Reading Changed My Life - Townsend Press

Reading Changed My Life! Three True Storiesthe head photographer from the Racine newspaper.He read the book Goodnight, Moon. The kids couldsee him and talk to him and realize that yes, he’s areal person, a dad and a husband and a humanbeing who also happens to be a newspaper photographer.And now they can think, ‘Hey, maybe I’dlike to be a photographer’ instead of ‘maybe I’ll bea drug dealer.’ Because before, dealing drugs mighthave been the only ‘career’ they really knew about.”Other “life skills” are taught as the need comesup. At one point, Julia suggested that some of theolder students do an activity that involved reading anewspaper. The kids seemed reluctant, and Julia waspuzzled. Then she realized the problem: they didn’tunderstand how to read a newspaper. Their familieswere too poor to subscribe to a paper, and they hadnever learned to use one.“You know how a story will skip from one pageto another?” she says. “For instance, at the bottomof a column it might say, ‘LIBRARY, sec. B, p. 3.’ The84