I remember the night when, fresh out of college, I was hired for my first teaching job. I was amazed and startled at the enormity of the responsibility that I had just been blessed with. My main thought as I was driving home was that I was being entrusted with the education of a class full of children, that I! was going to be teaching little children how to read. I was truly both scared and very excited!

Now, here I am, good gracious 13 years later, teaching my own personal Kindergartner how to read. It is such a different experience than I would have planned or anticipated. She is much different than my other children, and from me. She's lively, energetic, imaginative, and can "read" many of our picture books, holding the attention of her 2 year old brother as well as I can.

She deserves more than something "Dick and Jane"(ish) or some easy repetitive reader with no storyline. She loves books...real, fun, exciting, beautifully illustrated books! So that's what we're reading. It would be an act of condescension to present her with anything less. Of course I am starting with ones with more repetition and sight words but we're using ones that she enjoys.

As I've thought through all of this, I'm left wondering at what point it became such a radical idea to teach children to read through actually reading. Along with Humpty Dumpty, it seems that real literature, real books, which are the ideal resources for teaching, have fallen off the wall and been replaced by teachers' manuals.

Must we make everything artificial? Must we professionalize everything to the point that the average person feels incapable of teaching his/her own child something as natural as learning to read?

I say we must not!