Time to Read

How can I expect my students, many of whom are reluctant readers, to try to set aside 15 minutes each day to read when I have difficulty doing this myself.

Here is a rundown of today's reading:

- 8:30 a.m. - 30 minutes - newspaper
- 12:45 p.m. - 15 minutes - The Global Achievement Gap (required summer reading for my school district)
- 3:30 p.m. - 15 minutes - two picture books (read to my 3-month-old son)
- 9:00 p.m. - 40 minutes - Frindle (read to my 9-year-old son)

This is all well and good, and is pretty typical for any day of the week (although the newspaper reading is usually less than 10 minutes; I read it longer today because it was the Sunday paper). However, I have been trying to carve out some time all week long to start reading James X, a book my 13-year-old son loved and wants me to read so we can talk about it, and in the past 7 days I have not even picked it up. And to be totally honest, there are several other books that I would rather read for entertainment.

Is this one of the problems our students may have? Are they always being told to read something that they didn't choose to read? Not that all reading must be self-selected, but I know that the books I enjoy reading most are the ones I choose for myself. However, with life as busy as it is, it's very difficult to set aside time for leisure. I know that adolescents probably do not have as many pressing life responsibilities as adults (childcare, work and family responsibilities, community responsibilities, etc.), but I also know that kids today seem to be more stressed and busy than kids were when I was in high school.

How can we recapture blocks of time that we can use to read for pleasure? And when we do happen upon these serendipitous blocks of time, how can we make sure there is an interesting text nearby? Once we figure out how to do this for ourselves, maybe we can help adolescents do this better as well.