BY: Mike DiMatteo
I never liked textbooks. As a student, I found them staid, boring, and at times so cluttered that the sheer volume of information on a page became a distraction. They always struck me as clinical rather than engaging, regardless of how much research textbook companies invested in their creation. When I became a teacher, I felt the same way — perhaps even more so. When preparing a lesson, I tried to think like a student: if this were presented to me, how would I react? That wasn’t my sole driving force, but I kept it in mind as I mapped out my lessons.
And what I kept coming back to was this: these kids are not going to read this stuff. It’s boring.
Making matters worse was that reading was sometimes used as punishment.
“If you don’t quiet down, I’ll assign three more pages — and the questions at the end of the chapter, too.”
Nothing kills a student’s desire to read quite like wielding it as a threat.
It should be noted that there is a difference between AP students and non-AP students when it comes to willingness to engage with assigned materials. But lest you get the wrong idea, even AP students don’t read everything assigned, despite weekly reading quizzes designed to hold them accountable. AP students are also teenagers.
Students at lower levels? In my experience, few read anything assigned at all.
I kept asking myself why. What I assigned wasn’t overly complicated or particularly dense — I wasn’t asking them to read entire chapters, just a section or two. I was familiar with the professorial, clinical explanations curated through studies by academic researchers, most of whom had never spent a day in a working high school classroom at an at-risk school. I took their reasoning with a grain of salt. There had to be more to why these kids weren’t reading.
So I asked them directly.
“Why don’t you read the assignments?”
The answers were predictable:
“It’s boring.”
“I just don’t like reading.”
“I read — just not this stuff.”
“‘Cause I just don’t get it.”
Typical responses from high school kids who have better things to do than read pages 235–239 in a textbook.
For me, it came down to two things. First, many of them struggled with reading itself. It was a chore. And when something is a chore — especially reading — most students will avoid it as much as possible. The primary reason is that they weren’t taught properly at the elementary level and didn’t supplement their learning with reading at home. Phonics, for some reason, has become a dirty word.
Second, much of what they were asked to read wasn’t relevant to them, not in the least.
“Why do we have to read this stuff? I don’t live in the 18th century in a chateau.”
When something feels like a chore, people avoid it — that’s human nature. The best of us recognize this and push through, but most grade school and high school students don’t yet have that drive. Their instinct is avoidance, and so they avoid. The result is that their skills don’t improve, and as the years pass, they find themselves continually defeated by the written word. When defeat is all you know, eventually you give up. Many do, with little desire to recover — and why would they? There are few consequences for not doing so, and they are passed through the system regardless. The result is that many simply fall through the cracks.
The question of relevancy is more complicated. This is where the art of teaching comes in. Modern students are skeptical by nature — many don’t want to be in school to begin with, and if they are going to be there, they don’t want their time wasted. A lesson or activity must feel worthwhile to work. When I first began teaching, this wasn’t quite as pronounced; students generally did as they were asked, albeit grudgingly. That is no longer the case. The same shift has occurred on athletic fields. Athletes want to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing — the purpose behind a drill, the reason for weight room sessions. The classroom is no different, just a different set of circumstances.
So I adjusted my approach.
First, I moved away from heavy reliance on textbook material. Students associated textbooks with boredom, and I didn’t want that association coloring everything else. What I did instead was use the textbook as an outline, providing essential background on the period we were studying, supplemented with direct instruction that went beyond what the textbook covered. Together, both elements provided context and relevancy — because I made a point of connecting the material to my students’ lives today. That is the key: tying it to the present, to them.
Second, rather than simply saying, “Read pages 235–239 and answer the questions at the bottom,” I built a story around the selection so the text had context before they ever opened it. Then I’d offer a passage from a primary source:
“Here’s a selection from The Decameron describing the horrors of the Black Death. Giovanni Boccaccio was there — he witnessed the slow, agonizing deaths of his neighbors and wanted you to know about it. Take a moment and hear what he has to say.”
Afterward, we’d discuss what we’d read and work to place it in a broader context, including whether something like it could happen today. I’d close by saying,
“By the way, The Decameron is free — just search the title followed by ‘PDF’ and you can read the whole thing.”
The selection was brief, enough to whet their appetites, but impactful enough that many students sought out more on their own.
There were students who still struggled — particularly at the lower levels — but my response was always the same:
“If you can learn to read this — and you can — you can read anything. There is an entire world of remarkable writing waiting for you. The ancients want to talk to you, to share what they know, and what they know is still relevant today. Human nature hasn’t changed much. All you have to do is invite them in.”
That seemed to resonate, and many dug in a little deeper.
Were there some who still didn’t read? Yes. That, sadly, is the reality of the profession. Some students simply will not do as instructed — it has been that way since the one-room schoolhouse, and no amount of ingenuity in lesson design will change that for every child. That is the reality of teaching at any level.
In A Supervisor’s Advice to a Young Scribe, a text from ancient Sumer (c. 2000–1600 B.C.), a teacher lectures a graduating student on discipline and respect. The school’s customs dictated that the student receive the lecture in silence and respond with humble words of gratitude. Instead, the graduate tells the teacher he has no need to hear any of it.
Some things don’t change.
And yet teachers — past and present — persist, finding ways in, and often succeeding. When it comes to reading, the lesson is this: relevancy is the key. Make it relevant, and the door will open.
