Green Grass & Goblins

After years of watching [Uncle] and me play Dungeons & Dragons every so often, our boys, ages 7 and 9, have decided they want to play too. [Uncle] has tried a few versions of role-playing games designed for younger players with them, but they want the full, brand-name game. Over the weekend we took turns walking them through the character creation parts of the Player's Handbook, helping them design their first official, rules-based characters. [Younger] was all about being a Druid once we told him they have the power to assume animal form and are friends to animals. [Older] went with something a bit . . . less benevolent. Here's the description and backstory he wrote:

Poise, an Elf Rogue

Green hair, bluish-white skin, and gold eyes.

I am a high elf that loves treasure! I have a knack for sneaking up on people and hoard treasure like a dragon. I have a beautiful red and black cloak, a gold tooth, and I am known as the King of the Dead.

After 5 years of fighting practice, my parents had decided I was a rogue. But when they showed me the treasure I fell in love. So in the middle of the night I grabbed my daggers and ran out into the world in search of treasure.

Also, [Older] was complaining about the lack of dragons in a typical campaign, since they're too powerful for all but the most advanced characters to interact with. He said "dragons" shouldn't be in the name of the game if it doesn't include dragons as something common. I said that name has a certain mystique to it, and if he wanted to name the game after what characters are likely to encounter most often they should call it Green Grass & Goblins.

So, of course, that's now become a thing in our house. Sometimes we call the game Dungeons & Dragons, sometimes we call it Green Grass & Goblins.

I love this article.

A Game Is Not a Game Without a Special Kind of Conflict

To play is to explore possibilities, to test limits, to move beyond the functional and utilitarian and into the realm of the unexpected and inappropriate. . . . In experiencing play, we are training ourselves to be flexible and creative. To be critical. To not just accept things as they are. . . . 

Because play never happens in isolation (we are always playing with something, after all), games can be a way of deepening our connections to each other. Play puts us in a strange dance of cooperation and competition, where we come to know others and ourselves more deeply. . . . 

Every game pits players with or against each other in a system of conflict. This ‘conflict’ might sound negative, a kind of antagonistic competition. In fact, the conflict in games is always collaborative in some way. This is because everyone participating agrees, voluntarily, to take part in the game together. If we’re being forced to play, it’s not really play. . . . 

The ongoing struggle of games weaves energy and engagement into the experience. When we play, we are taking part in productive conflict, joyful conflict, meaningful conflict. Conflict is part of the dramatic machinery of a game that grips our minds and emotions. As every storyteller knows, there is no drama without conflict. Conflict is the spark that helps games catch fire in us. . . . 

When we play a game, we do not become confused about whether or not the game is real. In fact, we are able to lose ourselves in play because (paradoxically!) we know that games are artificial. The conflict in games is like two actors fighting on a stage: artificial, theatrical combat. The audience members watching from their seats don’t rush up on stage to intervene and stop the fight. Instead, they sit in the theatre and suspend their disbelief. They can be gripped by the drama of the fight, yet at the same time know that it’s artificial. . . . 

For Piaget, the game of marbles was a lens for exploring how our morals develop. For De Koven, the community of players that emerges from a game offers chances for individuals to practise being better, together. These are not just abstract ideas. Every moment of play is an opportunity to exercise collaboration with other human beings and to explore the social contract of play. . . . 

Through games, we get to try out new versions of ourselves. Some are aspirational, some are transgressive. Play is a context in which identities can be discovered, explored and evolved. . . . 

Immersion in a fictional world of play is also immersion into an ideological reality. This is because player identities exist simultaneously in the artificial world of the game and also in the real world. In games, we engage with and transform identities, taking part in collaboration and conflict, with and against each other and ourselves. As an ancient form of human expression that has remarkable relevance for our digital lives today, it is high time to take games and play seriously. Because it’s through play that we discover who we are, and who we might become.

And it really ties in with the middle part of The Pirates of Lore from earlier this month, where I shared how I'm trying to teach story creation to kids as dependent upon creating a good conflict. I used my son playing with toy trains when he was very young as an example:

The next time his train went through that section of its journey, there would be issues. “Uh-oh, crash!” he would say with his limited language.

Why did he do that? Because even before we’re two years old, we know what makes a good story: a conflict. A problem. Something to solve. “The train went around the tracks.” That’s a story, but a very boring one. It’s much more interesting if the story is:

“The train started down the tracks. Little did the engineer know that flooding earlier in the week had washed away a section of the track. He careened toward that normally safe spot, only to crash. He radioed for help. A crane arrived to lift the train back onto the rails. Smaller cranes reloaded the freight, and an engineering crew repaired the damage to the train. A different crew shored up the ground and rebuilt the track. Finally, after a monumental delay, the train was able to complete its journey.”

