Why some teachers can't inspire the very habit they're demanding

Have you ever wondered why one teacher's enthusiasm for a subject seems to spread through an entire room, while another teacher's mandate to do the exact same thing falls completely flat? Donalyn Miller's answer is uncomfortably simple: it depends on whether the teacher actually lives the thing they're asking for.

Research on preservice teachers, reported by Anthony and Mary Applegate in an article called 'The Peter Effect,' found that just over half of the future teachers studied were themselves unenthusiastic about reading. That matters because, as literacy researcher Linda Gambrell has found, one of the key factors in motivating students to read is having a teacher who genuinely values reading and shares that enthusiasm. A related line of research, from Ruddell, found that teachers who see reading as an emotional and intellectual journey, rather than only a set of skills to extract information, have a greater long-term influence on their students' reading habits and motivation than teachers who treat reading purely as a tool.

Miller ties this to something more personal in her own account. Her principal, when interviewing any candidate for a teaching position at her school, always asks what book they last read, regardless of what subject they'll teach, because he believes a teacher's own reading life is a resource students draw on every day. At home, her husband Don carries a book everywhere he goes, into restaurants, on trips to the grocery store, even, once, into a tree he walked straight into while reading on the sidewalk. It is a small, almost comic detail, but it points at the same underlying fact: modeling is not a lesson plan, it is a way of living that people around you absorb whether you intend them to or not.

The uncomfortable implication is that no curriculum, no matter how well designed, can substitute for this. A teacher who does not read cannot convincingly ask students to love reading, any more than someone who never exercises can convincingly coach fitness. You cannot inspire in others a passion you do not actually hold yourself.

Start by making your own reading visible rather than private. Read for at least a few minutes somewhere the people you're trying to influence can see you doing it, and talk openly about what's difficult, not only what you enjoy, so your struggles seem as real as your enthusiasm. When someone recommends something to you, actually read it and tell them what you thought, so recommendations become a two-way habit rather than a one-way request. Keep a simple, visible record of what you've read, so your commitment is something people can point to rather than something you only claim. None of this requires new materials or a new program; it only requires that the habit you're asking for in others is one you're genuinely living yourself.