school, but it can influence their adult lives and social conditions beyond the classroom as well. Archer,
Gleason, and Vachon (2003) posited that students lacking literacy skills are less likely to participate in post
high school educational and training opportunities. Many students can read at a fast rate, but they do not
comprehend well or at levels needed for college reading; for those who do attend college there has been
an increase of students starting college with the need to use the universities’ reading clinics (Rasinski,
2006). Students may feel limited in employment opportunities to support themselves and their families
(Archer et al., 2003), and “without the ability to read well, opportunities for personal fulfillment and job
success inevitably will be lost” (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985, p. 1). Conversely, great
benefits result when students obtain and continue to grow in literacy skills as they lead to increased
confidence to seek career opportunities and ultimately to an enhanced quality of life (Devault & Joseph,
2004).
Although the three of us have master’s degrees in reading and all have experience teaching English
at some level in high school, we have many differences. We have a range of teaching experience from one
to eight years. We come from three different high schools, two suburban and one urban, and three
separate school districts within and around a moderately sized city in southwest Missouri. We are certified
in English 9-12, and two of us hold special education certificates. Our schools have different levels of
reading support ranging from no official reading teacher or reading class to a full-time reading teacher
constrained to working only with a limited number of freshmen and sophomores. Despite our different
schools and teaching situations, our commonality is that every day we work with students who do not
qualify for the special reading intervention classes and who struggle with reading tasks in school.
We also have students who are able readers, but they are resistant to reading what is assigned in
content area classes. A significant number of adolescent readers are what Lenters (2006) refers to as
“resistant readers” (p. 136). Although some may struggle with reading disabilities, the overarching theme
with resistant readers is a lack of motivation to read. Lenters found that students were not inclined to read
the kinds of material assigned and made available in schools and that this factor was the dominant theme
of adolescent resistance to reading. Unfortunately, our observations indicate that the avoidance of
assigned school reading carried over to students’ overall reading behavior, and many students have
become alliterate, or nonreaders by choice, as a result.
As high school teachers, we face expanding responsibilities for not only building on the efforts of all
the literacy teaching that has come before us, but also preparing our students to be literate citizens before
they leave high school in just a few short years. It is incumbent on us to prepare our students for high
stakes testing and the increased reading demands found on college entrance exams, yet the nature of
these pressures makes it “increasingly difficult for teachers to implement instruction responsive to
adolescents” (Elish-Piper & Tatum, 2006, p. 7). Unfortunately, the demands also often encroach upon
student motivation. This is a calamity because not only do we want our students to be academically
prepared, we wish to foster lifelong literacy. We want them to be deep thinkers, to choose to be readers,
to find pleasure in reading, and to be good communicators as the world increasingly demands high levels of
literacy, for “in a c