By Dana Katz
Reading has been proven to help a person’s mentality and mood time after time. An article from Family Education explains the benefit of pleasure reading. “First of all, the extra reading expands their vocabularies…Teens who read more serious literary works gain skills in handling complex ideas. The more teens read, the more information they pick up.” Reading has many benefits and can be extremely helpful both outside and inside the classroom.
LREI’s teachers would like the freshman grade to establish healthy reading habits, which includes reading for pleasure. Read, Write and Recommend (or RWR for short) was created to encourage freshman to take time out of their day to read a book for “fun”. However, is this goal being completed? Unfortunately, the answer is no. After talking to 40 freshman, I discovered that only 31% of students have actually read their books. Some say that they were not completing the assignment because they need to study for math tests or history assignments. Also, it may be confusing to be reading multiple books from different subjects at one time. Others even said they’d rather use their free time to socialize with friends or watch TV shows.
However, the 31% that did read their books claimed that it did feel nice to take time out of their busy schedule, to sit down, and to enjoy a book. One anonymous source explained that, “Although reading can seem boring, it was a great stress reliever.” How can the system change to be more helpful for the following year’s freshman?
If you have any ideas or thoughts about RWR we would love to hear at 21danak@lrei.org