One of education's most important goals should be to promote the lifetime love of reading. However, the standards initiative, the debate about creating a national curriculum, and the bashing of whole language efforts are among the high visibility trends that are causing teachers and administrators to focus on phonics, spelling, vocabulary, and other skills to the preclusion of more meaningful, interesting activities. For students to consider reading as a serious part of their lifestyles, they need exposure to fiction and nonfiction books, biographies, anthologies, "how-to" manuals, audio-books, computer software, magazines, newspapers, and other meaningful resources. Providing part of the school day for recreational reading is essential because demographic trends have resulted in unsupervised households. Teachers can shift from textbooks and follow-up activities to authentic material and student choice as a step towards developing the lifetime literacy habit. Teachers should demonstrate a variety of behaviors that represent lifetime literacy. Another invaluable strategy for encouraging the lifelong love of reading is to read aloud interesting stories every day. As teachers read aloud a variety of materials, they enrich students' lives with different types of text, including expository, narrative, descriptive, and poetic. Literacy educators have many opportunities to communicate the importance of their mission, which supports both proficiency in reading and a love of reading. (Contains 11 references and a figure illustrating a yearlong schedule that includes recreational reading.) (RS)