Andy Shin
Executive Director, Breakthrough San Francisco
This past August, Breakthrough wrapped up its eighteenth summer at SFDS. 76 hard-working fifth and sixth graders spent six weeks learning from 20 equally hard-working college students. Classrooms and hallways were bustling. Students dissected sheep eyes, mapped plot structures, and researched the lives of Native people in Chaco Canyon, in what is now New Mexico. They paid a visit to Facebook headquarters, camped out at Pt. Reyes, and had any number of unique experiences.
But with all this activity, one of the things I’ll remember most was our theme, “Readers are Leaders.”
After several years of summer themes that were worthwhile but abstract (“Oh, The Places You’ll Go”), we opted this time for something more tangible. Besides reading two novels for their summer Reading class, students were pushed to read as much as possible on their own. They recorded their progress on the website Destiny Quest and also made paper chains, one link per book, competing for the longest. Bulletin boards around the school recommended titles in different genres (mystery, biography, fantasy) or shared the favorite books of notable leaders (President Obama – among others, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon).
We also looked for other ways to reinforce the power of reading. SFDS librarian Renee Otero arranged for an accomplished children’s book author, Jennifer Holm, to speak to the students about her life as a writer and to sign book copies. In the mornings after breakfast, before students headed off to class, we often asked students and teachers to share a book they had recently read.
With all of this, I started to see something shift – in the students, and also in myself – in terms of just how much we valued reading. Maybe it was hearing a teacher describe a favorite book for the fifth straight day. Maybe it was the research someone cited about reading’s long-term benefits for intelligence, concentration, and creativity – benefits not imparted by TV watching. Maybe it was my own effort, not wanting to be a hypocrite, to do more reading myself (I really liked Girl in Translation, also Baking Cakes in Kigali, but had to give up on If You Don’t Know Me By Now). Maybe it was seeing Trayana reading happily at lunch. Most likely it was all of this put together. The growing consciousness about reading was a tide that washed over everyone at Breakthrough. If our students continue to read this much in the months and years ahead, there will be all kinds of positive results.
I understand the draw of TV and video games, especially in the days of 3-D graphics and busy schedules. A recent article in the New York Times discusses how some TV networks have moved their morning news broadcasts as early as 4 am, hoping to catch early risers, and possibly also counting on a spillover effect. As the reporter pointed out, “Once a household’s television is turned on, it typically stays on for hours and hours.” Recent surveys found that TVs in the average American household stay on for 8 hours a day – while the average American adult reads only four books per year.
While changing these numbers is a big mountain to climb, hopefully we can all set the right tone with the young people we know. For next summer at Breakthrough, we may be bringing back the “Readers are Leaders” theme, and we hope you’ll all join us in supporting this effort!
