“Practice Makes Perfect”: Reading and the Self

Hi everyone! I’m Esther, the current Program Coordinator for the Maryland Book Bank, and I hope you’re having a great fall so far. I’ve been a Program Coordinator for about a month, and taking up the role has been both an exciting and daunting process. I remember shaking during my first few weeks at the Book Bank, stumbling through tasks I had no idea about how to complete. But as time goes on, I’ve been doing better, and while I’m nowhere near perfect, the act of practicing has put me on the path to doing my work well.

Like a lot of things in life, we want to perform well, and the act of reading is no exception to this. During my first few bookmobile visits, I noticed that students had the penchant for picking books that were too difficult for their reading levels. Sturdy, nearly pictureless books tightly arrayed in shelves high enough that some students can only touch them when on tippy toes. With gentle persuasion, we coaxed them into picking books that were more appropriate. This of course included employing phrases such as “But this book doesn’t have a lot of pictures...”, or “Can you read this?”, and for the more determined children“Okay, please read this out loud for me.”.We can spend all day coming up with reasons as to why they do this (the allure of grabbing something at the very top of the shelf, perhaps?), but an educator I spoke with during our trips touched on a reason: they want to feel smart or capable of reading those books, and I believe her. Children, whether consciously or otherwise, chose these books because of a desire to challenge themselves. They want to prove that they can read those sturdy books, packed up tightly on the shelves, and they can do it well. And there are very few things that build your sense of self faster than knowing you can do something well. In fact, practice, confidence, and self-concept work in tandem to assist the academic, social, and overall development of our students.

To understand the relationships between these ideas, I’d like to explain neuroplasticity, which is basically definedby the brain’s ability to integrate information to manage and adapt to new challenges. When you repeat a challenging activity for a long enough duration, your brain creates and consolidates pathways that help you adapt to these experiences. In other words, practice makes perfect. Neuroplasticity also helps in developing a self-concept, which is what an individual perceives and believes about themselves. Thus, reading at an early age is especially important in building self-concept and confidence.

So how can we get early learners to build their reading capacities? Well, exposure to the activity from an early age is an excellent way of doing this. A study done on the relationship between early reading exposure, literacy interest, and self-concept found that an increased level of reading exposure helps develop literacy interest and self-concept. Thus, we are able to see a strong relationship between reading, confidence, and early mental development.

The Maryland Book Bank gives children chances to not only be exposed to books, but to also have the choice in selecting them. While reading the research paper,  I was reminded of regular faces I would see during Maryland Book Bank’s public hours, which functions as a free library of sorts. Budding readers would trickle through the doors, asking for books that they wanted this week. Their confidence in reading reflects years of practice with early reading, something that the Book Bank strives to foster in our Bookmobile visits.

Beyond the programs we do here, our policy of creating home libraries is another crucial aspect in building literacy capacities. Something that caught my eye while looking at the paper was the role of informal literacy education on the reader's self interest and self concept. The study indicated that literacy exposure at the barnehage (Norwegian version of pre-k) and reading at home influenced literacy interest and reading self-concept prior to the first grade. The Maryland Book Bank offers avenues for young learners to build literacy interests and their self-concept through our Bookmobile visits. In these visits, children can select books in a safe, welcoming environment that they can take home and build their knowledge for reading–books that get read to them by parents, or that they can read to siblings, or even to themselves, building those skills for their self-concept, confidence, and growth.

I hope that I’ve been able to illustrate the positive impacts of early reading on the self. It’s not too difficult to imagine, let me help you: a child steps into a softly lit truck painted purple, picking up several picture books. Was it a cat or a dinosaur? They are so young that they might not remember exactly which one, but they’ll recall hazy memories fondly. Then, they get to read chapter books, encountering novels that might end up becoming what they call their favorites. Throughout this process, passing thoughts dance through their minds before hardening to rooted seeds that will grow higher than shelves that house sturdy pictureless books and even beyond in time and practice:

  I can read. I like to read. I am capable of reading, so I like to read.