I Would Prefer Not To

Dyslexics Should Refuse to Read Aloud

Photo by Alex Munsell on Unsplash

Remember popcorn reading? The entire class sitting with an open book and students taking turns reading aloud, some students rushing quickly through their section, others stumbling while their classmates watch and squirm. Sometimes, we even had to stand up to do it. It was an agonizing process. The entire range of reading skill arrayed in front of everyone. Exasperated highly fluent readers forged far ahead on their own and struggling readers shrunk with fear. It was like standing naked in front of the class.

Seems this practice along with the dreaded practice of cold-calling (the teacher randomly calling on students in class) is making a comeback in certain “science of learning” circles. In a recent episode of the Knowledge Matters podcast, hosted by

Natalie Wexler

, Teach Like a Champion author and podcast cohost Doug Lemov argued for his version of popcorn reading, which he calls FASE reading — a combination of round-robin reading and cold calling.

I have found this push perplexing, especially since I am unaware of any substantial research base supporting this practice. To the contrary, experts have cautioned against round robin reading for decades. Nevertheless, research aside, Lemov still claims this reading aloud practice will improve fluency and prosody and increase engagement in the class. Makes me wonder why he does not find research compelling in this situation.

To my surprise, advocates for these practices justify them in terms of “inclusion,” arguing that they are designed to benefit neurodivergent, less advantaged and struggling learners (don’t get me started on my weekly rant about the dubious conflation of these categories…ughh).

I won’t rehearse all the arguments advocates make for these practices, many of which are unsubstantiated. You can read Lemov’s blog, or check out Pamela Snow’s defense of cold calling here (don’t miss the comments section). What concerns me is the way this practice utterly misunderstands the experience of dyslexic and neurodivergent students.

One of the primary arguments made by advocates of these teaching practices is that they can be done in ways that do not harm, stigmatize or humiliate less fluent readers or speakers. In other words, if done skillfully, these practices, which may have been harmful in the past, can be made safe. But the trauma dyslexic kids have about reading is already present. An individual teacher’s current practice is layered on top of years of hiding and masking and shame. To expect they can just forget all that is pure fantasy. It puts students in a horrible bind. They have no way to politely refuse. They have no way to quietly pay attention. They must, at all moments, steel themselves for the coming humiliation. One student described the worrying that accompanies this compulsion:

Each student would stand up and read and then it would go on to the next person for a paragraph each and like as soon as it's coming around to me I'm just like “oh, no”, like everything is going on in my mind and I'm like “oh no this isn't going to be good”, but I just have to get on and do it because there isn't anything else to do

For many dyslexic students, the association of reading with humiliation and shame is deeply embedded. Their anxiety will build with each minute until they are unable to do even tasks that under less pressured circumstances they might have accomplished.

And completing the task is not proof that the practice is harmless. Dyslexic students are masters at masking and hiding. They have learned to get through the day. That does not mean it is good for them. And, the effort of that masking can carry over to other classes and leave them utterly depleted. It is hard to focus on your math test or science lab when you are anticipating the concentrated focus you will need to get through your reading lesson.

Still, Lemov pushes the practice, arguing that it is “one of the most important things teachers can do in a reading class,” because it “helps build accuracy and automaticity,” even though the amount of time each individual student is reading is far less than what would be needed for building automaticity. Indeed, he poo poos the critics, conceding that some students will struggle, but those are “solvable problems.”

The solution he offers is a “culture of celebration” in the classroom. Teachers will not only correct students, they will celebrate great prosodic reading. But fantastic prosodic reading is what you get when you are already fluent. Struggling readers are too busy managing of the combined cognitive load of weak decoding, weak comprehension and an overload of anxiety. Reading cannot be a “shared social activity” for dyslexic students because it has always been the thing that alienates them from their peers. To minimize this reality as a “solvable problem” shows a real lack of empathy.

The videos Lemov posts about this culture of celebration are videos of lovely fluent readers getting praise from the teacher, not of struggling readers. Videos of struggling readers thrust in front of a class are painful. I’m not surprised Lemov doesn’t highlight those. Once again, the rich get richer. The good readers get praise and accolades bolstering their confidence, and the struggling readers get one more opportunity to come up short.

