[Reprint] Chen Lu: The Social Network Structure of Children’s Reading Promotion in the United States

This sea­son­ing is great! Learn­ing ing…Orig­i­nal address:Chen Lu: The social net­work struc­ture of chil­dren’s read­ing pro­mo­tion in the Unit­ed Statesauthor:dunaifang
Chen Lu: PhD in Cog­ni­tive and Devel­op­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy from New York Uni­ver­si­ty, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York, Leman
 
Hel­lo every­one!

Unlike many of you here, although I’m a child psy­chol­o­gist and under­stand child psy­chol­o­gy research, I haven’t pub­lished or sold any books, and I’m not some­one who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions. Instead, I con­sid­er myself an observ­er, a per­ma­nent observ­er assigned to the Unit­ed States. Over the past month or so, I’ve read a great deal of mate­r­i­al and con­duct­ed inter­views. Com­bin­ing this with my own long-term life expe­ri­ence, I’ve dis­tilled this speech. It was Pro­fes­sor Ajia who inspired me to deliv­er this speech. As he said, this is the spir­it of the broth. I don’t know how much the infor­ma­tion I pro­vide can tru­ly add to the broth, but at least it pro­vides some spice.
 

 

Amer­i­can chil­dren are the ulti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ries of read­ing pro­mo­tionRead­ing pro­mo­tion takes place in fam­i­lies, schools, and com­mu­ni­ties. What moti­vates these three groups is that the Unit­ed States places great impor­tance on read­ing. Schools often have libraries.

Research on read­ing issues like these has been ongo­ing in the Unit­ed States for decades. These ques­tions range from: Do large-scale read­ing pro­mo­tion pro­grams work? How do we know they are effec­tive? What meth­ods of inter­ac­tion between read­ers and chil­dren are most effec­tive dur­ing the read­ing process? And what hap­pens when a child’s eyes look at a page? Where does their gaze land? These are all areas of research.
Fam­i­lies in Amer­i­can soci­ety are diverse, but main­stream soci­ety has three char­ac­ter­is­tics when it comes to pro­mot­ing read­ing.
Ear­ly Read­ing

Read­ing to your child can be done as soon as they are born, or even before they are born. This should be a con­tin­u­ous prac­tice, and par­ents should enjoy the process of read­ing. This is dis­cussed in my book, “A+ Par­ent­ing Meth­ods for Chil­dren Aged 0–6.”
School
It is divid­ed into three major areas: library, class­room, and annu­al book fair.
1. Librar­i­an

Most schools in the Unit­ed States have libraries. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, peo­ple have the impres­sion that a school library is a librar­i­an read­ing to stu­dents, but in fact, school librar­i­ans have many func­tions.
●Read­ing expla­na­tion

Every class has a week­ly library class. Dur­ing this class, librar­i­ans will teach about read­ing, focus­ing on author and theme read­ing. They’ll also dis­cuss copy­right, its sig­nif­i­cance, and why it exists. They’ll also dis­cuss book prices, the Dewey num­ber­ing sys­tem, and banned books. They’ll also dis­cuss how to ban books you don’t want chil­dren to read, and so on.
●Coop­er­ate with teach­ers

Librar­i­ans col­lab­o­rate with class­room teach­ers. For exam­ple, if an art teacher is guid­ing chil­dren to rehearse a Shake­speare­an play, they might ask the librar­i­an to find some books on the sub­ject for the chil­dren. If a sci­ence teacher wants to study the solar sys­tem, they might ask the librar­i­an to rec­om­mend some books on the sub­ject.
Rec­om­mend­ed books

Chil­dren can read dur­ing library class­es. Librar­i­ans also guide indi­vid­ual read­ing activ­i­ties, try­ing to under­stand each stu­den­t’s inter­ests and pre­ferred read­ing styles. They com­mu­ni­cate with the class teacher. For exam­ple, a teacher might approach the librar­i­an and ask if a child only likes books about dogs and rec­om­mend alter­na­tive books. The librar­i­an would then under­stand that the child’s pref­er­ence for dog books stems from his love of ani­mals and his rich imag­i­na­tion. The librar­i­an might then rec­om­mend cat books with rich plots.

Librar­i­ans are also required to have a wide range of tech­no­log­i­cal exper­tise. Most librar­i­ans cre­ate blogs for their libraries, post­ing infor­ma­tion about ongo­ing activ­i­ties, stu­dent book reviews, and so on. Of course, there are also the duties of pur­chas­ing and man­ag­ing books, which are con­sid­ered the least impor­tant.
 
