ORANGE : Students Begin New Chapter at Center

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. --Samuel Johnson

Walk into the reading center at Chapman College and the smell of freshly baked cupcakes fills the room. The sweets are part of a day’s lesson, baked in the center’s kitchen by one of the program’s 65 students.

A book of letters from Arsenio Hall, Stephen King, Alan Alda and other celebrities also provides lessons at the reading center. Alda writes that he began to read the Congressional Record when he was 12. “From then on, I knew I wanted to do comedy.”

The program at the Kathleen Muth International Reading and Learning Center stresses the “authentic” approach to reading and writing. Lessons are designed to have special meaning for each student. When a student needs to read directions on a cake box or wants to understand a letter from Arsenio Hall, the concept of words and sentences becomes less abstract, said Pamela Perkins, the center’s director.

“Many think that reading is merely decoding written symbols,” Perkins said. “Reading is not about bits and pieces but rather about the meaning conveyed through the written work.”

The reading center uses all aspects of language and integrates lessons in speaking, listening, reading and writing.

This concept is actually part of the educational framework adopted by the State Board of Education, but many instructors still teach reading through “drill and kill,” Perkins said. Forcing students to memorize words or correctly read “Run Spot, Run” before allowing them to move on to something more interesting is a mistake, Perkins said.

“You make (reading) easy by making it meaningful,” she said. “You don’t make it easy by cutting up letters and making people read short words.”

The walls of the reading center are lined with picture books, reference books, classics and popular literature. But recipes, magazines, a puppet theater, audiotapes, television and movies are all used in lessons. Students may read scripts for episodes of “The Twilight Zone” at the same time they watch the video version.

Teachers will use whatever works.

Reading Center students, mostly in grades one to 12, receive one-on-one tutoring from Chapman College education students.

Often, instructors spend the first few lessons learning a student’s background and building trust. A slow introduction helps develop the student’s confidence and allows the teachers to build lessons around the reader’s interests.

“We had a student that just loved volcanoes, so we read several books on volcanoes,” said Bobbi Fisher, assistant director. “Then we built a little volcano that even erupted. Then he did a little newscast on the eruption as if he was on TV news and we videotaped it. So he had to write the script and read it himself on the air.”

One 16-year-old girl made her first trip to the reading center last week. A student at Richland Continuation School and mother of a 1-year-old son, she told her tutor that she was not getting enough help in her regular classes.

“I can read baby books real well, but big books are hard,” she said. “I need to learn how to read. Like a job application--I can’t make out the words, and I have to ask my parents: ‘What do they want here’?”