The pandemic has touched many students with heightened stress, disruptions and remote learning hurdles, but experts say it may have the greatest impact on the youngest learners, those in the formative years of learning to read.Creating a language-rich environment on Zoom has been hard for teachers, and that may impact reluctant readers, who may not spend enough time reading at home.
“If you had a childhood where a bedtime story was not a normal part of life, you might not see the value of it,” said Seena Hawley, who runs the Berkeley Baby Book Project, an affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which gives children a book a month from babyhood to age 5. “There are also some parents who aren’t great readers themselves, so they may be intimidated by reading to children.”
Hawley will never forget encountering one such reluctant reader, a boisterous 8-year-old named Reggie who actively disliked reading.
“I think it had always been painful for him. He was on his guard,” said Hawley, 61, who taught elementary school in San Jose for 12 years. “He had never known the sheer pleasure of being read to, so he was very skeptical. He expected it to be no fun, all work and no reward.”
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