The librar­i­an’s name is Janet
Gross, who has her own blog, worked with a class­room teacher to guide stu­dents through a Mex­i­can folk­tale read­ing project.

  
One of the books fea­tured a sto­ry about a rain­for­est. She led stu­dents using iPads, start­ing with a rain­for­est as the back­drop. Then, she encour­aged the chil­dren to draw the ani­mals. She then added the chil­dren’s draw­ings to the iPads, cre­at­ed an ani­ma­tion, and uploaded it to her blog. This col­lab­o­ra­tive approach allows stu­dents to share their expe­ri­ences with teach­ers and par­ents at any time, while also guid­ing old­er stu­dents in writ­ing book reviews for younger stu­dents. She’s knowl­edge­able about books on a wide range of top­ics. One year, I was work­ing on a project for the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion and asked her what books best reflect­ed human diver­si­ty. She imme­di­ate­ly gave me a list of 32 books. These includ­ed a deaf child attend­ing a concert—what would he do at the con­cert? A giraffe learn­ing to dance out­side the classroom—what should it do if the room could­n’t accom­mo­date it? And what hap­pened when a Japan­ese child brought sushi to lunch—something every­one had nev­er seen before? This is an exam­ple of a librar­i­an.

Librar­i­ans have their own mag­a­zine, the School Library Jour­nal, which serves as a plat­form for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Many stud­ies have found that if a school has a library and is well man­aged, stu­dents’ aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance and love of books will be high­er.A New York City school,Every day stu­dents go to the library for 30 min­utes of free read­ing, which has been prac­ticed for sev­en­ty or eighty years.

Mary, who served as a librar­i­an from 1945 to 1970, described the sit­u­a­tion at the time: “When the chil­dren were engaged in inde­pen­dent read­ing, the room was silent, each one immersed in their own world, absorbed in their own book. They would read for 30 min­utes. Every day at school, from the time they could read inde­pen­dent­ly until grad­u­a­tion, they came to the school library for 30 min­utes of joy­ful read­ing.” A while ago, I met par­ents and chil­dren from this school, and they hap­pi­ly told me that the best thing about this school was the 30 min­utes of read­ing every day. If stu­dents had unfin­ished books, they could put their book­marks in a bas­ket and come back the next day to find their unfin­ished books. When a stu­dent reads a book they like, they can tell the librar­i­an, “I want to hold a book shar­ing ses­sion.” By sign­ing their name, they can have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce the book to oth­er chil­dren at a meet­ing. Old­er stu­dents have begun writ­ing book reviews. The school library is a rich and diverse place for chil­dren. Chil­dren can read qui­et­ly here alone, share a good sto­ry with friends, hold dis­cus­sions to research a top­ic, and gain rich resources, and receive guid­ance from the librar­i­an.

   

 
2. Class books
Class read­ing plays a very impor­tant role in school.Many schools in the Unit­ed States, most of the schools I have seen, do not have Chi­nese text­books.Start­ing in first grade, stu­dents’ read­ing class­es are essen­tial­ly lan­guage lessons. Stu­dents are divid­ed into skill lev­els and con­tin­ue read­ing for a semes­ter, for exam­ple, two or three nov­els. By third grade, they can lead dis­cus­sions, and a key part of their home­work involves writ­ing book reviews and com­ment­ing on the char­ac­ters. One teacher assigned her stu­dents 20 min­utes of inde­pen­dent read­ing every day. He called this time “SQUIRT,” which cap­ti­vat­ed the chil­dren. Although read­ing isn’t direct­ly relat­ed to this activ­i­ty, the moment the teacher men­tioned “SQUIRT,” the stu­dents would imme­di­ate­ly and qui­et­ly begin read­ing. The teacher, know­ing the chil­dren’s pref­er­ences for cer­tain books, would some­times spend time at home, reflect­ing on books she’d read in mid­dle school and ele­men­tary school, and rec­om­mend­ing them to the stu­dents.

This is a class library where books are clas­si­fied and labeled with names such as “Nature Non-Fic­tion”, “Ani­mals Non-Fic­tion”, etc., so that chil­dren can feel famil­iar with the names of the book cat­e­gories.
   
