometimes, I think reading resembles a fast-paced search for facts
or important information that I might want to ponder. Other times,
reading happens slowly so I can form pictures in my mind of what
the people or places I am reading about look like, at least in my
opinion. Reading happens naturally in different ways and for
different reasons. Reading holds power with every word that
becomes a picture in a reader’s head or a morsel in a person’s soul.
I try to remember this along with the wisdom of Mark Twain who
wrote, “The [person] who does not read good books has no
advantage over the [person] who cannot read them.”
Once, while observing a student teacher, I heard a classroom
of fourth-grade students proclaim the injustice tied to Grace’s story
in Mary Hoffman’s 1991 picture book, Amazing Grace. Grace’s
class play, Peter Pan, could not have a black girl as the lead—at

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least in the mind of her classmates. Students listening to this story

expressed outrage, and the discussion that
ensued about prejudice and what students
Reading holds power could accomplish regardless of ethnicity
with every word represented what appreciating and
that becomes a understanding reading is all about. Stealing this
picture in a reader’s
head or a morsel in a moment of intense emotion and intellectual
person’s soul. awakening from the students to create a story
map or a sequence of events might have buried
the message Hoffman so eloquently crafts and
passionately shares with children.
Meaning from reading comes from the relevance of the words
and the power of the verbal pictures or information crafted by the
author for our knowledge and enjoyment. I, as a teacher and an
experienced reader, realize my students may not always be
supported to decipher, decode, or even appreciate the reading put
before them. So is my primary job breaking down text into a skills-
based learning experience so students can work toward this higher
level of reading enjoyment later in their school experience, say,
maybe in college? This logic appears to represent a major belief of
many curriculum directors and policymakers who seem to applaud
and push skills-based curricula. This acclaim is, however, only
partially accurate. True, skills and tools remain necessary parts of
becoming a reader, but they do not and cannot stand alone at any
grade or age level.
When struggling readers find the key to decoding words, they
enjoy the amazement of finally understanding reading—not
standards or comprehension questions but words strung together
in meaningful ways. In Patricia Polacco’s book Thank You, Mr.
Falker (1998), the main character has problems learning to read
because of dyslexia; sounding out has never worked for her. Finally,
after months of working with a reading teacher, as well as Mr.
Falker, the true meaning behind reading comes to the girl. Mr.
Falker puts a book in front of her that she’s never seen before. He
picks a paragraph in the middle of the page and points at it. Almost
as if it were magic, or as if light poured into her brain, the words
and sentences start to take shape on the page as they never have

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 Dear Teacher: You See I Love to Read

before. “She…marched…them…off…to…” (n.p.). Slowly, she reads

a sentence. Then another and another. And finally she’s read a
paragraph. And she understands the whole thing.
So now I ask you, isn’t understanding the primary goal in
reading? Isn’t each person’s understanding as individual as the
person is? We read to make meaning. Think of your students as I
think of mine. Are they struggling to answer someone else’s
comprehension questions or to define vocabulary words someone
else decided were important? Or, is the struggle their attempt to
understand what they are reading? Most students rush to find
answers to programmed assignments and are never ready for self-
selected reading time to be over. Learning skills in reading remains
a crucial and an ongoing part of reading, but this is not the ultimate
goal in my teaching. What about other teachers? I wonder. I know,
as a reader, I would lose the power and pleasure in my reading if
every step I took into a book, magazine, or newspaper was mired in
searching for answers to someone else’s questions.
I think of Scout’s introduction to reading class in To Kill a
Mockingbird (Lee, 1960):
She [the teacher] discovered that I was literate and looked at
me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell
my father not to teach me anymore. It would interfere with
my reading. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.
One does not love breathing. (p. 18)

What have you read lately? Was it a meaningful experience?

If so, was it meaningful because you had a discussion with a friend
after you read it? Was it meaningful because you were reminded of
a similar family situation that made you cry from laughter or
sadness? I doubt the meaning came from learning a new word or
remembering the order of events, don’t you? I know meaning does
not come to me in these ways.
In Memoirs of a Bookbat by Kathryn Lasky (1994), the main
character, Harper, shares her way of reading:
Just that afternoon at the library story time, Nancy had read a
beautiful poem about a baby bat being born soaring and
swooping through the night, skimming across treetops to find

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my way through the dense forest in the darkest night. I listen

to the shining needle points of sound in every book. I read. I
am no bookworm. I am the bookbat. (p. 32)

The poem describes bats’ sharp ears, sharp teeth, and their
quick, sharp faces. It tells how they soar and loop through the night,
how they listen by sending out what the poet calls “shining needle
points of sound” (p. 32). The poet remarks, “Bats live by hearing. I
realized…right then, that when I read I am like a bat” (p. 31).
So, dear teacher colleagues, we have a lot in common, you
and I. We chose to be teachers. This choice automatically creates a
multitude of daily realities we both experience—a set of standards
to guide our teaching, the ever-pressing issue of
grading and deciding the quality of students’
I believe that before
students can become
work, and teaching reading, to name a few. My
engaged readers they goal is to share my reading life with my
have to see students—what I read, what I love about it, and
others…enjoying the how these connect. I believe that before
experience of reading. students can become engaged readers they
have to see others, people like you and me,
people they respect and admire, enjoying the experience of
reading. Students who see tears, laughter, and satisfaction packed
in a book may then desire to discover the same experiences for
themselves. Do you agree?

LITERATURE CITED
Hoffman, M. (1991). Amazing Grace. New York: Dial.
Lasky, K. (1994). Memoirs of a bookbat. San Diego: Harcourt.
Lee, H. (1960). To kill a mockingbird. New York: Warner Books.
Polacco, P. (1998). Thank you, Mr. Falker. New York: Philomel.

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