Teacher Reads: THE BOOK WHISPERER

I picked this book up in hopes of solving the problems of the universe. Or  to at least get students to read more, so they can figure out for themselves how awesome it is.

In the book, Donalyn Miller describes how she implements reading instruction primarily through independent reading of student-selected novels. At the beginning of the year, she places a lot of focus on getting to know her students' interests and reading background. Then she utilizes both the school library and her own classroom library (which sounds like every teachers' dream) to match each student with several books that cater to those interests. Impressively, she challenges her students to read 40 books in one year. To help students meet this challenge, she carves out a lot of time during the school week to allow students to read. She also looks for ways to incorporate students' reading into standards based learning. She justifies her practices by sharing anecdotes from students and telling about her standardized test score successes.

I was torn as I read this book, and it made me realize that I might be a little cynical. Her descriptions of her classroom seemed a bit too saccharine...a little too Hollywood perfect. Her successes with even the most resistant, struggling reader seemed unreal. I commended her for the high expectations she set for her students, but I wasn't sold on 40 books. I have since read her blog post, "The 40 Book Challenge Revisited", and get that it is less about a number and more about creating a community of reading. 

I couldn't help but compare her idea's to Kelly Gallagher's Readicide. Like Gallagher, she rejects reading reward systems like Accelerated Reader, stating that they place too much emphasis on meaningless, petty rewards. According to her, once the rewards are gone, many students stop reading because they haven't discovered the inherent value of it.  She also rejects using reading logs and uses a reader's notebook to communicate with her students about what they are reading. I have never known anything other than AR and have seen the good and the bad that goes along with it. I'm still not sure where I stand on this.

Unlike Gallagher, Miller is staunchly against whole class novels. She claims they are a waste of time and are one of the main reasons that students turn away from reading in the first place. I stand by Gallagher's arguments for a shared reading experience and a universal literacy. Students need opportunities to be guided through a text like Hamlet, and there's value in challenging students to read it. I believe there has to be balance. Students should be allowed to select their recreational reading but should be challenged to tackle more complex texts in the classroom with scaffolding. 

As I read this book, I tried several small "experiments". I brought back silent reading during warm up time (something I did last year, but replaced with sentence of the week). I started having students do short book recommendations on a Google Presentation. I made deliberate efforts to talk about books I'm reading and books I like. The results of these changes were very apparent. Many students mentioned on their end of trimester reflection that they liked having time to read at the beginning of class. The book recommendations opened up a lot of conversations between kids about books they enjoyed. It's amazing how even the smallest changes to your daily practice can improve the learning environment.

I have work ahead of me to improve student reading opportunities. The plan now is to look for more ways to increase the time students get to read independently and incorporate more choice in whole class novel selection. This book also reinforced the idea that I have a professional and personal responsibility to read a lot more than I currently do. More importantly, I think teachers deserve time to read books for fun. How can I expect to create a culture of book lovers if I can't find that for myself on a regular basis?

So until next time, I'm going to lay off the teacher books and curl up with The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. Happy reading!