Comments on: When learning feels like a forced march

By: Rebecca Zook

Rebecca Zook — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:26:07 +0000

Liz, thanks for stopping by, it’s nice to “meet” you here! I totally hear what you’re saying and I’m glad you are starting to recover your love of reading!

I actually think for me the turning point came when I re-read the children’s book Matilda by Roald Dahl mid-way through college. Have you read it? It’s about a little girl who discovers *her* love of reading. I had bought it as a birthday present for a friend and before I gave it to her, I thought, I’d better read this over to make sure she’ll really like it. And reading it made me feel SOOO happy. I remembered what it felt like to really love reading when I was little!

By: liz

liz — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:27:04 +0000

I gave up reading for fun almost entirely during college. I, too, inhaled books up until college. Then, I just had so much other reading that I couldn’t stand the thought of doing MORE reading outside of classes. I finished my most recent round of school in 2007, and between that experience and spending several years devoted to getting life in order post-college, I’m only just now starting to get back into reading for fun.

By: Rebecca Zook

Rebecca Zook — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:22:14 +0000

Oops, the link didn’t work. Here it is again http://www.visitingdc.com/images/miro-painting.jpg

By: Rebecca Zook

Rebecca Zook — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:21:15 +0000

Thanks so much for your thoughtful post! I’m glad that you get to play with math too, and never have any assignments to complete! Your comments remind me of what Rafe Esquith writes about reading — that the reason we want students to learn to read is so that they LOVE reading, and they want to read all the time. Adults who read, read because they crave it, not because they have to take a standardized test or fulfill a state learning requirement. Just like — how if we never get to play with math, we might never learn to love it for its own sake.

Here is a link to the painting, called The Red Sun, a the Phillips Collection:

By: Sue VanHattum

Sue VanHattum — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:49:48 +0000

(meant to say…)

I was thinking as I read this of the connection to math, how fun it is when we choose it, and how stressful otherwise.

I love that I get to play with math these days, and never have any ‘assignments’ to complete.

By: Sue VanHattum

Sue VanHattum — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:47:52 +0000

Thanks for a wonderful post. I took a two-semester great books course (required for the honors program) my first year of college, in which we read most of what’s on that list of yours. I don’t remember that class making my love of reading lessen, but I sure didn’t get to make a deep connection with those books. (I also thought the writers were often sexist and the choices eurocentric. I would have liked a bit more breadth.)

I took a Native American literature class in graduate school, and was distressed by how quickly we had to move through the luscious books we were reading.

>I stumbled across a Miró painting I never dreamed I’d see in person

Do you know the title of this? I’d love to see it.