This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 84 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, I interview teacher per Neil Rip about how we can stop killing the love of reading.

If I had to pick one thing that makes the biggest difference in the quality of any person's education, the quality of their life really, it would be reading.

And I'm not really talking about basic literacy, not about the ability to read.

I'm talking about reading for pleasure, to satisfy curiosity, to understand how people work and find solace in knowing we are not the only ones who think and feel the way we do.

That kind of reading.

And I try pretty hard to help my three kids become the kind of people who read that way.

I taught them all how to read before kindergarten, the house is full of books.

We keep TVs and devices out of everyone's bedrooms, and they see me reading quite a bit.

But all five of us have multiple devices and we're on them a lot.

We can stream just about any TV show or movie we can think of at any time.

My 11 year old daughter is obsessed with staring at people who poke slime on Instagram.

My 10 year old son spends way too much time watching a YouTuber named Logan Paul get in fights with stop signs and dance to car alarms.

My 13 year old daughter keeps up a running dialogue on Snapchat with dozens of her classmates.

And my husband and I spend way too much time on Facebook, the old people's social network.

So yeah, the reading culture in our house isn't quite where I'd like it to be.

And I know that's on me. We are definitely working on it.

But something else has happened in schools too.

When I see what my kids do in school for reading, it doesn't really look like reading.

I ask them what books they're reading in school and a lot of times they give me a blank stare.

What they do in reading they tell me is mostly worksheets about reading or computer programs that ask them to read passages, not books, and answer multiple choice questions.

Knowing this has bothered me a lot. And it led me to Donald and Miller's book, The Book Whisperer.

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