"Deeper Reading": Educating Kids from the Inside Out
The best observation—let’s not call it an evaluation, please—came from a colleague as he walked by my room while the class was reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and said in his own self-amazement: “It looks like they’re praying in a synagogue,” which cracked me up for unknown reasons, at least, until I thought about it for a second, and said to myself, “Yes, this is what the solitude, concentration, reflection, feeling, thinking, visualizing, creating, re-creating, contemplating, and motivation do to the reader who reads deeply, passionately, only to become lost inside the book and herself—reading almost seems like a religious experience, ha, ha…
So let me now apply an approach to the process of reading and reading life experiences. How deep can a reader go when reading novels, short stories, poetry, essays, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, plays, myths, fables, fairy tales, history, science, and math books, and even tweets?
I believe pretty deep, serious, and focused, but at the same time of this involvement and evolvement, readers can have fun alone in solitude taking a “see cruise” along the landscape of mind, body, and imagination, the latter I sometimes call a “self-amusement park.”
Read the following thoughts, ideas, reflections, and experiences in the mythology, magic, and mystery of my inner reading world and contemplate them for a moment. When you stop ruminating on these concepts about mindful reading, try adding them up in your head: What have they triggered? What do they leave you thinking, feeling, recollecting, and experiencing?
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