Book Love_The Importance of Reading Choice in a Secondary Classroom

Book Love_The Importance of Reading Choice in a Secondary Classroom

As a former 4th/5th grade multiage teacher, I have always believed in using a readers workshop/ writers workshop approach to teaching English, but convincing high school teachers to read books like Donalyn Miller's, Reading in the Wild, and The Book Whisper and try it in their classes was difficult.  They had not been taught high school English in that way and many felt like this was an elementary/middle school approach.  That changed when I came across Penny Kittle's book, Book Love. From the moment I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.  My book is filled with post-it notes, highlights, and annotations. Here is a high school English teacher who approaches reading and writing in the same way was I taught and is finding success.  I was so excited about this book that I could not stop talking about it in the English office.  I carried it with me all the time and tried to share her ideas anytime I could during my literacy coaching meetings.  I honestly think my department chair thought I was crazy. 

Last spring, the best thing happened - a Heinemann flyer showed up in my mailbox. Penny Kittle was coming to Wisconsin, just an hour or so away from where I live.  My department chair sent me along with another English teacher.  We were so inspired by Penny Kittle's stories that we came back to school and had to share what we learned with our department.  We approached it by sharing clips from her YouTube video with the boys sharing their thoughts on reading.  These boys are like many of the students in our classes and we wanted them to see how this approach can change student beliefs. Once they saw the connections, we were able to share her philosophy and approach to reading and writing in English.

Our Presentation to the Department

Then the magic happened.  One of our junior English teachers asked for the book, read it, and took the plunge both feet in this fall.  He relied a lot on ideas from both Book Love and Penny Kittle's book, Write Beside Them.  Taking the reading/writing workshop approach was not by any means the easy route.  All semester long he felt like a brand new teacher and was spending a lot of time searching for meaningful mentor texts, redesigning lessons, and reading tons and tons of books.  He enlisted other teachers to come to class and share their favorite books too.  I began to hunt down other Book Love followers, like Amy Rasmussan and her crew of teachers who write a blog called Three Teachers Talk.  These teachers inspired me with their posts and I began sharing these posts with him.

Little by little, Book Love started to spread.  In addition to the junior teacher, a few other teachers started adding book talks and independent reading into their daily routines.  By the beginning of second term, two more teachers decided to take the plunge and redesign their classrooms as well.  The conversations these teachers are having with each other is inspiring to me.  Students are reading more books than they ever have before and many are beginning to see themselves as true readers and writers. One of these teachers had over 300 different books read in her classroom during term two. 300! Our students are picking up books that stretch their thinking and challenge them. They aren't just reading "easy" books or only YA.  One student read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books this term. Another junior who has dyslexia and hasn't read a book all the way through since grade school, read over twenty books this semester.  They understand the importance now of building a reading and writing stamina as they prepare for their future.  Above all, these students were thanking their teachers for igniting a passion for reading and writing that they had lost a long time ago. Now if that isn't the best holiday gift for a teacher, then I don't know what is!