3. Annu­al Book Fair

  
Fam­i­lies and schools inter­act active­ly. Every year, par­ents orga­nize a book fair at the school. A group of par­ents orga­nizes a book­store in the gym­na­si­um. Their tasks are sim­i­lar to those of a reg­u­lar book­store: select­ing, pur­chas­ing, dis­play­ing, sell­ing, and account­ing. Books are also dis­played in cat­e­gories. Dur­ing this process, there’s an activ­i­ty where every class teacher takes their stu­dents to the book fair with­in the three or four days of the book­store’s open­ing.

I helped out for a few days at my daugh­ter’s school’s book fair this year, and the scene was tru­ly mov­ing. You’d see two- and three-year-olds, led by their teach­ers, hand-in-hand into the book­store, books at eye lev­el. They weren’t just brows­ing; they were dis­cussing things like “I like this one, don’t like that one,” “Do you want to buy this one?” and “Do I have enough mon­ey?” Each par­ent pays the school 10 yuan in advance, and each child can choose a book, as long as the price does­n’t exceed 10 yuan. Hav­ing this kind of group activ­i­ty involv­ing books from a young age is incred­i­bly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren.

The school also invites authors of books, with five or six authors invit­ed to each book fair. They are assigned to dif­fer­ent class­es to read to stu­dents based on the lev­el of their books.
  

   
The school also asks each class teacher to make a list of books they want. Oth­er staff mem­bers, such as nurs­es, librar­i­ans, phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teach­ers, and art teach­ers, can also make their own lists. At the book fair, each teacher’s list of books is placed on a shelf. Par­ents can look at the list, decide which books to buy, and write a note on the book: “Ded­i­cat­ed to which teacher, donat­ed by which fam­i­ly.” Par­ents then take these books to their class­rooms to dis­trib­ute to the teach­ers. Par­ents who have con­tributed most to the book fair often receive pri­or­i­ty. This year, a par­ent unknow­ing­ly assigned me to dis­trib­ute books. I went to sev­er­al class­es and found it tru­ly reward­ing. Every teacher, upon see­ing their request­ed book, beamed with grat­i­tude. I gave a nurse a book about the human body she had request­ed. She exclaimed, “It’s fan­tas­tic!” I asked, “Why would you need books when you’re a nurse?” She explained that chil­dren can read while wait­ing in line or using the restroom. Boys espe­cial­ly enjoy read­ing gross-out books about boogers and bath­room breaks.

This event was made pos­si­ble thanks to the con­cert­ed efforts of par­ents. Before­hand, par­ents clear­ly divid­ed the work for the book fair into three groups each day, each requir­ing three peo­ple. Cleanup was also need­ed at the end, and par­ents vol­un­teered, which was only a small part of the process. The prepa­ra­tion and invit­ing authors were a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work. Every­one did this so their chil­dren and their peers could have a won­der­ful book-relat­ed expe­ri­ence. I once saw two par­ents sell­ing books, and anoth­er par­ent came in and said, “I just saw an author read­ing in your daugh­ter’s class, and your daugh­ter was lis­ten­ing intent­ly.” The par­ent was incred­i­bly hap­py. Par­ents also feel hap­py to see their chil­dren read­ing hand-in-hand with class­mates, or they advo­cate for their chil­dren’s rights by giv­ing books to teach­ers. This is what moti­vates par­ents.

   
Com­mu­ni­ty
1. Phys­i­cal book­stores

The chil­dren’s sec­tion in the chain book­store is very large, divid­ed by genre. For exam­ple, dur­ing hol­i­days, there’s a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to Christ­mas; anoth­er sec­tion to Thanks­giv­ing; there are books about African hol­i­days; there’s a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to Hanukkah; and every year dur­ing Chi­nese New Year, there’s a sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to Chi­nese New Year, all in Eng­lish.Book­stores are a won­der­ful place for par­ents to take their chil­dren. This expe­ri­ence is irre­place­able because chil­dren, no mat­ter how young, can see books, touch them, take them, and spend time there. Even if they can’t walk, they can crawl and walk around by hold­ing onto the shelves. Cul­ti­vat­ing chil­dren’s ear­ly sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences with read­ing is cru­cial.

This pic­ture shows a nan­ny with a child. Par­ents don’t need to wor­ry if the nan­ny isn’t well-edu­cat­ed, because book­stores are won­der­ful places. You can’t go wrong there; they’re full of good stuff and very safe. How­ev­er, phys­i­cal book­stores have been hit hard in the US, and small book­stores have been clos­ing down. We ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed small book­stores because they offered more per­son­al­ized ser­vice, but they’ve all gone bank­rupt. There’s a book­store called Riv­er Street Books that has a very fine col­lec­tion and sells a wide range of books, espe­cial­ly those on child psy­chol­o­gy. My child has var­i­ous issues, and the staff will imme­di­ate­ly rec­om­mend books on any sub­ject. So, even though it’s far from home, I’m always hap­py to go there for my book shop­ping.

