June classes are over! Yea!!!

I'm celebrating in my head tonight. My June coursework is completed; I have to go to class Monday one more time, and then my days in Ada are over. I realize that two days a week in Ardmore in July are still ahead of me, but I am still celebrating. The worst part is that it is so hot that it's miserable just going from the car to the building. I'm going to the movie tonight at 9:40 to celebrate.
I also went to the library to pick up some book to read FOR PLEASURE. The irony did not escape me that I have not been able to read for pleasure because I am studying to be a reading specialist.
I don't know who is reading this, but one of the most interesting things I studied this month was an article about people who were struggling readers as children but became successful adults. I expected to find that all of these people found ways around reading, but that was not the case. They have all become very good readers because at an early age they developed a passion for some subject. The people she studied have become doctors, lawyers, physicists, scientists-and all have become experts in their field.
How can we get kids today to read about their passions. If their passion is politics, they will watch CNN; if their passion is animals, they will watch the discovery channel.
Reading has been such an escape and a pleasure for me for my entire life that I can't imagine not wanting to read. I have a reading vocabulary far beyond the vocabulary that I speak because I read. That is one gift I wish I could pass on to my students.