Reading as a way of life

Reading as a way of life

I could say, without a doubt,  that I love reading. However, I cannot deny that I do not practice it as much as I would like to. We live immersed in a time where work, families, friends and society itself prevent us from having a relaxed time for our own hobbies (or this is at least my case, living in that super-technological and busy era).

What is beyond clear is that the act of reading should be a ritual, a non-guilty pleasure we are looking forward to enjoying at any time or in any place.  Among those pages, we will find answers, we will lose ourselves and above all, we will dream;  in a few words, it allows us not to feel lonely anymore.

When I see and wonder about the images selected for this task, I mainly concentrate on two of them, as they make me think on my own experience. That Kind woman sharing a reading time with the little girl, promoting on her the real love for books ... it's, for me, as if you were  watering a seed which later would become a vigorous tree. I am pretty sure that we have a  responsability (we teachers and family) because loving “the action of reading” is achieved  thanks to a great patience and tenacity but never forcing our young people to read something they do not like; in fact, I absolutely prefer my students being independent when it comes to choosing their own readings (the more and different options you provide them, the more they will read for the simple and wonderful pleasure of reading).

In a second place, I would like to emphasize that photograph of the library as well, because it is our job to instill in our children and teenagers the desire of going to such a magical place  so full of possibilities, where they can read a newspaper, find information on any subject or even borrow a film…

As I wrote as a title for this entry, “Reading is a way of life”, a plural and tolerant way of  understanding reality, promoting respect and learning about  different ways of thinking. 

Let's never forget that teachers are the new "influencers" and that if we read, they will also read.