Dear Reading, We Need To Talk

I don't like reading, it's so boring. What's the point?

It’s a teacher's rite of passage to hear some version of this sentiment from a struggling reader. It’s okay; take a breath. You can briefly lament how quickly that passionate dislike can dismantle your beautifully crafted reading lesson plan—now, let’s roll up our sleeves and figure out where this aversion comes from and how we can help students move beyond it.

The purpose of reading is to access information and engage in learning, right? Behind this resistance is usually something deeper than apathy—more like frustration and a sense of defeat from constantly struggling to decode. When decoding becomes a barrier to content, students eventually disengage if they don't get the instruction they need.

Take Saron, for example. As a second grader, she was bright, artistic, and enthusiastically inquisitive. She participated in all in-class discussions and group projects and always tried her best, but trying to decode even the simplest words stopped her in her tracks. The halting fluency didn’t match her intellectual strengths.

“I just remember always feeling angry with myself and the tasks I had to do,” Saron reflects, years later, “I loved stories and audiobooks, but I never really had that connection to text that I wanted—and that made me really upset.” 

Decoding is not innate. For most of human history, oral storytelling was the primary mode of learning. Written language, a relatively recent requirement in our learning culture, requires the brain to activate multiple regions to sound out letters, form words, and build word recognition. Only when decoding becomes automatic can students truly learn through reading.

In the 1990s, neuroscientists like Dr. Guinevere Eden led groundbreaking research that used MRI technology to study how reading develops in the brain. They found that neurodivergent brains activate differently when learning to decode. For students with dyslexia, for instance, neural regions won’t engage the same way unless supported by targeted, multisensory instruction. Similarly, students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may struggle with early reading instruction due to delayed development in their brain’s prefrontal cortex.

These are just two examples in the broader spectrum of neurodiversity present in every classroom.

For young Saron, a dyslexia diagnosis confirmed what was becoming clear: the traditional balanced literacy approach— relying on context cues and memorization with a drizzle of phonics—wasn’t meeting her needs. Her teachers and parents faced a choice: continue pushing her through and hope it sticks or think outside the box and adjust instruction to how her brain works.

When we lean heavily on grade-level decoding benchmarks without understanding why students struggle, we risk making instructional choices that frustrate and alienate them. The “reluctant reader” label follows them from grade to grade, bearing all the biases that come with it.

After about third grade, explicit “learn-to-read” (aka decode) instruction is replaced by “read-to-learn” content. Students with patchy decoding skills hit a wall when guessing, skipping, or memorizing words no longer work. As the text gets more complex, students mask, avoid, or act out—anything to hide their struggle out of fear of being considered less capable.

So we must ask, if decoding is a bridge to learning, how do we make that learning accessible to those who can't yet decode fluently?

Recalling her early years, Saron shared how much she needed patience, understanding from her teachers, and access to alternative ways to learn. “It wasn’t that I didn’t understand—it just took me longer to show it,” she said. “More visuals and hands-on learning would’ve helped me get there faster.”

At the 2025 SENIA International Annual Conference in Phnom Penh, Greg O’Connor, Head of Education Asiapac Everyway, shared a powerful analogy. After years of pilot fatalities, he described how the US Air Force discovered their cockpits didn’t fit most pilots. The solution? Adjustable cockpits designed for the extremes, not the average. This flexibility dramatically improved safety and performance.

O’Connor urges educators to apply the same principle to classroom design. "One in five people in our classrooms is neurodivergent,” he said. “If we design only for the middle, we exclude the margins. But if we design for the edges—everyone has access." 

Are we providing multiple ways for students to consume information and express their understanding?

For Saron, access meant more than structured phonics instruction in homeroom. Through separate and targeted Orton-Gillingham intervention programs and a toolbox of supports—audiobooks, text-to-speech tools, and read-alouds—she could keep learning while strengthening decoding. “Audiobooks helped me gain fluency and confidence,” she said. “I could follow along with challenging books and started understanding how sentences were structured. That gave me a way in.”

Today, tools like Microsoft Immersive Reader, Bookshare, Learning Ally, Read&Write, and NaturalReader support reading access. Speech-to-text tools like Google Voice Typing and Otter.ai, among others, can support writing tasks. As Saron reflects, “The alternative options I was given to express my understanding were vital to doing well in class.” 

Throughout middle and high school, Saron used these tools to fully participate in learning, proving that decoding ability isn’t the same as intellectual ability. Tools like scribes and oral explanations didn’t lower the bar—they simply gave her a way to show what she knew. “I understood the content—I just had a hard time expressing my understanding in writing,” she added.

In his workshop, O’Connor noted that literacy challenges are among the most common reasons students drop out, and he challenged us to take the pain out of reading—not learning. “When we have multiple access points to content while explicitly addressing decoding challenges,” he said, “we move away from decoding as a measure of intelligence. We create classrooms where students are motivated, engaged, and ready to learn.”

Saron is now a few months away from graduating high school and has been busy! She founded a Social Justice Club in middle school and served as Social Justice Committee president in high school. She worked in many leadership roles like student body Co-president, Vice President of Project Imagine (a club promoting menstrual health and wellbeing), Co-President of the National Honor Society, and captain of multiple sports teams, all while being active in dance and theater, both in and outside of school. 

“There were definitely points where I thought, ‘I guess I’m not a reader or a writer,’ and I almost gave up, but I’m proud that I didn’t. I worked hard, and now I know I can be both—even with my differences.”

Saron’s story isn’t an exception. It’s a call to action. Every student has unique differences—and all deserve meaningful options to learn. Saron’s story shows what’s possible when we meet students where they are and let them soar. Teaching is about reaching everyone. When we center flexibility, patience, and access for our students, we create space for learners like Saron to not only belong but to lead. And, ultimately, we give all our students those opportunities to thrive.

References

Eden, Guinevere. “What Is Dyslexia?” APM Reports, 11 Sept. 2017, https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/what-is-dyslexia-guinevere-eden 

Turner, Emily Hanford. “Hard Words: Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?” APM Reports, 22 Aug. 2019, https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading 

Understood.org. Understood for All, Inc., https://www.understood.org/en/articles/how-reading-changes-the-brain 

“Guinevere Eden.” Reading Rockets, https://www.readingrockets.org/people-and-organizations/guinevere-eden 

Project Imagine. Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/project.imagine/