A Revelation

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I think I’ve finally put my finger on just what, exactly, feels so wrong about my having joined a liberry teen-focus group: lack of understanding of the basic goal of getting teenagers to read.

All I’m saying is, I was the teenager who inspired whole panels of teachers, counselors, and parents to convene in order to figure out how to get me to stop reading.

I may be out of my depth here.

Comments

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Oh ye gods, the Book Wars.

I suppose, looking back, that they may have had a legitimate objection - I was reading through all my classes. I still feel the solution was to make the other classes more interesting. For example, that year I had the Awesome Math Teacher, who was a folky geek who taught us how to built satellites and chaos theory and knew who Harlan Ellison was and generally made an effort to engage each student with the subject by linking it to things they were already interested in? I got my first ever (and so far only) A in math. He was also the first math teacher to realize that no one had ever properly explained negative numbers to me.

When he left next year and we went back to rote memorization and busy work? Right back to Ds and Cs and reading Stephen King.