So I switched the extra processing power to making context-appropriate inflections, dramatizations, and intonations instead of the monotone my classmates were doing, which the teachers seemed to tolerate.
I do this too, and other people often comment on how well I read out loud.
I often find myself buffering words into vocalization while I read ahead a line or so and prepare the next sentence. I can insert pauses (or intone a clause as an aside) to make it easier for the listener to parse.
What tricks do you have?
The catch is that if I am thinking about something else simultaneously then what I am reading aloud doesn’t make it into memory; I can read for 20 minutes and then suddenly realize that I have no idea what happened in the story. The reading is on autopilot.
Your teacher probably tolerated monotone because your classmates were working hard just to get the words out, and they weren't ready to add inflection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjtPMiumixA Don't Read Like a Robot - Blazer Fresh | GoNoodle
It was stated that the only thing she inspired me to do was slow down my expression of reading speed. Reading faster than my peers and entertaining them is not something people get embarrassed about.
Her telling me to slow down was not a magical way to get me to add inflection out of the void. Being scolded for deviating from normal speed only reinforced the standard school mentality that any deviation = bad. It would have only discouraged me from adding inflections without first being instructed to do so.
>(other classmates) weren't ready to add inflection.
I don't recall my classmates even adding inflection by high school or beyond, let alone by the end of the trimester. At least where I'm from, elementary teachers do not try to add inflection in their students. I'd imagine being able to read itself is more than sufficient to send them on to the next class.
Teachers focusing attention on illiterate students probably took precedence over tinkering with subjective inflections in kids who were not only going to pass their K-5 standardized tests but were already reading at a high school level.
This is why my kids go to private school and I support school choice: when students are treated like widgets that only have to meet some minimum quality standard, that necessarily results in teachers doing exactly as you describe: tolerating mediocrity because mediocrity is the standard. It’s not the teachers’ fault, it’s the way public schools are designed: to output students at a minimum level of competency. Until parents start demanding something beyond the minimum and voting accordingly, just “passing,” is all that we can expect.