Veteran teacher and author Kelly Gallagher explains why kids have turned away from reading, and what parents and teachers can do to bring them back.

Kelly taught high school English for 35 years. He's the author of *Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading*. His work has earned him the National Council of Teachers of English's Kent Williamson Exemplary Leader Award (2024), the Adolescent Literacy Thought Leader Award (2018) and the California Association of Teachers of English Award for Classroom Excellence.

In this episode, Lee Schneider talks with Kelly about the forces pushing young people away from books. Some of those forces include: test-driven schooling, teaching techniques that make assigned reading a chore, social media that is built to be addictive, the temptation to take AI shortcuts instead of actually reading the book assigned.

Kelly shares that when he was in the classroom90% of his recent 12th graders admitted they had "fake read" their way through school, meaning that they hadn't read a novel in years and only had read excerpts.

Links: Kelly Gallagher website: https://www.kellygallagher.org/

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Kelly Gallagher - Guest

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It (Stenhouse, 2009) | Kelly Gallagher | Bookshop · Amazon · Author site

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World | Maryanne Wolf | Bookshop · Amazon · Author site · HarperCollins

Teens Choosing to Read: Fostering Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Growth Through Books (2023) | Gay Ivey & Peter Johnston | Bookshop · Amazon · Teachers College Press

The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion

Sophie's Choice| William Styron

A Lesson Before Dying | Ernest J. Gaines

The House on Mango Street | Sandra Cisneros

Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck