Thursday, July 10, 2008
what reading is for
Yesterday, Mrs. Miskadventures and I began our volunteer work at 826 Michigan (refer to this post if necessary) by helping out with a reader's/writer's theater workshop geared toward 10 to 12-year-olds.  Along with getting a healthy reminder of what 10-year-old boys are like (!), I had a blast and can't wait to go back in a few days.  

I anticipate a much longer post on the entire experience sometime later in the summer, but for today I just wanted to share one cute thing that happened on my first day.  The workshop leader - who was trying to hit home the point that books are "elastic" and can be rewritten, reconfigured and reimagined any way the reader likes - asked the kids to respond in writing to a question: "What is reading for?"  

Being 10-year-olds, most of the kids resorted to shouting out funny answers rather than bothering to write anything down, but one tiny little girl, quietly sitting on the fringes of the circle, caught my eye, so rather than give the boys the attention they wanted I headed over her way.  When I asked her if she had answered the question yet, her delicate little face beamed back a mouthful of absurdly huge braces as she shook her head proudly and asked conspiratorially if I wanted to see it.  Indeed I did, so I opened up her little blue book to read this:
Reading is what teachers make their students do when they want to leave the classroom to get more coffee.
And I laughed because it's true - sometimes, that is exactly what reading is for.  Smart little bugger. 


1 Comments:

Blogger Kathleen said...

Hehe! I was wondering what she wrote. She was ridiculously cute and clever. I can't wait for next week!

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