That’s a much more exciting story. It made the play much more fun for my young son. He didn’t have the language or concepts to describe his play the way I just did, but a version of that story was being told in his head as his hands and body acted it out. It’s what he meant when he said, “Uh-oh, crash!”

Stories, games, and play all require conflict.

And from over ten years ago, in Imagination: Not Just for Kids, thinking about the imaginative play of kids:

And, really, in a very broad sense, isn't this what we're doing when we discuss politics and religion, when we gossip and spread rumors, when we create mission and vision statements for our workplaces, when we try to figure out how to live with one another as neighbors and define ourselves as communities--aren't we really just negotiating the rules of our shared games and trying to find groups to be part of whose styles match our own?  How we define reality is up to all of us to figure out together, and it happens in the interplay between us.

Play is for everyone. Because it’s through play that we discover who we are, and who we might become.

Speaking of negotiating the rules of our shared games, something from a work meeting just today. A group of colleagues shared a presentation they gave at a conference about our Community Matters book club, including these "Rules of Engagement" for discussions:

Campfire Agreements ​

Assume Good Intent - seek to understand before reacting ​

Be Gentle with Others and Yourself – we may not always find the right words our first try; what matters is that we are trying; see above​

Accept Feedback with Gratitude - we are here to learn and grow; even good intent can have harmful impact; be open to learning how to do better ​

Respect Vulnerability - these are personal topics and people will be sharing difficult things; be sensitive to it ​

Expect Discomfort - these are hard topics and considering them can feel bad; that is okay and prods growth ​

Take Turns; Include All - listen first; be aware everyone is given the chance to participate, especially the slower to speak 

I was part of the early process of creating this book club, then stepped back when we had enough other people interested in participating that I wasn't needed. I'm pretty sure I helped draft the Campfire Agreements, though this was my first time seeing them in a couple of years. And I'm pretty sure they were influenced by a list I shared, credited to Ignatius, in Wisdom Is Listening.

A little more from their presentation and proposal, to give context for why Rules for Engagement seemed needed:

Community Matters: An intergenerational book club that focuses on important community topics for tweens and their grownups

In America, public libraries are at the center of national discourse. The Johnson County Library’s Community Matters Book Club offers an opportunity for tweens and their families to talk about tough topics in a safe space. Join us as we discuss how we built this club in this divisive time in Kansas, how we navigate conversations about representation, and why it’s important for libraries to make space for these meaningful conversations.  

Previous book clubs have included: Race, Grief, Eating Disorders, LGBTQ, Incarcerated Parent/Wrongful Conviction, Climate Crisis/Activism, Mental Illness/Depression, and Homelessness.  

All attendees will walk away with everything you need to host your own Community Matters Book Club, including book lists, and learning guides.

Luckily, we are librarians, and we also know that some of the most important connecting happens when we share stories about ourselves, and when we learn others’ stories. STORIES CONNECT US. So, in each meeting we followed the fun, low risk icebreaker with a picture book that shared a theme from that month’s chapter book. This served as an “appetizer” and gave us an immediate, shared collective experience. After reading the picture book, we’d have a short conversation around an easy to understand, common text, and then when the chapter book discussion began, we would enter the topic collectively and intentionally – and our hope was that this would make the CONNECTIONS that would CREATE COMMUNITY.

If we could all make a best effort to adopt these Campfire Agreements, our ability to create community would be greatly improved.

Since much of this post is backward looking, extending ideas I've previously considered, it seems only appropriate that I reference the last post, Find the Thread of Love and Beauty in It All, to provide context for what follows. A good chunk of that post was sharing what I wrote to a high school senior in response to her request to interview a librarian for her senior cumulative research project called Capstone. For my Capstone project, I am researching "Why Has Reading Become a Lost Art?". I am specifically researching teens and digital media use, and how that contributes to the loss of reading.

She wrote back:

Thank you so much for your response! This information is outstanding; many ideas I haven't thought of! This will definitely help further my research. With this, I do have a few follow-up questions. I'm interested to hear your perspective on a few things. Take your time, there are quite a few. I will paste them below. Once again, thank you for your time! It is greatly valued.

I once again got carried away answering her questions because they are an area of interest for me. A lot of thoughts that I think are worth preserving as more than an email. Here they are.

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Thank you for the excellent questions. I have thoughts. Many, many thoughts; and I didn’t try to be concise. Enjoy, and let me know your follow-up questions.

