The SLOW Path To Reading

It's official.  He brought home his first reader.  I have sat and listened to nearly a hundred children read this very same book.  But today, the emergent reader sitting before me is my own.  I feel so much pride, and I think, why does it matter so?  Why is this SO important?  And I'm not the only proud one; he's proud too.  We took a video of him reading to send to his grandparents.  Later, he asked to watch it, and I just watched the smile erupt on his face.  Only six days ago, as we made our new year's resolutions, he had told me "I want to learn to read."  And here he was.  Reading a real book.  Six days ago, I'm not sure he realized how close he was.  My heart is still fluttering.

As I watched my little guy officially enter the world of reading, it occurred to me that my excitement has nothing to do with his gaining a skill.  Yes, he is now developing an important skill that will assist him in his journey towards success in whatever he pursues.  But, that's not what excites me.  I am not proud because he is gaining a skill.  Instead, I am proud because he is gaining access. Access to a world greater than his own.  Access to a wealth of information, adventure, creativity, and exploration.  Access to a pursuit of knowledge directed by himself.  Access to the freedom of self-education.  I am excited for him because he has arrived here with desire and confidence, and from that profound place, he will continue to grow in his skill and his connection to this amazing world will deepen.

As a Montessorian, one of my greatest passions is language and reading.  It's a mind blowing thing to watch language develop.  Seeing the transformation from understanding speech to comprehending the written word makes me truly realize how astonishing are the capabilities of the human brain.  Especially one of a child.  There is no magic here, rather hard-wiring so complex that it cannot be stopped.  The brain must learn language.  It needs to learn language.  It will learn language.  As long as there is exposure, there will be learning.

We Montessorians know that the adult does not teach the child to speak.  Barring any difficulty or complications with the hard-wiring, the child will speak.  Anyone who's had an intense conversation with a two year old will realize how quickly and complexly that it happens.  The role of the adult is to enrich the language around the child, make it accessible, and only in that way can we affect the development of the child's language.  No, we do not teach language.  We share it.

Reading is not much different.  The process is the child's.  The process is there in the brain.  We do not teach the child to read.  We give the child access to the components of reading, just as we did speech, through sounds and syllables.  Only this time, we relate it to the symbols of the written word.  We share this information.  We do not teach.  We share and share and share, and then we share some more.  And when we have shared enough of the building blocks, then something incredible happens.  Something amazing.  Something hard-wired.  The child takes those building blocks and puts them together.  The child reads.  Spontaneously.  I have even seen it happen without warning.  And when the child reaches this place of his own accord, without force or pressure, he arrives with confidence.  He arrives with passion.  He declares his desire to keep forging ahead, to learn more, to voraciously feed his appetite for learning.  He is a reader.  This child knows the power reading holds.  It is the power of self-education.  It is the key.  It is access.

I have known this day was coming for a quite a while.  From a distance I have watched the signs.  He knew more sounds.  I heard him starting to listen for sounds in words and break them apart and then blend them together again.  He would build words at home with the magnetic letters on the chalkboard.  I could see the building blocks.  Some might think that as a Montessori teacher, I have been able to add much to the process.  But what I have added is not what some might think.  I have added silence and patience.  Yes, if he asks for the sound of a word, I let him know, but I do not push.  I do not schedule time for us to practice.  I do not request that he learn.  I know the materials are in his classroom and I know that he is attracted to them.  I trust the process.  Were I homeschooling, I might be more involved in that I would provide the building blocks myself, but I would be relying on the same process.  Waiting.  Waiting for interest.  Waiting for requests.  And I would share, as I do now occasionally.  Share the sound for each symbol when he is interested.  Provide letters so that he may practice making a word and recognizing the symbols that make up the sounds he hears in a word.  At home he might be drawn to the magnetic letters on the chalkboard to do this; at school he is drawn to the beautiful wooden Moveable Alphabet letters in the same way.  He builds words.  Words he wants to make.  He practices.  And we wait.  His teacher waits.  I wait.  It is a waiting game.  Waiting for the skill to build.  Waiting for repetition to take hold so that he is no longer thinking of a sound and trying to remember what the symbol looks like, but now he is suddenly looking at the symbol and recalling the sound.    She and I both know that the longer we wait, the stronger his skill.  We are waiting for it to come together in his mind.  So I let her keep sharing, and she finds new and interesting ways to share (maybe a scavenger hunt to find words with the sound associated with a specific symbol or maybe writing a story with the letters).  She shares.  He repeats.

This is the longest part of the process.  It is also the most important part of the process.  If we push, there is a grave risk.  We risk breaking that fragile sense of confidence.  We risk making it seem harder than it is.  We risk messing with the process that is happening in his mind.   We risk his passion and his innate drive.  So, we wait.  And then one day, we see the sounds coming and blending together in his brain.  We see that he can recall the sound for every letter when he sees it.  Then, and only then, does his teacher share the next step.  The book.  The punctuation.  The sight words.  Oh they come together so beautifully.  And there he is.  Reading.  Of his own accord.  This is still just another step in the process, there is still so much to learn.  But this is the top of the hill.  When the child reaches the apex with such support, the rest of the process is all downhill.  Like a sponge the child grasps at new information, sucking it in with vigor and such incredible retention, just as he did with verbal language.  He is a reader.  He has the key.  He has access.

My son is 4 years and 9 months old.  This was the age at which the process took hold in his mind.  It is not the same for every child.  Some reach the apex sooner.  Some reach the apex later.  Some reach the apex much much later.  It does not matter when they do (I once knew a child who was 7/8 years old before all the building blocks came together and today he excels as a student).  It does not matter when the process takes hold.  It matters that it does take hold in such a manner that they are confident and driven.  If they reach this point without those two things, the rest of the journey may not be downhill.  It may continue to be forever uphill, forever a struggle.  I had no desire for my son to become an early reader.  I had every desire for my son to become a strong, confident, and passionate reader in whatever time his mind needed.

I watch many children and many parents struggle with reading.  They so often struggle in ways they never struggled with the development of spoken language, which was gracefully shared and the process left to the child's mind.  I blame a system where reading is treated differently than language development, not as a natural process of the child's but something that has to be created by the adults.  It is taught.  It is pushed.  In the public school system, children are being forced to become readers earlier and earlier, trying to meet a deadline for the next grade.   Trying to meet a standardization.   I continue to see children taught letter names that have no relevance in the reading process (the only time you use letter names in education is in mathematics, and then you still do not use all of them, or alphabetization which is not a skill needed in reading).  I see children pushed, work-booked to death.  Imagine if we did such a thing with spoken language!  I dare say no child would ever wish to speak!

My deepest wish for every child is that the adults around them learn to share the reading process rather than teach it.  Share the sounds and relate them to the lower case symbols (oh, can we please delay the learning of capitals and letter names and focus on sounds first!).  Contemplate words and how to put them together.  Build simple phonetic words together and save complexity for later (build upon a solid foundation!).  Then wait.  Have patience.  Reading is language, only in a different form.  Montessori (as well as other non-traditional methods) education has developed ways to follow the natural process.  If we let it develop in the same manner as spoken language, as the natural process of the mind, and have faith in that development, if we let children take the slow path to reading and let them develop confidence and understanding of the building blocks we share, then maybe we will have an entire generation of confident readers.  Maybe we will have an entire generation with the key.  And maybe, just maybe, we will have an entire generation with a drive for self-education and the pursuit of knowledge.  I dare say reading is so powerful, and confidence even more so.  Let every child become a reader in his own time.  Let every child slowly reach for the key and gain access.