The Magic of Read Alouds

For those of you who don't know Timothy Razinski let me just save you some time. He's the guru on Read Alouds. What does Read Aloud mean? Simply this: Reading aloud to your children.  He has done oodles of research on the benefits of reading aloud to your kids. Let me just give you a few things he says about doing read alouds:

~Reading aloud to your children gives them positive affective feelings about reading in general that will help them WANT to read later in school when they have to.

~Read alouds provide hours of pre-literacy exposure to kids where they will absorb all kinds of background information on all sorts of topics, that will help them come to school with a much larger schema.

~Listening to a fluent reader (i.e. You) read a text that might otherwise be too challenging for them in terms of syntax, vocubulary and phrasing, makes a challenging text accessible and enjoyable to struggling or reluctant readers.

~Reading a book aloud to them that is required reading for school, at least the first few chapters, helps them get over the hump of getting started and helps them get hooked on the world of the novel.

~Reading aloud to your children means you are modeling the joy and importance of reading and being a life long reader.

~Reading aloud to your children means you are exposing them to books that you know and feel are important for them to read. It gives you partnership and involvement in their learning experience.

~Reading aloud to your reluctant reader is the only way to get them interested in reading independently on their own.

When I taught reading to inner city kids in Houston, and I started doing read alouds with my students, I began to feel its magic. Kids who had previously hated reading class were the first in their seats to hear me start class with the story. Kids who NEVER took home books to read started asking to take home copies of the book I would read in class. Students who had never done well in reading before started taking a new interest in books. It works. It really does. Every time with every kid. I mean it. If you aren't reading aloud to your kids, you are missing out and so are they. And I have lots of ideas on books so reach out if you need some. Its not to late. My mom read to us even as teenagers on vacation and we loved it. Those are some of my best memories on road trips. Maybe that's even why I became a reading teacher...hmmm.

Appalled. Just appalled.

I just have to say it. I have to. I am APPALLED at the lack of commentary and response from Christians or anyone else for that matter about the transcript released regarding the selling of babies' body parts that was just released. We are an insane culture that celebrates babies and birth and pregnancy, but at the same time, has no regard for babies if they aren't wanted. WAIT...aren't wanted? By whom? By the long long waiting lists of couples dealing with infertility that have to wait a couple of years to get a baby?

What we are really saying is that underneath a woman's right to choose, which isn't really the issue and never has been, we are telling young women, "Yes, cave into the pressure to make this choice and make the realities of it go away. It's so much better and really it does matter more to not embarrass anyone than do the right thing." Isn't that what we are saying as a culture? Are we really validating women to say that their best option, their most empowered option is to make it go away. Let's just not lie. You know what I told women who came to the Crisis Pregnancy Center. "Listen, I don't care what your parents or your boyfriend, or husband or whoever thinks about you having this baby. What do you think? What decision can YOU live with because this decision is one you live with. " And I didn't make one dime off that advice. Not one. I was there for free so that girls who were scared of their boyfriends didn't let them make the decision for them.

If this recent article exposes nothing else it should clarify one thing: There is no counseling going on at Planned Parenthood regarding abortion. It is sales, people. Sales. They make money on a yes. So this whole jargon about supporting women's rights in making a decision is a bunch of garbage. Let me see some counseling that says here are ALL your options and by the way, let's be clear on one thing: This is a decision you will live with, either way. That is just a beginning of a support of women's rights. Full information, empowerment to choose either way, and clear honest straight talk about the reality that a procedure will never make her decision less of a decision she lives with, along with clearly stated information about risks of the procedure. That's treating women like people and not like potential clients. The bottom line is that the terms pro-choice and women's rights is marketing jargon pure and simple. To make women feel that by choosing this procedure they were being empowered. Most successful ad campaign of the century I think. And sadly we fell for it. Roe v. Wade should have been one decision for one woman in one situation. That's what the judicial branch does. Apply to a particular case the laws written by congress. That's not what happened. And no one cares. Case law isn't in the constitution, but I digress.

And this isn't even the most important issue here. That's not even considering the most important issue of the value of human life. The fact that if there is a mystery about human life and when it begins, we respect the guardrail of the womb and don't recklessly careen as close to the edge as possible hoping we are not going to fall off a moral cliff. The reality of the debate surrounding when human life begins really reveals the heart of what human legalism strives for: How much can I get away with? Wrong question. Wrong motive, wrong perspective. But we don't care. Because we are empowered. And after all, Planned Parenthood would say, we aren't doing anything wrong, we are just recycling what mothers don't want. We are putting it to good use. If that doesn't make you sick, we as a society are past hope. All of us. Have we just decided as a society that such issues are just too unpleasant to comment on? If this doesn't provoke moral outrage from society, we might as well round people up in carts and take them to the arena. Oh wait, we already are. Come quickly Lord Jesus.