Finding Common Ground and Common Sense: More Thoughts About the Current Dialogue Around the Teaching of Reading
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A few years ago, our family became permanent advocates for an immigrant foster child. She was 14 years old and about to become a mother. The trauma she had endured was unimaginable. She had some immense challenges ahead of her. She would need to process her traumatic past, build trust with others, and raise a precious child, being a child herself. She had not been afforded many of the trust-building opportunities that parents do with their children such as reading to them and listening to their stories. In essence she had lost her childhood.
As a foster parent and an educator, I read a lot. Some of my books are for pleasure; others are to help me manage life, parenting, and most recently, fostering children. One book recently gifted to me was Wounded Children; Healing Homes by Jayne Schooler, Betsy Smalley, and Timothy Callahan (2009). This book helped me to understand how to create space in our home for our foster child, Ritzi, to heal. Another recent read, Dancing with a Porcupine; Parenting Wounded Children without Losing Yourself by Jennie Owens (2019), helped me to create a plan for self-care during particularly challenging times. These books helped me to see our family was not alone in this journey and encouraged us to persevere through some very difficult times.
Although these books were fabulous resources to me and my family, the real healing came when the act of shared reading was introduced to Ritzi.
Shared Reading Heals
As a young teen, Ritzi was often gifted books of encouragement. Daily devotionals, journals with encouraging prompts, and stories of others overcoming adversity helped her to process her pain and begin to heal. There were many things she was not ready to talk about; however, she needed a way to process and work through her trauma in her own way. These resources, and professional mental health support, allowed her a way to take ownership of her own mental health and continue the healing process.
We began to model reading to her infant child. At first, she hesitated and let us do most of the reading time; however, over time, she began to experience the joy of reading to her child. The little infant and toddler books were excellent for her to improve upon her own literacy skills as she read to her child. We filled the house with bilingual books like Tortillas are Round, Las Tortillas son Redondas by Roseanne Thong and John Parra (2013), books about Central American culture, and several books that reflected diversity such as Skin Like Mine by Latashia Perry (2016).
We realized a positive connection to her past was cooking. She had cooked with her grandmother as a child. It was a source of comfort for her to cook some of her favorite foods. Wearing matching handmade aprons from my grandmother, she would share stories of her childhood and I would share mine. It was a valuable time of healing and bonding for us. However, reading recipes was challenging. There were more times than once that ¼ teaspoon was read as ¼ cup, which made for some interesting results. But, the more we read recipes and cooked together, the more her confidence grew. She became more independent and her face would beam with delight as the family devoured her creations.
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by Dr. Sam Bommarito
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