Meet LaKeisha

My grandmother has lots of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and poetry books for me to read. I mostly read poetry books. I like Maya Angelou, and I have The Complete Works of Langston Hughes. I've only read a couple of them...

I like Terry McMillan, too. ‘Cause I have Mama and I have Waiting to Exhale... I‘ve read Andrea, He’s My Baby Now, Coffee Will Make You Black, Mama I Want To Sing, Where Do I Want To Be? And a couple others. I can’t give them all. I think they’re mostly between 200 and 250 pages...

I used to didn’t like to read. I used to be like, “Okay, I have to read in class, fine.” Then my friend Jasmin gave me a book and I liked it and I read it and it just started me reading different books. It was a book you would find in the teen fiction area. It was like in the 7th grade...

I could read but I’m also- they tested me and I could comprehend but I can’t read real real real well. I’m sorta slow but then I’m not. I’m not slow enough to go into a special class. My most biggest problem is like reading a book. Sometimes I stumble over the most simple words. Just because. And some days I’ll just open the book, no mistake, and the next day I’ll be like stumbling over it and they don’t know why.

Meet Rosa

Rosa is describing to an interviewer her school experience with reading in history classes and with history textbooks.

This textbook, it's more like they're talking to you and explaining to you, sort of, in a way. That's kind of like what I feel. They have more examples than a textbook. Textbooks jus', really, much more just throw the facts at you, and you're just like, "Here are all these facts." And it's kinda boring. You read all these facts about dead people and what happened and... sometimes you wonder, like, "Why am I studying this thing?" You know, why? But in these books it seems more realistic.

Why is that? What's the difference?

We're like talking about hate groups right now. And we watched the movie The Wave. And it like, it tied in with the book and it kind of made us realize that it can happen again. If you don't know what happened back then, y'know, it can repeat itsel£ So this book is more, I don't know, realistic to me. I understand it more.

Well let me ask you about that. Is it that the book is different? Or is it that your talking in class around the book is different? Is it the topic that's more realistic? Is it the connection that you can make to your own life? Or is it something about the way the book is written?

It's sort of like the way the book is written. Here they give you examples and you know, you're thinking, "Okay..." And the way we talk in class is different. And it's just like, the talking in class and the way the book is written and the way you read it, and all of that ties in and it gives you like this whole different atmosphere. And it's not really all that boring to read anymore.

What is different about the way you're talking about this?

Usually in like a regular History class, like the one I had last year? Which was just pretty much all writing? Okay,"Read from page so-n-so to so-n-so, answer the red square questions and the unit questions and turn them in." And he corrects them and says, "You did this wrong, you did this right. Okay, here you go." And that was pretty much the basic way every single day was gone. So, from day one to the end of the year, that's pretty much all we did. Answer the red square questions. And pretty much it's been like that since I got to middle school.

In fifth grade it was a little more different because we actually discussed the books. But before that it was like, we didn't have books, like pretty much for History. You know before fifth grade, it was pretty much kids don't really understand so they don't have those books. And in fifth grade was when we started with books.

And it was pretty much, answer the red square questions, explain a little, red square questions, explain a little. And the questions just pretty much had to do with what you were reading. And it wasn't like it was spread all over the place, like you had to read it. It was just like, if the red square question was here, you knew it was somewhere around that area right there. And you could just look for the answer and copy it down and you got full credit for it. So, you didn't have to read. It was something that you could like slide by without them knowing. I don't know if they cared or not, but that's the way everybody did it. You see the red square question and you sort of calculate where it's around, you find the answer, and you write it down and that's it.

Now it's like, you have to talk about it. You have to explain what you read. You have to make a tree about it, okay? And figure out those details. You have to get more into the book than you realize. So, this book is kind of different. Also, the way we're talking in class.