How did you become interested in working in teen reading services at [Library]?

That was a long, gradual road for me. I spent my first few years in college just learning without a clear goal, not know what I wanted to do with my life. Finally, in my third year, I had an epiphany; I had a semester where most of my classes were simply for fun, and I realized, after seeing that one of them was “Shakespeare” and another was “The Oral Interpretation of Literature,” that what I really loved was reading and sharing stories in the pursuit of understanding and connecting with people. I finally understood that I needed to be an English major.

I had resisted fields that led into teaching because my parents were both teachers, but I decided that what I wanted to do with an English degree was teach. I got my degree in secondary education, thinking I’d become a high school English teacher. I started applying after graduation and the first good offer to come my way was a school librarian position. I’d never considered that option before, but it felt like a good fit. I accepted the job and realized I really liked it.

After a few years I needed a change of environment—not profession, but location. Again, I started applying, and this time the first good offer came from [Library]. I’d never considered being a public librarian or working with younger kids before, but again it felt good, I tried it, and I loved it. I serve the whole range of youth ages, from babies and preschoolers through to teens, and like it all.

What I liked most, though, was that, unlike in a school, the people at the public library choose to be here and, for the most part, get to choose what they check out and read. The teens I see have more reading freedom and autonomy than teens at school.

What were the main influences that helped create your love/habit for reading like college or a parent/guardian?

My parents were both teachers, as I said, so they raised me with reading and books a natural part of our environment. I read some as a child, but not a ton. I didn’t really fall in love with reading until I discovered the kinds of books that really spoke to me when I was in middle school. A teacher read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis to us and I became enamored with the fantasy genre. I read the rest of the Narnia books, then another fantasy series, then J.R.R. Tolkien, and then I just kept going. Books with magic and fantastical adventures were, well, magical for me. They became what I wanted all the time—and only them.

What I remember of high school was reading two to three fantasy books each week, books I chose for myself, and completing as little of my school reading as possible because I found what my teachers wanted to make us read boring in comparison. If I could learn what I needed from classroom lectures and discussions, I would skip the assigned reading to have more time for my optional reading.

Adult disclaimer: I’m not saying I recommend you follow my choices, just that is what happened so I’m reporting the experience to you. You should not be like me; you should read your assigned work. I look back with regret that I missed out on those reading experiences. Still, all that recreational reading helped develop my life-long love of books and led me to where I am today more, I think, than anything my teachers did or said.

How does your education/degree fit into your job now and how does that revolve around literacy?

I have continued to improve as a reader my entire life. The more I read, the better I become at it. Reading is a skill. Just like any other skill, the more you do it—the more you practice—the better you get. I thought I was a good reader in high school, but I got better in college, then got better in graduate school, and continued to improve through all of the reading I have done in the many years since.

It goes without saying, of course, that the content of my education degrees was directly related to my career as a pusher of stories. A multitude of classes about understanding literature, about teaching, and about how to help people connect with literature in libraries. Being a good reader is part of the equation, but just as important is understanding people—what they need, how they communicate, how they learn, and how to relate to them. My work happens where people and books* intersect, in the space between them.

*I say books because that’s our current topic, but really it’s stories and information in all their formats—movies, articles, music, games, and many others. At the library we try to offer them all.

How does your role in the Teen Reading Services help teen literacy rates increase?

Ah. Well, I don’t actually know that it does, that my work improves literacy rates. I like to think so and operate on the assumption that it does, but I’ve never tried to verify it with data. I think if you go looking you can find research to support the assertion, studies that show that students at schools with good libraries score better on standardized tests than schools with bad or no libraries. I think. But I haven’t looked for that kind of thing in a long time because I take it for granted. I’m pretty sure that information is out there, though.

As to the “how,” though. As you can see from what I chose to highlight above from my experiences, I believe:

• Choice, autonomy, and freedom in reading choices are essential;
• Practicing the skill of reading is more important than the topic or type of reading.

If we want to improve teen literacy, we need to get teens to spend more time reading. If we want teens to spend more time reading, we need to help them find things to read that they’ll enjoy. In the library business we like to say, “If you think you don’t like reading, it means you haven’t found the right things to read yet.” We believe everyone will enjoy reading if they find the right kinds of books or materials—just like finding the fantasy genre in middle school is what turned me into a reader.

So my goal as a librarian is to help each reader discover something they’ll find fun to read. Since every person is different, every need will be unique—what one person loves, the next person will hate. So there’s no “one size fits all” solution. I try to be familiar with as many different types of books as possible so I can make many different types of recommendations, depending on what each person needs. The work is all about where people and books intersect, pairing together readers and reading that fit. The goal is always to help each person find something they’ll enjoy, so they’ll read more, which will make them more literate readers.

