ARggh!

Okay.

 So I have a child who doesn't hate to read, but she's not as addicted to the printed word as I am.

She is, however, REALLY PICKY about what she wants to read.

Enter the AR (Accelerated Reader) program.

If you aren't familiar with the AR program, here's a brief synopsis off of their EIGHT PAGE parent guide that pretty much says it all--
AR is a computer program that helps teachers and librarians manage and monitor children’s independent reading practice. 

So the way this works is, my kid took some test to determine the AR level of books she is capable of reading. She has to choose books at that level, and then take tests over them.  The longer or harder the book, the more points the kid gets for passing the tests.

Let me interject here.  Teachers and schools LOVE AR.  Hey.  I'm a teacher.  I can understand why.  The computer and the child does all of the work.  All a teacher has to do is assign a certain number of AR points to be earned by a certain date and make it part of the kid's grade.  Easy.  Peasy.  Kids are reading. At their level.  Reading comprehension is getting checked (sort of).  Teacher is free to do other things.  Like teach Common Core (don't EVEN get me started).

Back to my very picky reader.

We were in Costco yesterday.  (This always means a trip down the book aisle.  Even if I was just there the day before.)  And my daughter found a book she wanted to read.

I'm not proud of what happened next.

Instead of telling her how excited I was that she found a book she was looking forward to enjoying, I pulled out my phone and plugged the title into the AR bookfinder.  Yep.  I suck.

Well, so does AR, because apparently the book she was so interested in reading isn't AR approved.

And it gets worse.  I hesitated.  Hesitated, Dear Reader.  Apparently she needs 23 or something AR points by Halloween.  She has 10.  I considered not buying her a book she wants to read, because there are books that she NEEDS to read so she can get points for her GRADE.

She's eleven.  Eleven.

I totally get a book list in Jr. High.  Or High School.  We should not graduate students who haven't been exposed to Shakespeare, or Mark Twain, or Ancient Greek epic poetry.

I even understand book lists for "Accelerated Readers."

My older son LOVED AR, by the way.  But he was a voracious reader anyway.  He tests well.  And there was a contest at school.  He's a wee bit competitive.  AND his teacher gave him two-liters of Mountain Dew for getting AR points.  (Yeah.  Don't get me started on that one, either.)

My daughter is an average reader right now.  This is okay with me. She reads on grade level.  She occasionally picks up a book and reads for pleasure.  But right now, it's not her #1 favorite thing to do.  I firmly believe that if we continue to encourage reading and find ways to be delighted by books, she will eventually catch the reading bug.

Luckily, I got my head back in the game.  I put the book in the cart.  I put my worry about my daughter's grade in Language Arts aside.  And I reminded myself that my approach is going to go much further toward creating a lifelong love of reading than AR EVER can.

Stupid AR.

Author's note:  BOTH of my kids told me point blank that they regularly take tests over books they read years ago, or that we listened to on tape, or that I read to them.

Fabulous.

I guess I need to ramp up the lessons on honesty and integrity while promoting a lifetime love of reading.