7A Reading Don't Fix No Chevys

The “Meet the Crew” interchapter sections in Reading Don’t Fix no Chevys where authors Smith and Wilhelm capture the voices of the kind of young men teachers can, will, and should expect see in classrooms all across America. Each of these young men’s stories was reminiscent of someone I knew from my experience as a student in school. I knew guys like Aaron who were smart and applied to great colleges like MIT, but rejected school type reading. Brandon could have easily been any one of my fellow male English classmates who “buys into the nature of school” yet asks why when his English teacher assigns him books like Shakespeare. I imagine every school has a young man just like Joe who refuses to participate in discussion and hates reading yet excels in math. Some of my male classmates had expertise in areas that I felt should have, but did not translate into academic success in English. Young men like Barnabas who show aptitude for computers and video games or Rev who displays a passion for archaeology, history, and philosophy. Bambino is another example of a young man that could have been one of my buddies in school and who falls under this category. He writes an encyclopedia of wrestling moves in his notebook, but when it came to classroom reading and writing he did the bare minimum. I knew a Bam as well. That is I knew a young man like him, who claimed to write frequently just not at school and felt more comfortably expressing himself through a computer. Male adolescent literacy experts, Smith and Wilhelm deserve the attention of all educators and I think we have a lot to learn from them.