Education Next – Kathleen Carroll
“One part playdate, one part “Dead Poet’s Society,” and one not-insignificant part dessert, this invitation-only weekly gathering brings together a most unlikely group of members: boys who struggle with reading in school. If you’re an 8-year-old who has decided you hate books, this is the club for you. Why start a club whose members resent the activity at its core? The idea emerged from an experimental approach to reading homework that another parent and I devised at the outset of third grade: a homegrown buddy system. Both of our sons were having trouble mastering the complexities of reading—and amid current, fast-moving standards for the early elementary grades, that meant lots of really boring remedial work. After long days of decoding worksheets and pamphlet-sized readers at school, books were cast under an evil spell, re-imagined not as adventure stories but as torture devices. The idea that reading could be interesting and fun seemed a cruel fiction.”(more)