Sup­port­ing phys­i­cal book­stores can cre­ate and pre­serve the book­store expe­ri­ence for chil­dren.
2. Com­mu­ni­ty pub­lic libraries

Estab­lished in the 17th and 18th cen­turies, Europe expe­ri­enced numer­ous eco­nom­ic depres­sions, wars, rev­o­lu­tions, and droughts. Years of class con­flict and eco­nom­ic pan­ic led to a move­ment for pub­lic libraries sweep­ing across Britain. The rise of pub­lic libraries ini­tial­ly stemmed from dona­tions from pri­vate libraries. Lat­er, leg­is­la­tion estab­lished pub­lic tax rev­enues, boost­ing pri­vate gov­ern­ment sup­port and ulti­mate­ly fos­ter­ing the estab­lish­ment of pub­lic libraries. Fol­low­ing the estab­lish­ment of libraries, the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion was estab­lished, along with its own pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal, the Kepler Sci­ence. The New York City Pub­lic Library was fund­ed by dona­tions from suc­cess­ful phil­an­thropists and entre­pre­neurs who donat­ed their pri­vate col­lec­tions. Library cen­ters now exist with­in blocks of each bor­ough of New York City, serv­ing as com­mu­ni­ty cul­tur­al hubs. They offer a wide vari­ety of activ­i­ties, includ­ing sto­ry­times for infants and tod­dlers once or twice a week, cater­ing to all ages. This has been a long­stand­ing com­mit­ment.

The library will inter­act with fam­i­lies and pro­vide train­ing mate­ri­als. In addi­tion, the com­mu­ni­ty pub­lic library has ded­i­cat­ed librar­i­ans, 4,000 mem­bers and 30 com­mit­tees.

Pub­lic library librar­i­ans play a very impor­tant role. Eliz­a­beth Bird, an offi­cial of the New York City Pub­lic Library, is very young. She has writ­ten a book that teach­es librar­i­ans how to select books. Anoth­er book will be pub­lished next year. Her blog is very influ­en­tial. After read­ing a new book, she writes a book review, and the book is often eas­i­ly accept­ed by every­one. Her reviews are sharp and approach­able.

Cal­lig­ra­phy:
Chil­dren’s Lit­er­a­ture Gems: Choos­ing and Using Them in Your Library
Career

《Trea­sures of Chil­dren’s Lit­er­a­ture: How to Select and Use Them in Your Librar­i­an­ship》

 

expect­ed2013YearCan­dlewickpub­lish­ing:

Real-life pro­to­types of chil­dren’s book sto­ries

 

Influ­en­tial blog­gers:
http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production
 
3. Pedi­a­tri­cian

In the Unit­ed States, chil­dren must see a pedi­a­tri­cian reg­u­lar­ly, so pedi­a­tri­cians play a cru­cial role in pro­mot­ing read­ing. Con­cerns arose about the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of fam­i­lies in the Unit­ed States who lack access to books due to low edu­ca­tion and income, prompt­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of pedi­a­tri­cians as a resource for book rec­om­men­da­tions. Start­ing in 1987, the Unit­ed States estab­lished a pro­gram to involve pedi­a­tri­cians in pro­mot­ing read­ing, but it has not tak­en off for a long time.

There is a pedi­a­tri­cian named Robert Needle­man in Ohio. He start­ed giv­ing away a thou­sand books to chil­dren vis­it­ing his clin­ic every year in 1998. The activ­i­ty he ini­ti­at­ed was estab­lished as RORA.

