“I am a student of fourth grade and I love to read. Some of the people ask me: “why do you read so much?” and others, “you look like a nerd reading!” But, you don’t understand anything. I love to read and write. I don’t care what people say. I just like to do it and you will never take books away from me!” –SJBS 4th grader.
Honduras is not a country known for its love of reading. Bookstores and libraries are a rare sighting. On public transportation, you would be far more likely to see your fellow riders sharing their love of reggaeton with their smartphones than reading a news article. However here at SJBS, empowering our students with excellent literacy skills and a love for reading is one of our greatest goals.
This year we kicked off a new initiative to promote reading: The Amazing Reading Race. Every class, grade one and up, has a weekly minutes goal. The students track how many minutes they are reading with reading logs. The teachers (or sometimes the students themselves during math class!) total the minutes to see if the class met their goal. I get the fun job of announcing the leaders every week at Acto Civico. At the end of the parcial, the class that made their goal the most times wins books for their class. In first parcial, 8th grade took the grand prize and each student received a book with a “From the library of…” nameplate inside. Their excitement was overwhelming.
Since the reading race began, we’ve been noticing more and more students reading around school. Teachers have begun giving out respect tickets to students they “catch” reading at lunch and recess. Third graders often spend their lunch reading with me in the resource room instead of playing. Even the teachers try to get spotted reading by taking books out to cancha duty or by reading in the pasillo during recess. Reading has become contagious at SJBS!
I believe our greatest responsibility as teachers is to instill a love of learning in our students, especially one that they can go on to share with their communities. This is particularly significant here, in a country that needs powerful individuals that can make positive changes. Hopefully students like the 4th grader who wrote the message above will continue to spread their love of reading after they leave our school: “I’m really proud of myself that I like to read… Reading can take you to another world filled of mysteries so if someone bothers you say to them, “Why don’t you try it? It will be great.” And remember, reading can take you anywhere!”
