This TED Talk features education innovator Alvin Irby, recorded live at TED Residency 2017.

As an elementary school teacher, my mom did everything she could to ensure I had good reading skills.

This usually consisted of weekend reading lessons at our kitchen table while my friends played outside.

My reading ability improved, but these forced reading lessons didn't exactly inspire a love of reading.

High school changed everything.

In 10th grade, my regular English class read short stories and its spelling tests.

Out of sheer boredom, I asked to be switching to another class.

The next semester, I joined Advanced English.

We read two novels and wrote two book reports that semester.

The drastic difference and rigor between these two English classes angered me and spurred questions like,

where did all these white people come from?

My high school was over 70% black and Latino, but this advanced English class had white students everywhere.

This personal encounter with institutionalized racism altered my relationship with reading forever.

I learned that I couldn't depend on a school, a teacher, or a curriculum to teach me what I needed to know.

And more out of, like, rebellion than being intellectual, I decided I would no longer

allow other people to dictate when and what I read. And without realizing it, I had stumbled

upon a key to helping children read.

Identity.

Instead of fixating on skills and moving students from one reading level to another

or forcing struggling readers to memorize lists of unfamiliar words,

we should be asking ourselves this question. How can we inspire children to identify

as readers? Deshaun, a brilliant first grader I taught in the Bronx. He helped me understand how

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