Do you prefer audiobooks over reading actual text? If so, why do you think you like one over the other?

I don’t think I have a preference, as I enjoy both, each in its own way. I love audiobooks, but can’t just sit and listen to them—my body needs to be engaged in a simple, thoughtless activity of some sort or I can’t focus on the listening and my mind wanders. For text, I like to tune everything else out and focus in on it. I’m not sure if it’s the same for others, if there’s a general scientific principle behind my experience that applies to everyone or if those are simply my preferences. Regardless, I love both ways of engaging with books and recommend them both.

I think, as with any other literacy, it takes a bit of practice to properly engage with audiobooks. Readers need some time to train their ears and brains to fully process and maintain focus, and at first they’re likely to find their minds wandering and their eyes finding distractions.

One of the things I particularly love about audiobooks is the way they can bring character voices to life. If a character speaks with an accent or cadence or manner that a reader has never encountered before, they won’t be able to properly imagine it on their own—they won’t “hear” that voice just by reading the text, and it can fall flat for them. A good audiobook reader can bring to life text that a reader might not be able to on their own, creating a fuller, more nuanced reading experience.

When you were a high school librarian, did you notice a difference in how teens were spending their free time in the library over the years? What trends did you see?

Yes and no. I was a high school librarian over 20 years ago, so technology has changed a lot since then. Phones, the Internet, and social media existed, but they weren’t the same. The options available now are somewhat different. Still, teens themselves are basically the same. They would rather do things that interest them than things that are imposed on them by others. And they’d rather socialize much more than teachers and schools find acceptable or productive. Today’s teens use phones and social media to socialize and engage in their activities of choice, so the how of what they’re doing has changed some but the what is generally the same.

In your opinion, why do you think that teens aren’t as motivated to read compared to earlier years? Are you concerned about reading habits/literacy declining? What’s at stake?

You ask why teens aren’t as motivated to read as they used to be. I’m not sure that’s true. I think teens have always resisted being forced to read things they don’t choose for themselves and I think teens who find books that excite them will read.

At the same time, I think teens have more choices for recreational activities than ever before. Teens will always want to engage in stories, learning, and socializing. Books have been a prime source of stories and information for a long time, but now have more competition from the Internet and digital devices. So teens have more options for how to consume their stories and information than ever before. Adults do as well, for that matter, and their habits are changing, too.

As to whether I’m concerned, that’s something I debate with myself a lot. Everything I wrote in my first message revolves around that question. I prefer text, reading, and books, so instinctively I want everyone else to share my preferences. But is that mode better? There are arguments—and data—for and against. I try to be open to both. People can tell stories, learn, share, and communicate in so many different ways. My gut wants books to be the best, but I think that’s probably a personal bias and not necessarily true. If teens can learn to be capable thinkers, problem solvers, knowledgeable citizens, and gain what they need to be healthy, productive people, it doesn’t matter so much if it happens through book reading or through other formats and technologies.

In high school, was reading for pleasure promoted at your school? If so, how?

I’m afraid high school is a fading memory for me in many ways. It’s possible reading for pleasure was promoted, but I don’t have memories of it happening. While I’m sure teachers encouraged reading and the librarian helped students find books they might like, I don’t remember any official promotional efforts by the school.

At the library, is there a specific book or genre for which teens look most? If so, why do you think that genre is chosen the most?

I’m not sure. I could probably get some statistics for you about what checks out the most, but I don’t know off the top of my head. There are certainly trends when one type of book is especially in demand, but that changes over time. But my focus has always been about figuring out what’s most appealing for each individual reader, which means lots of options for lots of different people.

One of the first lessons I learned as a librarian—as a high school librarian—was to listen to my readers. I was in library school at the time, taking classes that taught me about all the award-winning, top quality, nationally popular books, and I ordered and promoted them. Our student population at the time was mostly minority—more Black than anything else—and from a lower socioeconomic status. When the students saw the books I ordered, they told me that wasn’t what they were looking for. They wanted books that had characters like them, books they could see themselves in and easily relate to. So I looked for books with Black and minority characters in urban settings, bought those, and saw reading increase. What worked wasn’t figuring out what was most popular with “teens” as a general category, but with the particular teens who were in front of me wanting books that interested them. That’s always different depending on who and where you are.

Do you believe if schools promoted audiobook reading, would students want to read more?

I think it would help. Not everyone will enjoy audiobooks, but there are some readers who will prefer that option yet aren’t currently getting the chance (I assume, based on your question). Giving those students the option to choose between print books and audiobooks will certainly appeal to them and make them more likely to read the books they can engage the way they want.

