By Ben Godina
Temporary Secretary
As a future English educator, obviously I think reading is important and essential, but it’s deeper than that.
From the time I had the ability to read, my parents were sticking books in my hands. From “Little Critters” to “Goodnight Moon,” as a 3 year old, I was eager and voracious. But I wouldn’t say I was a serious reader until fifth or sixth grade, when I found “The Great Illustrated Classics.” The stories of Robin Hood and his merry band or King Arthur and his round table captured me in worlds where justice was real and true and people cared for one another.
However fiction isn’t my only forte. Before I was reading novels, I was pouring over books about animals and their strange uniqueness. I wanted to be a zookeeper for about 12 years of my life, because I spent my childhood falling in love with the beauty of the animals on those pages. I still haven’t gotten over my obsession and fascination with dinosaurs, because as a little boy, I dragged around a massive encyclopedia about the strange creatures to every store, restaurant or family gathering.
I remember as a middle schooler being entrenched in the terror of Isla Nublar in “Jurassic Park” or imagining myself in the world of Star Wars, not because of the movies, but because of the wonderful extended universe of books and novels birthed from another kid loving the same things I did. It wasn’t until my dad started giving me young adult novels he taught that I began understanding how books shape us and the world around us. Many kids my age had a middle school series—“Percy Jackson,” “Divergent,” “The Hunger Games.”
Mine was “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.” My dad taught the first novel for several years, and it was one of the first of his that he gave me. Like I’ve said before, I have always been a little weird and felt like an outsider in most spaces I find myself in, so diving into a world of misfits and outcasts made me feel seen and understood.
“Winger,” “Grasshopper Jungle,” “Alex Crow”—the brilliant mind of YA author Andrew Smith grappled my brain and has yet to let go, as I’ll usually reread one of his books at least once a year. His books were profoundly funny, relatable and absurd in a way I never thought possible out of books. My dad has always been an advocate for modern literature in high school classrooms. He understands the importance of the classics but witnessed kids’ lack of relatability and engagement with those texts.
Moving into high school, I began debating, and through that, I was required to read hundreds of news articles and terribly boring government documents, but it gave me the ability to engage with media and papers beyond my base knowledge. It also highlighted the importance of reading from multiple perspectives to gain a better understanding of people. Media literacy is extremely vital to our current political and economic ecosystem, and I thank debate every day for my ability to parse through the crap.
In my education classes, we have discussed the importance of reading in any form. “It doesn’t matter what kids are reading as long as they are reading,” is a motto that has been ingrained in me and my fellow future educators. Only about 54% of adults in the United States finish a single book a year, meaning if you read one book, you have read more than close to half of the American population. Kids are in a literacy crisis, and that starts at home. As I said, I’m in the position I am today because I was given the encouragement and access to reading and books as soon as I was able by my parents. The old adage “monkey see, monkey do” still stands. So if you are discouraged by kids’ lack of ability to read or understand concepts outside of their technology, consider the last time they saw you with a book open in your hands.
Storytelling is an inexplicably human concept and is the throughline of all the things I’ve ever loved. It connects us as humans in a way only stories are capable of. You can find connection and relatability with someone on the other side of the world or someone who was born 200 years ago, all through words on a page. Reading is clinically proven to slow cognitive decline, reduce stress and impart empathy on readers. The literature I’ve read has been fundamental to forming my core values and aspirations, and it has made me a media-literate, empathetic young adult.