After reading both Patrick Sullivan’s, “An Open Letter to High School Students about Reading”, and Scott L. Newstock’s, “How to Think Like Shakespeare”, it became clear that both surface reading and deep reading have their own roles in the classroom. Sullivan tends to paint a negative picture of surface reading, asserting that it only allows a student to memorize, recall, and be shallowly engaged with a topic. While these statements are true, Sullivan also seems to imply that surface reading is of no use to a student and has a negative impact. However, I believe that the best way to positively impact a student’s learning is through both types of reading, complemented by testing and other deep-thinking activities. Newstock argues that the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act “ushered in our disastrous fixation on testing,” stating that relentless testing is to blame for student’s lack of imagination and lack of interest in learning; that Sullivan’s conclusions about student un-involvement are a fault of the system, not of the students. Newstock’s argument is supported by Sullivan’s proposal that students read to finish homework and prepare for memory recall exams, instead of reading for understanding and comprehension. In this way, Sullivan’s proposal qualifies Newstock’s claim that the type of content and how students are taught has narrowed. Due to this, both surface reading and deep reading are necessary for the classroom to balance each other. Surface reading is required for practicing memory recall and is important for simple and shallow concepts. Testing should be used in a similar way, to develop those concepts and determine if the student has a basic understanding of it. Conversely, deep reading in the classroom is imperative to understanding broader long-term concepts that require focus and depth of thinking. I feel that the combination of surface and deep reading could have helped my academics in high school. In personal experience, I was never taught how to determine whether what information was important or not. Consequently, I take notes on small details and focus on minute facts and miss the larger picture. My experience is similar to Newstock’s claim that students’ knowledge becomes narrowed and test anxiety results in obsessive and ineffective study habits. The joy of learning was removed by never being taught how to effectively read, take notes, and focus on broad ideas. However, I cannot relate to claims and studies showing that students take surface level notes to read and finish their assignment. I often read to understand but missed the important meanings. My problems with reading seem to stem from not understanding how to think deeply, rather than never being given deeper thinking assignments. As a result of my high school experience with reading, writing, and taking notes, I find that both Newstock and Sullivan’s ideas have real credibility and could possibly have an impact on how I read and study in the future.