Aside from those particular readers, simply creating more options is always a good thing. If students feel they have more freedom and autonomy to choose what they want, they will be more motivated to participate. So the more freedom and autonomy a school can include in their overall reading culture, the more reading is likely to occur.

Do you think that in order to promote teen literacy it has to be implemented during school time? If not, how can education encourage out-of-school reading?

See below

If you could create a “program” for schools to promote reading for pleasure, what would that look like?

See below

How can a teen, who wants to read, escape the addiction to media and create a habit of reading?

Hmm. That’s a tough one. Social media creators study human brains and psychology and intentionally design their products to be as compulsive and hard to put down (i.e. addictive) as possible. They’re hard for anyone—not just teens—to escape, by design. (That’s another interesting research topic, by the way.) It takes an intentional effort. A desire to change followed by strategic choices. Some of the choices are actions—like finding more ways to socialize in person instead of through media, so your social needs are met and you don’t feel like you have to rely on media to feel satisfied in that area. Removing some apps from devices can make it more difficult to give into temptation when it hits. Changing patterns of activities long enough that they become new habits. (Another good research area, the power of and how to change habits.) And some of it is changing your mindset and priorities. Deciding to let certain things go because they don’t matter and choosing to value other things instead. This can be really hard, because it often means overcoming anxiety and insecurity and self-doubt, which are a constant battle, and not simply making a one-time choice. It’s not a simple thing, and I’m pretty sure most everyone (even adult librarians) struggles with it.

Okay, back to questions 11 & 12 . . . 

The thing about recreational reading or reading for pleasure is that it can’t be made to happen. It can be promoted, encouraged, and modeled, but the second it becomes in any way required or even rewarded it stops being recreation, pleasure, or fun and becomes an imposed task. Fun can’t be assigned; it is inherently a choice.

When I was a high school librarian, our district decided to implement a recreational reading program. They found a national program designed by experts, bought into it, and paid the consultants to come train us. Once the experts went away, though, teachers couldn’t bring themselves to fully adopt the program. They wouldn’t trust students’ self-reported reading amounts and started looking for ways to test the students on their reading to make sure they’d actually read what they claimed. Soon that testing became an official feature of the program throughout the district. Soon after that, the program went away as a failure.

Recreational reading is a hard area for schools to succeed in because it requires the opposite mindset of how they operate much of the time. Schools are all about tracking, assessing, and reporting learning. It’s a core feature of our educational system, and a core framework for how educators see the world. Telling students they should read without trying to track, assess, or report that reading feels almost unnatural in an educational setting. It runs counter to how things work and how people think.

Nevertheless, it is what is needed. True, effective promotion of recreational reading—both in school and out of school—cannot be accomplished with just a program or initiative, it requires a culture shift. A change in how schools think about and talk about reading. Schools don’t treat reading like something fun, they treat it like a learning activity, like work. Fun involves freedom and autonomy. It’s a response to an internal desire a person feels—which means it can’t come from outside, from a teacher, parent, or other authority. It’s all about intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic.

So if schools want to promote reading for pleasure, they need to treat it like a pleasurable activity. Have reading opportunities that are not tracked or reported or graded. Let students read whatever they want for those opportunities, with no talk of recommended lists or reading level or type of writing or format. Educators and authorities should be seen reading for fun themselves (authentically, not for show). Stop talking about reading as a way to learn.

Everyone loves stories. People regularly come together talk about stories they’ve encountered on TV shows, movies, music, celebrity lives, and more. We can talk about the stories from books in the same way. Just because the story comes to us via reading doesn’t mean we can’t “geek out” about them in the same way as other stories. If schools want reading to be a fun activity, they have to treat it like something fun and not just a somewhat-less-miserable way of doing the work of learning.

You might be wondering if it can’t be both fun and work at the same time. I’ve done a lot of research, reading, and writing about this very topic. Unfortunately, internal and external motivation often don’t cooperate or accumulate, they compete against each other. An imposed external motivation can undermine and override a natural internal motivation. In other words, once an activity is forced upon someone as work, it stops being fun.

Because I already have things written that relate to this, I’m going to do a bunch of copy-pasting to finish up. It’s a lot. Here goes:

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“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” wrote Mark Twain 140 years ago in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He described the wealthy men who paid for the privilege of driving four-horse passenger-coaches as Play, “but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”

Current research on motivation shows Twain was indeed a “great and wise philosopher” (as he calls himself in the passage). Autonomy, the freedom to make one’s own choices, is key to making a pursuit fun; payment and rewards and external incentives cast the activity in an entirely different light, turning it into a forced task that is easy to resent and begrudge—they are ultimately de-motivating.

