On Creating a Reading Environment on Campus (Taking the Stone Soup Project School in Hefei as an Example)

 
  The read­ing envi­ron­ment used here
The con­cept of “envi­ron­ment” main­ly comes from the book “Cre­at­ing Chil­dren’s Read­ing Envi­ron­ment” by Aidan Cham­bers, a British writer and schol­ar.
Read­ing Envi­ron­ment: How adults help chil­dren enjoy books,
1996), this author, win­ner of the Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen Award, is also a sea­soned teacher. This book is the result of near­ly 30 years of research by a team of teach­ers com­mis­sioned by the UK School Library Asso­ci­a­tion. For more infor­ma­tion, see Chap­ter 4 of Aji­a’s Help­ing Chil­dren Fall in Love with Read­ing: A Hand­book for Pro­mot­ing Chil­dren’s Read­ing. The term “envi­ron­ment” is also cru­cial in describ­ing the growth of chil­dren and adults, per­haps refer­ring to the Amer­i­can human­is­tic psy­cho­an­a­lyst Rogers in A.
Way of Being (Carl R.
Rogers repeat­ed­ly uses the term “envi­ron­ment” in con­nec­tion with growth-pro­mot­ing, because that is exact­ly what we use it in our read­ing.
 
  In order to help peo­ple gain a basic under­stand­ing of the cam­pus read­ing envi­ron­ment, the fol­low­ing is a brief out­line.


 
  The read­ing envi­ron­ment described by Cham­bers gen­er­al­ly includes:
 
  1. Book stocks;
 
  2. Book dis­plays (dis­plays);
 
  3. Read­ing area;
 
  4. Book brows­ing (brows­ing);
 
  5. Read­ing time;
 
  6. Keep­ing track
 
  7. Sto­ry­telling (dif­fer­ent from item 8);
 
  8. Read­ing aloud to your child;
 
  9. Book own­ing;
 
  10. Cre­ator meet-and-greet (star per­form­ers);
 
  11. Friends and peers;
 
  12. Help­ing chil­dren learn to choose;
 
  13. Read the response;
 
  14. The enabling adult

 
 
As can be seen from the above, cre­at­ing a read­ing envi­ron­ment suit­able for chil­dren on cam­pus is a com­plex and cum­ber­some sys­temic project. At first glance, it may seem daunt­ing, and the weight of var­i­ous fac­tors actu­al­ly varies. There­fore, in the book “Help­ing Chil­dren Fall in Love with Read­ing,” Ajia pro­posed the “min­i­mal fac­tors” prin­ci­ple in the read­ing envi­ron­ment, refin­ing three basic points: books, time, and peo­ple. If we com­pare it with Cham­bers’ descrip­tion, it is rough­ly as fol­lows:
 
  (1) Book fac­tors include items 1–4;
 
  (2) The time fac­tor includes items 4–13 (which actu­al­ly also includes a vari­ety of read­ing activ­i­ties);
 
  (3) Human fac­tors include item 14, which includes not only teach­ers but also par­ents in schools.

 
  (1) Books as Basic Fac­tors:


 
 
When inspect­ing a school, the first thing to con­sid­er is the total num­ber of books, more impor­tant­ly the total num­ber of books suit­able for chil­dren, and then the num­ber per capi­ta. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the stor­age, dis­play, man­age­ment and cir­cu­la­tion meth­ods of books (Cham­bers 1–2). Con­ve­nient cir­cu­la­tion can pro­mote the max­i­mum pos­si­ble uti­liza­tion of books. Pay atten­tion to areas where stu­dents can read, such as class­rooms, cor­ri­dors, read­ing rooms, libraries… (Cham­bers 3).

 
 
Sev­er­al schools in Hefei have been imple­ment­ing read­ing ini­tia­tives since 2006, span­ning over six years. With the rapid increase in books and stu­dents’ read­ing needs, schools face the daunt­ing chal­lenge of library man­age­ment. How­ev­er, these schools have also devel­oped var­i­ous solu­tions through prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, which, tak­en togeth­er, have formed a high­ly replic­a­ble man­age­ment mod­el.

 
 
In the ear­ly read­ing projects, most schools that have become mod­el cam­pus envi­ron­ments have gen­er­al­ly regard­ed the entire cam­pus as a library, the so-called “school in the library”.
The prin­ci­pal or per­son in charge of school-lev­el read­ing man­age­ment becomes the direc­tor of this loose­ly defined library, respon­si­ble for every­thing from book selec­tion, stor­age, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and dis­play to man­age­ment. Sim­ply put, aside from gen­er­al admin­is­tra­tive duties, most plan­ning, coor­di­na­tion, man­age­ment, and pro­mo­tion work is han­dled as a school-lev­el project. Teach­ers active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the read­ing pro­gram nat­u­ral­ly become assis­tants. This mod­el is not only high­ly replic­a­ble but also par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ducive to engag­ing more teach­ers (and even par­ents) in the grad­ual deep­en­ing of read­ing activ­i­ties.

