I think young people should not be judged by the level of their reading but by the way a book makes them think and feel.
Jacqueline Woodson
As she accepted her appointment to become the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, esteemed author Jacqueline Woodson said, “I don’t believe there are ‘struggling’ readers, ‘advanced’ readers or ‘non’ readers.” How a book makes them think and feel, how it gives them hope, how it opens them up to new perspectives and changes them—this is what matters, says this four-time Newbery Honor Medalist, Coretta Scott King Book Award-winner, former Young People’s Poet Laureate, and National Book Award Winner.
But, not labeling our readers and writers is pretty challenging for teachers (especially as testing season has just waned and grading is an ongoing experience). Many young readers are thwarted just as they begin to navigate their reading journeys, especially those who need extra time and patience, by an educational system that seems to thrive on competition and comparison. It’s hard some days to keep our raison d'être alive and well. In Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading, Jennifer Scoggin and Hannah Schneewind remind us, “It takes courage to reimagine our teaching so that it centers on trusting our students to know themselves and to be engaged in their own learning.”
Encouraging the thinking, feeling, hoping, and perspective-taking Woodson is talking about within a trusting space is a classroom teacher’s primary role, our raison d'être. As inspirational leaders in our classroom, it is our responsibility to set a vision for how literate thinking, feeling, hoping, and perspective-taking looks, sounds, and feels. This vision includes offering students access to an ever-changing collection of books, ones that matter to them, as well as access to someone who will recognize and celebrate moments of growth in their ever-developing literate lives. Responding to all readers as readers, taking them seriously, treating them as confident and competent, is teaching worth cultivating. Our responses reflect their raison d'être.
This week I was privileged and honored to celebrate a young reader’s first experience in losing (and finding) herself in a book, a milestone in her reading journey.
Into the Classroom
Independent reading time is drawing to a close as Itzayana approaches me. Her face has a huge grin indicating something delightful she wants to share about her reading.
Itzayana thrusts one of Ann M. Martin’s La Hermanita de Las Niñeras graphic novels in front of me. (Itzayana is learning to read in both Spanish, her first language, and English.) I recognize the book from a few weeks earlier; Itzayana had requested I get this series from the school or public library, which I did.
“Ms. Debra, I just LOVE this book! I just love the characters so much!” she beams.
She continues, “It’s like, I get so distracted by it! It’s like, I don’t even know I’m here at school… it’s like it’s my world…like I’m at the ocean…like this…”
At which point she drops to the floor into a sitting-cross-legged yoga pose, a hand on each knee with finger and thumb touching, with her eyes closed briefly. Coming back to her feet as quickly as she’d sat, she resumes describing this experience, her first, with losing herself in a book.
“It’s just me and my book.”
Her excitement is contagious—I quickly decide to extend independent reading a few more minutes because I simply must explore Itzayana’s “distracted” love for this book. I know her reading journey hasn’t been an easy one and this experience is momentous.
“What is it about this book that makes it so distracting for you?” I ask.
“You know how some of the kids, they love Dogman…(she gestures to some kids nearby engaged in reading Dav Pilkey’s book and pauses to find words to express her thinking) …I don’t like those. I just love this character…Karen…she’s this girl here,” pointing at the character on the cover.
Itzayana begins to search the pages to help explain why this book has become so special to her. She reads aloud several of the beginning pages, which were in Spanish, translating for me as she went along. In the series, the parents of Karen, the main character in the story, are divorced. Karen and her brother, Andrew, spend time with each parent at their respective houses.
“See here in the beginning…it shows Karen and her two families. That’s exactly like my family. She has two families and I have two families just like her. She has different houses, too. The character, her life is just like mine.”
After a moment, she says again, with a sigh, “I just love this book.”
We share a celebratory, reader-to-reader hug, noting how truly exciting it is to get lost in a book, especially one with characters we can relate to. Her confident smile says it all.
During the class meeting at the end of reader’s workshop, Itzayana shared her joy in finding a book she loved so much she couldn’t think about anything else!
Later in the day, there was a tap on my shoulder and a whisper in my ear.
“Ms. Debra, I’m going to ask Ms. Maria (the school librarian) for the English book for you so you can read it yourself to see why it’s so special.”
Itzayana, my fellow reader, I’m looking forward to it.
Teacher decisions that affect the Conditions of Learning
· Making time every day for independent reading. Seeing yourself as a reader, a key principle of Engagement, relies on the fact that you actually “do” what readers do, which is read (practice is known as Employment in the language of the Conditions of Learning). As Jen and Hannah say, in Trusting Readers, “Students need and deserve long stretches of time to lose themselves and find themselves in books,” just like Itzayana did. Independent reading time is not just about finding books she loves, however; Itzayana is also getting needed decoding and fluency practice in a rich, meaningful context.
· Supporting children to create their own book collections. Itzayana and her classmates each have book collections they’ve curated from our classroom library based on interest. Some books are easier reads, others less so. Everyone’s book collection includes poetry from both published poets and student poets. Every week, the students request books and I spend time in the school and public libraries trying to fill those requests. The expectation for me to support their reading interests and responsibilities is firmly established.
· Talking about reading as a reader. A principle of Engagement is that we have a bonded relationship with the person or persons with whom we are learning. What joy it is to talk about ourselves as readers in the company of those with whom we have bonded! The students in this classroom regularly experience emotional responses to books, both their own and mine. In fact, just before independent reading on the day Itzayana shared her emotional response, I’d read aloud the remarkable picture book, Farmhouse, by Sophie Blackall. The book relates through amazing poetic language and stunning illustration the story of an old farmhouse the author bought and explored and researched. I dare anyone to read these final, heartwarming lines about the farmhouse to children without a lump forming in their throat, the farmhouse where “twelve children were born and raised, where they ate and slept and worked and played and laughed and loved and grew quite old, where they’ll live on, now, in this book that you hold, like your stories will, so long as they’re told.”
Try this out
· How do you inspire your readers to explore how a book makes them think and feel, how it gives them hope, how it opens them up to new perspectives and changes them?
· How do you make time for independent reading every day in your classroom? If it doesn’t happen, what gets in the way?
· How do you support your students to have access to books they’re interested in reading?
· How do you share your own emotional responses to books?
There are moments a teacher never forgets and I think this one will be mine.
Thanks Debra for so accurately describing what it means to be lost in a book, one of the great joys of being a reader--falling in love with a book, a genre, an author, a character, and being so engaged that "It's just me and my book." You note: "A principle of Engagement is that we have a bonded relationship with the person or persons with whom we are learning." The way you promote engagement and daily, independent reading makes it possible and likely your students will become and remain inspired, thoughtful, lifelong readers.