The library is dedicated to helping its community experience reading as Play and not as Work. In particular, our youth, who are especially engaged in the process of determining the distinctions between the two.  In 2017, we are applying to Summer Reading Twain’s insights into and that research on motivation.

No longer will prize books be given as rewards at the end of the summer; they will now be given as gifts at the start of summer to all who are interested. The books are not “payment” for Work performed, they are tools for Play with no strings attached. We want to help our youth build their own personal libraries that they choose for themselves to read as recreation.

We will be applying this philosophy in other, less conspicuous ways as well, and invite you to join us. Let’s make reading Play by taking all of the Work out of it. It is not an obligation. It is fun. And for it to be fun, it is a choice we applaud, not a task we reward.

This summer, we want to help you build your personal libraries so that your reading belongs entirely to you. We want to help you Play.

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At the heart of anything and everything we would encourage you to do is one simple idea: reading should be enjoyable. Reading is a fun activity. It should be something your students want to do with their free time, something they look forward to doing and are excited about. They need to see people they respect enjoying reading. They need help finding things to read that they will enjoy. And they need reading to not be presented as work.

There are exceptions, but most activities we engage in either feel like work or feel like play. When something becomes work, it’s not something we want to do for play. It’s no longer fun. So the biggest thing you can do is help reading feel less like work and more like play for your students. And what makes something feel like work? When someone else forces you to do it. When they tell you what to do, how much to do, when to do it. When they judge and evaluate it. When they “pay” you for it. For many students, that’s all reading has ever been. Teachers and parents force them to read, tell them what to read, when to read, how much to read, we test and grade their performance, and we reward them for doing well. That makes reading work, which takes all the fun out of it. It prevents reading from being play. The key, then, to recreational reading, is to avoid any of those things that make it into work.

Everything we suggest is about finding ways to make reading more fun.

Reading is a skill. And like all skills, the way to get better is to practice. The more someone reads, the better they get at reading. It doesn’t matter what they read, so long as they do it and, hopefully, do it a lot. So there is no such thing as bad reading, since anything they read improves their ability to read. All reading is good reading. And the more they enjoy what they are reading, the more motivated they’ll be to read more. So if we want our students to get better at reading, we need to find them things to read they’ll enjoy, so they’ll read more, which will make them better readers.

One thing that can become an issue to this approach is the idea that students have to read books that are at a particular level. Age level, grade level, Lexile level, whatever measure you might encounter. For recreational reading, throw away the idea of reading levels. They are a tool that can be useful in classroom settings, but the rest of the time they become a shackle that limits freedom, choice, and fun. If students want to attempt to read something that is above their level, let them. They’ll put in the effort to figure it out because they’re enjoying it; or they’ll get frustrated because it’s too hard and give up. They’ll rise to the challenge if it’s fun, they’ll find something else if it’s work. At the other end of the scale, don’t worry if they want to read something below their level. Remember, all reading is good reading, so even when the reading is easy it’s still practicing the skill and improving their ability. Even if it’s something simple. Even if it’s something they’ve read before. So long as they are reading, they are getting better at reading.

Another idea that can become an obstacle is the idea that students must be reading “quality literature.” That they need to read big chunks of text with no pictures and a good message. That is not necessary. All that matters is that they read. Anything that makes it fun. They don’t even need to read books. When they read a magazine, they are reading. When they read words on a computer, tablet, or phone screen, they are reading. When they read a note from their friends, they are reading. When pictures are part of the story, they are still reading. All reading is good reading.

The key then, is helping your student find what he or she enjoys. There is no one right or best answer to the question what to read. Everyone is different, so everyone will have different reading tastes. And different moods, so what they enjoy might change from day to day. Maybe they want to laugh. Maybe they want to be scared. They could be looking for excitement, or struggle, or friendship. Sometimes they’ll want something that feels real, other times they’ll want to escape. For some people a certain period in history feels magical, for others dragons and unicorns, for others technology. Maybe they’re in the mood to learn more about a favorite passion. The options are unlimited. They just need to find whatever it is that will be fun.

One of the biggest things readers look for in a good book is a mirror. When they open the pages, they want to be able to see themselves. They want characters that look, sound, and feel like them. Settings and experiences they recognize. People who know the lives they’re living. Or they want to see their worries, hopes, and dreams expressed. They want to find their interests and passions. Their emotions. They need to find themselves represented in what they read. That’s what it means for a book to be a mirror.

