Well, I did feel bad but I got over it. I can’t really remember a bad teacher although I like some more than others. My absolute favorite, from all my schooling through college even was my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Bradbury. He liked scifi and fantasy and read to us out of The Hobbit. Invited all of us to his wedding the summer after school was over. He’s still alive and still married! That’s 57 years.
We mentioned Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
Another series of books is the Boxcar Children mysteries. They’re easier to read. Most 2nd graders can read them with a little help. I remember finding several in the Children’s section of our town’s library.
The original book featured 4 orphens that were frightened of their stern grandfather. The oldest boy leaves with the kids and finds a boxcar. He takes care of the younger ones. The boy gets a job to buy food. They face difficulties and survive. Most young kids will enjoy the simple story.
The other books feature the kids in mysteries.
I read a few of them before finding the Hardy Boys books.
Encouraging children to read is crucial. What they’re taught in the classroom isn’t enough. That skill has to be practiced. That was certainly true in my case.
I became a good reader because I enjoyed it. I had a library card at a young age.
I read those as a kid, as well. My teacher, probably in 2nd grade, read the first book in the series to us in class, and then I checked several more of them out of the library.
Mine is basically the same, except I don’t remember anything.
In my small country school, my first grade teacher called my mother in to tell her that I couldn’t read. My mother told her to get a third grade book and called me over and had me read it. I read it. Apparently I was borrowing a book from the kid next door who was in the third grade instead of reading my assigned book because it was boring.
One good series for very beginning readers is Kids of the Polk Street School
It starts with a main character being left back and repeating second grade. There is one per month. My daughter liked them when she was little, and they were the books I read when I volunteered for a supplemental reading period at the elementary school across the street. I had each kid read one page in turn. When we finished a book, I had the kids read one word each of the last page in sequence as fast as they could as a kind of celebration. They loved it.
I recall Spider Robinson’s story about how his mother taught him to read, and at the age of six he went to the library to get a card. He told how the first book the librarian handed him was Heinlein’s juvenile Rocket Ship Galileo. He read it in one day and went back to the librarian asking if there were any more of these. He said she smiled, because “librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to addicting small children” Robinson only had a card to the junior section, but when he found out there were Heinlein titles in the adult section he forged a letter from his mother to be allowed a card that had access there.