Some teachers will comment on how well cold calling and FASE reading works in their classrooms, how much kids like it. But dyslexic children have learned to suppress their emotions at school in order to survive. How many of us have seen our kids come home and fall apart? There is “robust evidence” that this strategy of emotional suppression can have long term effects, furthering anxiety and depression as well as making it harder to learn.

Teachers are not reliable judges of what a child is feeling. The teachers I have interacted with across the years usually had little idea how their words or actions or the general classroom culture were experienced by my dyslexic kids. To be honest, my kids didn’t really expect them to. They were so used to being misunderstood, misunderstanding was what they expected.

While homeschooled, my children did not have to spend their precious mental energy suppressing their emotions. By the time they entered school, they were older and found creative ways around these reading aloud sessions. My middle daughter, in Bartleby fashion, told me she just refused (if you somehow haven’t yet read Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener” you can find it here). Or, if it was popcorn reading, she would simply pick another student as soon as someone picked her. But these practices came with a cost. They marked her as different. They required her to highlight her “disability,” and mention her accommodations. They unmasked her. Just imagine how humiliating reading aloud must be if students are willing to bear these costs to avoid it.

The idea that these practices will cure dyslexic students of their reluctance also misunderstands the nature of dyslexia. Their reluctance is not a hangover from elementary school that needs to be “overcome.” It reflects the ongoing reality of being dyslexic. Even after learning to read, dyslexic students are still dyslexic. Reading and language processing are exhausting for them. Even “good” dyslexic readers find reading slow and challenging. That is what it means to be dyslexic. There is no way to make required reading aloud “fine” for dyslexic students.

Dyslexic students have also been told they need to learn to regulate their nervous systems, to gain practice facing the things they fear, to address the anxiety they feel in these situations. Too few teachers understand that heightened emotional reactivity is a part of the diverse wiring of dyslexic brains. These students tend to be highly attuned to the feelings of others and more emotionally and socially sensitive, which also makes them “more vulnerable to affective symptoms such as anxiety.” That anxiety is not simply a reaction to a less than desirable past school experience, but part of who they are. It cannot simply be erased by a “skilled” teacher.

I have written previously about the backlash against neurodiversity that seems to be brewing. The current push for things like FASE reading and cold calling is part of this backlash. It is utter hubris for Lemov and others to ignore the pained voices of dyslexic and other neurodivergent students and insist that the “experts” know better what these students are feeling. They do not. Advocates for these practices claim to believe pedagogy should be based on research, but they are willing to put aside research when the practice is something they intuitively like. So, the question is, why do they like it?

I suspect it is because they are committed to the belief that all learners are alike, that, at their core, all learners learn alike. And, it follows that all students in a classroom should be doing the same thing. Accommodating difference, on the other hand, is hard and uncomfortable. And I am not speaking here of mere learning preferences but of actual brain architecture, which is different in dyslexic students. Dyslexic students enter school with a brain architecture that is not primed for reading. Creating the neural circuitry for reading requires a much larger, more explicit investment of time and energy for a dyslexic student. That means school cannot work in the same way for all students. But because dyslexic students are a minority, they are forced to constantly adapt to a system that is designed with the non-dyslexic majority in mind (which is why sending your child to a dyslexia school or homeschooling remains the best option for these children). Truly accommodating difference is a two-way street. Neurodivergent students must already mold themselves to the school environment, but the school environment and all the other students should also bend to accommodate them. All students will need to learn that it’s ok for some students to do things differently.

I also suspect that allowing difference opens the door for students to have more of a say in what school looks like. Some adults find this prospect troubling. Perhaps they fear they will find, like Melville’s narrator, that “all the justice and all the reason is on the other side,” that they may begin to “stagger” in their own “plainest faith.” It is the refusal that is reasonable, not the compliance. Even if there were proven benefits to such reading practices, they would need to outweigh the undeniable harms, harms that are too often only visible to those who are willing to see them. In order to make learning work for all students, schools and teachers need to be willing to learn from the students in front of them. They need a fair dose of humility.