Of course, that is not always the case. Sometimes they are looking for a window that lets them take a look at something outside of themselves. They want to see what the world is like for others. Other settings, other cultures, other periods in history. Something fresh and new. Something that will stretch them. And that is great if that is what they are after.

But if the only choices we offer them are windows, they are likely to lose interest in reading as a fun pursuit. Most of the time, they are hoping to find mirrors.

Parents Should Be Readers, Too

• Read for pleasure
• Fill your home with books and reading material
• Talk about what you read; ask your kids about what they read
• Read aloud to your kids

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“When we choose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome — by a factor of five to one.”

That quote comes from a Harvard Business Review article that a friend shared with me recently, Increase Your Team's Motivation Five-Fold.  It calls the conclusion that choice leads to commitment "an inconvenient truth about human nature."  The subtitle of Daniel Pink's book Drive, which similarly emphasizes autonomy as one of three keys to motivation, calls the same phenomenon "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us."  Is it really that inconvenient and surprising, though, when we really think about what gets us excited versus what bores us?  I believe that if we really pursue these ideas, study ourselves and others with an eye toward "human nature," they--in contradiction, perhaps, to conventional wisdom--seem obvious and common sense.

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It’s funny how motivation seems to be driven by the same factors regardless of circumstances.  Recently I was reading an article (What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?) about children, schools, behavior, and discipline.  It included the following sentence: “University of Rochester psychologist Ed Deci, for example, found that teachers who aim to control students' behavior—rather than helping them control it themselves—undermine the very elements that are essential for motivation: autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others.”

"Autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others."  That seems awfully familiar.

Consider this, from Daniel Pink's website about his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: “Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that’s precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today’s challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action.”

"Autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others" vs. "Autonomy, mastery, and purpose."

Yes, quite familiar.

I've written: “Workplace motivation is the same as school-based learning is the same as personal motivation is the same as independent learning is the same as reading pleasure and recreational activities and play and creating and coming to grips with all kinds of change, personal, institutional, and societal.  It's a process.  A personal investment.  A choice.  An action.  A journey to an outcome.  And if you try to skip that journey and head straight to the outcome, give people the answer without the process, none of it will amount to much of anything.”

The more I see, the more I see the same.

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 . . . I also thought about library use when reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, particularly when reading a section about the motivation of parents in a study of an Israeli day care.  Too many parents were late to pick up their children, so the day care tried imposing fines for lateness.  That actually made the problem worse, and it remained so even after they decided to take the fines away and return to the previous system.  Why?  They had taken something that was operating in the realm of social norms and moved it into the realm of market norms.  The market norms weren't as motivating and undermined the social norms; and once the situation was defined in market norms they stuck, making the return to social norms nearly impossible.

So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. . . . when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time.

In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori and Rom Brafman approach the dynamic through brain science, looking at the physical response to the different exchanges:

It's as if we have two "engines" running in our brains that can't operate simultaneously. We can approach a task either altruistically or from a self-interested perspective. The two different engines run on different fuels . . . It turns out that when the pleasure center and altruism centers go head to head, the pleasure center seems to have the ability to hijack the altruism center.

Schwartz and Sharpe cover similar territory in Practical Wisdom under the heading "Motivational Competition" in the chapter titled "The War on Will," writing how using market, self-interest incentives demoralizes people.  They also write about the Israeli day care as a prime example, then follow with this:

Another example of the demoralizing effects of incentives comes from a study of the willingness of Swiss citizens to have nuclear waste dumps in their communities.  In the early 1990s, Switzerland was getting ready to have a national referendum about where it would site nuclear waste dumps.  Citizens had strong views on the issue and were well informed.  Bruno Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee, two social scientists, went door-to-door, asking people whether they would be willing to have a waste dump in their community.  An astonishing 50 percent of respondents said yes--this despite the fact that people generally thought such a dump was potentially dangerous and would lower the value of their property.  The dumps had to go somewhere, and like it or not, people had obligations as citizens.

Frey and Oberholzer-Gee then asked their respondents whether, if they were given an annual payment equivalent to six weeks' worth of an average Swiss salary, they would be willing to have the dumps in their communities.  They already had one reason to say yes--their obligations as citizens.  They were now given a second reason--financial incentives.  Yet in response to this question, only 25 percent of respondents agreed.  Adding the financial incentive cut acceptance in half.