In 1989, we start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing a thou­sand books at one point in one state, and by 2012, we had dis­trib­uted 6.5 mil­lion books at thou­sands of points in all states in the Unit­ed States. This devel­op­ment is very inter­est­ing and encour­ag­ing.These 6.5 mil­lion books weren’t bun­dled togeth­er and sent to a sin­gle des­ti­na­tion; they were dis­trib­uted indi­vid­u­al­ly. Why has this “This book is fas­ci­nat­ing, come read it!” cam­paign endured and thrived? Fam­i­lies that received books were 40% more like­ly to read to their chil­dren than those that did­n’t. Once the research find­ings came out, every­one was imme­di­ate­ly moti­vat­ed. The next step was pri­vate dona­tions. After the pri­vate dona­tions, the Pedi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion said, “This is a good idea! We’ll work togeth­er to help spread the word.” Pub­lish­ers and the gov­ern­ment donat­ed mon­ey. Every­one worked togeth­er to expand this cam­paign.The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics requires pedi­a­tri­cians to encour­age par­ents to read to their chil­dren after 6 months, and after 2 months. Some states have writ­ten it into law, and some health insur­ance agen­cies will pay for par­ents to buy books.
 
4.Nation­al Drop Every­thing and Read Day

Some fam­i­lies have chil­dren who haven’t read to them by the age of three. If they can read for 30 min­utes, even once a year, the child will have this expe­ri­ence. After read­ing once, par­ents will feel that this is some­thing they can do and will find ways to do it. There are also pro­grams like Read Across Amer­i­ca, Ten Months Across Amer­i­ca, and Read­ing Rock­et. Who pro­motes these pro­grams? Read­ing Rock­et is an ini­tia­tive of Wash­ing­ton Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion. Their web­site has exten­sive resources for par­ents, teach­ers, librar­i­ans, and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als. This pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion is just one of Read­ing Rock­et’s edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams; there are also sum­mer read­ing pro­mo­tion pro­grams, youth read­ing pro­grams, and learn­ing pro­grams for dropouts, chil­dren with brain trau­ma, and chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.

Pub­lish­ers, schools, and fam­i­lies unite,For exam­ple, Schol­ar Pub­lish­ing House has a his­to­ry of 60 years and has a book club. This book club clas­si­fies the books it pub­lish­es accord­ing to the age of read­ers, and sends this book list to teach­ers once a year. The teach­ers then send it to stu­dents and par­ents. Par­ents can fill out the list and hand it to the teacher if they need any books, and the teacher will then hand it to the pub­lish­ing house.My daugh­ter received this book list every year dur­ing her kinder­garten years and ordered it every month. The books were incred­i­bly afford­able, paper­backs that nor­mal­ly cost six or sev­en yuan were sold for just two or three yuan, mak­ing it a fan­tas­tic val­ue. The adver­tise­ment men­tioned a book club, which served as a plat­form for teach­ers and par­ents to con­nect and dis­cuss the impor­tance of read­ing and book buy­ing.

There is a pub­lish­ing house called Lee & Low, which is the only Chi­nese-owned pub­lish­ing house in the Unit­ed States. Their web­site has a spe­cial teach­ers’ sec­tion and a ded­i­cat­ed pub­lish­ing expert. Teach­ers can email him at any time if they have any ques­tions about read­ing and he will answer them.

  
Many years ago, a psy­chol­o­gist at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty pro­posed a the­o­ry of child devel­op­ment, argu­ing that a child’s devel­op­ment and out­comes are influ­enced by their envi­ron­ment. This envi­ron­ment, in turn, con­sists of many com­po­nents and lay­ers, which inter­act with each oth­er. It’s this inter­ac­tion that tru­ly dri­ves the child’s impact. The US read­ing pro­mo­tion frame­work we just saw is a prime exam­ple of this the­o­ry, demon­strat­ing how these key com­po­nents inter­act to cre­ate an opti­mal envi­ron­ment.

“A+ Par­ent­ing Method for Ages 0–6” describes how the var­i­ous parts of a child’s liv­ing envi­ron­ment encour­age and sup­port each oth­er, and how the var­i­ous parts of the envi­ron­ment inter­act with each oth­er. We can use the same net­work struc­ture to think about and explore oth­er very impor­tant issues in chil­dren’s devel­op­ment, such as chil­dren’s phys­i­cal health, sex­u­al knowl­edge, and knowl­edge of nature. This net­work struc­ture can all be used to think about them.The net­work struc­ture exists and is main­tained because of the exis­tence of many indi­vid­u­als. These peo­ple were chil­dren who loved read­ing. They had par­ents who loved read­ing, so they grew up to be adults who love read­ing and cher­ish this expe­ri­ence. That is why they have such enthu­si­asm and use such efforts to pro­mote this work.

The work you all do here is to cul­ti­vate these indi­vid­u­als, to nur­ture those who will com­plete the struc­ture of our future pro­tec­tion. I admire your work and am hon­ored to share what I have learned with you. Thank you!