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Robyn Rich is a Grade 7-8 English language arts teacher at Piscataquis Community Secondary School. She is also the 2024 Piscataquis County Teacher of the Year.
As we mark Maine’s February Read to ME Challenge and Read Across America Day in March, it seems to me that the habit of reading, reading for pleasure or reading to learn, is getting lost in the age of digital information.
In this world of social media, soundbites, digital information, and reels, why do we need to read books? Why are books still a vital part of the human experience?
Because reading opens our worlds to the past, present, and future — to cultures and experiences we wouldn’t otherwise know. We are a civilization made up of the collective stories of our ancestors — stories that explain who we are and how we got where we are today. In the earliest years of civilization, people told stories, passing them on to future generations.
As we evolved as a species, we developed technologies and skills that allowed our stories to be collected and preserved. Our stories are a road map leading us from the distant past to an unknown future. Our stories answer age old questions and teach valuable lessons.
As a veteran reading teacher of 39 years, I use stories and reading to share common experiences and ideas with my students. I read to my middle school students every day because they crave good stories and need to feel connected to a world much larger than their own. Reading stories to kids is a powerful tool for sharing and exploring the human condition. I read to my students because stories empower them to share their ideas, beliefs, and world views. The simple act of reading aloud puts all of us in the same room, engaging with the same experiences with unique perspectives.
Whether you’re reading to an audience or you’re immersing yourself in your own reading experience, stories have the power to transform how we think about the world. In the words of Carl Sagan, astronomer and planetary scientist: “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it, and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millenia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
Join me and others across Maine this February (and beyond) and read to someone or ask someone to read to you. Let’s make reading a habit again.
