[CALIBK12] Audio Books Justification?

[David Burt]

I know where Douglas Dilts concern.  Some teachers have the "knee-jerk" reaction that new ideas are bad.  Others have forgot their bill and our venting their frustration on the new ida like Blanche pointed out.
 
My response to this (because i've had time to think about it )would include the following.
 
1.  ANYTHING that might inspire kids to read and understand literature or any type of book is worth trying.
2. One time while substituting for an American Lit class, I played the recording, made my the teacher, of Huckleberry Finn.  I was amazed at how many of those kids were paying attention.  This teacher knew how to make a recording.  The kids were an average class at our school of various reading and English Language levels.
3. Audio booksallof students, especially the non-readers and English Language Learners to learn pronuciation and the meaning from context because they aren't struggling to sound out the words and thereby losing the story.
4. My own bright (I'm not biased) 9-year old son has gone from a "I hate to read" to a self-motivated reader because his mother reads and discusses books with him, he has listened to stories in the car and wanted to read them, and he has found STAR WARS books.  
5. I myself listen to audio books that I download for free from www.librivox.org and put on my phone.  (I love librivox because it's freee and I'm as big a tight wad as my father.)
 
Thank you Doug for bringing this up and allowing me to formulate my thoughts.  If your experience had happened to me, I wouldn't have handled it as well as you do.  (I can be a little impatient with teachers I disagree with if I'm not careful.)  Blanche's point was also very helpful.  My wife has spent 25 years trying to get me to think of possibilites like that as to why a person reacts the way that they do.
 
Good luck,
 
David J. Burt
Teacher Librarian
Southwest HS
El Centro, CA
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20081001/60f46223/attachment.html