These studies of Israeli parents and Swiss citizens are surprising.  It seems self-evident that if people have one good reason to do something, and you give them a second, they'll be more likely to do it.  You're more likely to order a dish that tastes good and is good for you than one that just tastes good.  You're more likely to buy a car that's reliable and fuel efficient than one that's just reliable.  Yet when the parents at the day care center were given a second reason to be on time--the fines--it undermined their first reason, that it was the right thing to do.  And the Swiss, when given two reasons to accept a nuclear waste site, were less likely to say yes than when given only one.  Frey and Oberholzer-Gee explained this result by arguing that reasons don't always add; sometimes, they compete.  When the Swiss respondents were not offered incentives, they had to decide whether their responsibilities as citizens outweighed their distaste for having nuclear wastes dumped in their backyards.  Some thought yes, and others, no.  But that was the only question they had to answer.

The situation was more complex when citizens were offered cash incentives.  Now, they had to answer another question before they even got to the issue of accepting the nuclear wastes.  "Should I approach this dilemma as a Swiss citizen or as a self-interested individual?  Citizens have responsibilities, but they're offering me money.  Maybe the cash is an implicit instruction to me to answer the question based on the calculation of self-interest."  Taking the lead of the questioners, citizens then framed the waste-siting issue as just about self-interest.  With their self-interest hats squarely on their heads, citizens concluded that six weeks' pay wasn't enough.  Indeed, they concluded that no amount of money was enough.  The offer of money undermined the moral force of people's obligations as citizens.  Morality is for suckers, the offer of money seemed to be saying, even if only implicitly.

A substantial body of research done with children and adults confirms these findings. . . . 

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Here's my review of Why Motivating People Doesn't Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging by Susan Fowler:

It was only this week I finished watching the first season of Ted Lasso. I'm arriving late to the show, but am loving it as much as expected--from both all the praise it's received and the little I knew about its premise. One of the areas it's exceeded my expectations is Ted's approach to coaching. In case you don't know, Ted is a top American football coach who takes a job as a British football (soccer) coach. He knows nothing about the game or culture he's jumped into, but he's completely confident in his ability to succeed because he knows something even more important: what motivates people. He doesn't coach by focusing on the details of the game, but by watching his people, figuring out what they need, and giving it to them. After that, the rest takes care of itself.

I mention that because this book, as well as any I know, is a manual for those wanting to learn how to lead like Ted Lasso does. Or maybe Ted read this book and learned how to apply it to his situation. Either way. From the concluding chapter of Fowler's book:

Executives tend to pursue results by focusing on what they want from people. They have it backwards.

When you focus on what you want for people, you are more likely to get the results you want from people.

And from the chapter before that:

The nature of human motivation is not about making money. The nature of human motivation is in making meaning. . . .

Definitive evidence shows that organizational vitality measured by return on investment, earnings by share, access to venture capital, stock price, debt load, and other financial indicators is dependent on two factors: employee work passion and customer devotion. It does not work the other way around—organizational vitality is not what determines customer devotion or employee work passion. . . .

What [leaders] want for their people is a positive sense of well-being. At the heart of what leaders hope for their people is the satisfaction of their psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

In other words, the key to a successful business or organization is making sure that people find their psychological needs met by their work, because if they do then the work they do will be excellent. People don't need to be motivated by external factors, they need to feel autonomy, relatedness, and competence, and then they'll be intrinsically, authentically motivated to do their best in response. Leaders shouldn't focus on motivating them, but on creating an environment in which they motivate themselves.

Fowler does an excellent job of presenting this information and making her case, succinctly, directly, and with plentiful examples. I recommend it for everyone.

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I haven't heard back yet, but today I felt compelled to add one more thing because I think it might be a good source she can use. I sent her this link that someone shared with me last night.

‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes

 . . . It all began during lockdown, she said, when her social media use took a troubling turn.

“I became completely consumed,” she said. “I couldn’t not post a good picture if I had one. And I had this online personality of, ‘I don’t care,’ but I actually did. I was definitely still watching everything.”

Eventually, too burned out to scroll past yet one more picture-perfect Instagram selfie, she deleted the app.

“But that wasn’t enough,” she said. “So I put my phone in a box.”

For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens. And she began waking up without an alarm clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight. Once, as she later wrote in a text titled the “Luddite Manifesto,” she fantasized about tossing her iPhone into the Gowanus Canal. . . .

At an all-ages punk show, she met a teen with a flip phone, and they bonded over their worldview. “She was just a freshman, and I couldn’t believe how well read she was,” Logan said. “We walked in the park with apple cider and doughnuts and shared our Luddite experiences. That was the first meeting of the Luddite Club.” This early compatriot, Jameson Butler, remains a member. . . . 

Reading is Play, and both should be as common as Green Grass & Goblins.