 
 
In short, books, as the basic fac­tor, are the premise and foun­da­tion of the entire read­ing envi­ron­ment. Prac­ti­cal and effec­tive stor­age and man­age­ment ideas can make the whole envi­ron­ment come alive.

 
 
Regard­ing the selec­tion and stor­age of school books, a spe­cial reminder is in order. While we clear­ly advo­cate pri­or­i­tiz­ing books that are suit­able for chil­dren and that chil­dren enjoy read­ing, we must also empha­size that school col­lec­tions need not be lim­it­ed to aca­d­e­m­ic needs. On the con­trary, read­ing should be an activ­i­ty that helps chil­dren dis­cov­er and expand their inter­ests. There­fore, the scope of school col­lec­tions should be as broad as pos­si­ble. The real­i­ty is that the cur­rent sub­ject set­tings and knowl­edge scope of domes­tic schools are very nar­row. Cater­ing to such a nar­row range of sub­jects will only lead to stu­dents becom­ing increas­ing­ly igno­rant. Fur­ther­more, for read­ers who tru­ly love read­ing, free­dom is the high­est spir­i­tu­al pur­suit. “A library should be like a par­adise” (Borges), and this cer­tain­ly does not mean it is filled with books relat­ed only to aca­d­e­mics.

 
  (2) Time as a basic fac­tor:

 
 
For schools that have just start­ed to imple­ment read­ing pro­grams, it’s easy to inter­pret read­ing time as: 1) time specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to engag­ing in read­ing activ­i­ties to invig­o­rate cam­pus cul­ture; 2) time for stu­dents to read after school or out­side of class. These are both seri­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings.

 
  As a basic fac­tor of read­ing envi­ron­ment, time should be accu­rate­ly expressed as:Stu­dents’ statu­to­ry read­ing time at school.Such times include but are not lim­it­ed to:
 
 
① Write the read­ing class time into the timetable (espe­cial­ly pay atten­tion to dis­tin­guish it from the recita­tion class focus­ing on clas­sic ancient poet­ry);
 
  ② Dai­ly read­ing time stip­u­lat­ed by the whole school (such as con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing time and lunch read­ing time);
 
  ③ Read­ing time specif­i­cal­ly required by sub­ject cours­es (such as the des­ig­nat­ed read­ing time in Chi­nese lan­guage class­es);
 
  ④ Time specif­i­cal­ly used for bor­row­ing books in the library or read­ing room.
 
 
Whether it is the ini­ti­at­ing school or the new­ly joined school, spe­cial atten­tion should be paid to the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of the school’s actu­al read­ing aloud to chil­dren activ­i­ties (Cham­bers Item 8) and con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing activ­i­ties (Cham­bers Item 5; strong­ly advo­cat­ed by Pro­fes­sor Krashen, author of “The Pow­er of Read­ing”).

 
  (3) Peo­ple as the basic fac­tor:

 
  Cham­bers describes the 14th item: the enabling adult read­er
Adults are the most impor­tant ele­ment in the Cham­bers Read­ing Cycle, play­ing a cen­tral role in the over­all read­ing envi­ron­ment. Specif­i­cal­ly, with­in the school read­ing envi­ron­ment, this pri­mar­i­ly refers to teach­ers, includ­ing read­ing teach­ers, gen­er­al sub­ject teach­ers, librar­i­ans, school-lev­el read­ing pro­gram lead­ers, and the prin­ci­pal him­self. In oth­er words, it encom­pass­es every­one, includ­ing, to a large extent, par­ents.

 
 
The cur­rent real­i­ty in main­land Chi­na is that chil­dren’s read­ing edu­ca­tion is com­plete­ly absent from for­mal teacher train­ing, and chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture edu­ca­tion is almost nonex­is­tent. Fur­ther­more, relat­ed school library edu­ca­tion and train­ing are com­plete­ly lack­ing. There­fore, in the field of chil­dren’s read­ing, all school teach­ers are effec­tive­ly start­ing from scratch. Becom­ing tru­ly “com­pe­tent adult read­ers” requires patience and a long jour­ney.

 
  We believe that the most fea­si­ble solu­tion is to pro­mote read­ing clubs.
The Stone Soup Pro­gram is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tive that fos­ters a shared under­stand­ing of chil­dren’s read­ing. The ini­tia­tive involves estab­lish­ing read­ing groups, large and small, among teach­ers at dif­fer­ent schools, with­in the same school, and among par­ent groups, focus­ing on chil­dren’s books (with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on chil­dren’s books, not adult or edu­ca­tion­al titles). These groups are most­ly adults start­ing from scratch. Only when they them­selves deeply expe­ri­ence the joy of read­ing chil­dren’s books can they effec­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in, guide, and appro­pri­ate­ly pro­mote chil­dren’s read­ing. This is why, over the past few years, we have been dili­gent­ly pro­mot­ing chil­dren’s book read­ing groups and cul­ti­vat­ing read­ing group lead­ers in our pro­gram schools—a key pri­or­i­ty of the Stone Soup Pro­gram.

Ajia …
In Octo­ber 2012, Bei­jing