A Good Reader

Am I a good reader? Well, I think I am good at reading. At least mostly. I have, at some times more than others, really enjoyed reading all sorts of books. I am a little slow. My wife is a much faster reader then me (she's always scrolling past where I've read when we're sitting at the lap top together) and as a child I always remember wishing I could read as fast as my mom. But, slowness aside, I can comprehend. I can pull out deeper meanings. I think I am a good reader.

I don't really read that much right now. So, I think I am bad at doing reading. I have this crisis every time I go to read. I think "oo, I should read such and such book!" Then I think, "I have a lot of reading I should be doing for my classes." Then, "I don't want to read for my classes." And finally, "guess I won't do any reading right now."

I think my love of reading comes from my mom. She was always reading and I think it just rubbed off on me. There were lots of reading things she had us interact with when I was young. We had Library for Kids in the "town" where my grandparents lived (town is very liberally used here, the population was my grandparents and maybe 5-10 other houses spread throughout the mountain. The library was next to the post office and nothing else was next to those two buildings, just a road and lots of trees. I loved it there.) We had the book mobile that would come by my house every month or so. I thought that was very normal but I haven't seen one of those vans by any of my houses out here in Utah. Then there was the school libraries I could always turn to. They were always small, but I could always find something to read.

As a very young kid I read for knowledge. I just liked knowing stuff and I liked it when I was thought of as the "smart kid." I think that was fostered by my family at first too. I think it also gave me a place in the scheme of things. I wasn't popular in my elementary school, but at least I was smart and that came with its own kind of social interactions.

Eventually we moved out of my small town to a different, not quite as small town. All of a sudden I wasn't the smart kid. There were lots of smart kids, well like 3 or 4, but it wasn't just me anymore. With out that pushing me to read for knowledge I just kind of gave it up. They already had established themselves as the smart ones, and I didn't feel like fighting them for it, so I just turned to my other reading love, fiction.

That happened in middle school and I've never really turned back. I think I got a little rebellious and I just didn't like being told what to read. It was a bad attitude and unfortunately I think it lingers on. Thus my current reading crisis. I don't think any of my peers ever pushed me in that direction though. I was never one to follow my peers. I just did it myself. So since then, when I read, I mostly only do it for enjoyment.

That might have a small something to do with why I am an art major. The texts there don't require much reading in the traditional sense. Also If you don't like the text the teacher is prescribing, well, you can just look quickly and move on. Plus I'm a sucker for a new image. I'm not sure where it came from but I love filling my head with new and varied works of art.

How do we foster a love for reading? I'm not sure. Immersion? I think that's what did it for me. You've got to surround kids with it. And they've got to see you doing it. And loving it.

For my classroom I hope to have a huge library. I think the more you read, the more ideas you can put into your head -be they facts or fiction, the more creative of an individual you will become. As far as art texts go, sure I'll have my share of history books. But mostly I want to have more than my share of Art! I want imagery plastering my walls. I want to show my students something they've never seen every week they come to my class! This is they way I hope to immerse them in texts. This is the way I hope to foster a love of reading, or in my case a love of art.

A Letter to a Future Artist

Dear Future Student,
You're thinking about taking an art class, eh? Well here's a little video that should push home some of the great reasons, and ideas that should make your decision an easy one:

Well that about sums it up, I think that should cover my blog post for this week, too. Looky their, introduced a future art student to the subject and knocked out my home work in 4 sentences and a video, not to shabby.....

Ok, maybe I should elaborate some more. I think one of the most powerful moments in this little art propaganda clip is when they make the following point in so many words. That is, that most of education seems to teach us that we need to find the right answer. Because of this we are so, so worried about being wrong. So worried that we stop taking chances. So worried that we live life playing it safe. Well in art, there is no right answer, at least not if I'm your teacher!

Future Student, I want you to hold me to it. Your success in my class will not be measured by whether or not you were right, but by whether or not you acted for yourself and created something you could call your own. I want you to hold me to everything in that clip, and I want you to enjoy every second of it. Or at least most of the seconds.

Art is hard. But that's because it is worth it. In art you will not only learn to take chances, but you will learn to fail. Then you will learn to pick yourself up and try again. Too many times we get so caught up in trying to never mess up that we can't just stop and enjoy making a mess! Life is not cut and dry, it's not black and white, and it's not going to care how many questions you got right on that test. It's going to care about what kind of person you are, and what kind of mind you have. If you put in the effort, art will make you a vibrant, alive, human being. It will expand your idea of what is possible, and thereby expand the inner workings of your mind.

So, yeah, you're thinking about taking an art class.. I think you should, too.