It's So Easy to Kill Good Books

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing." This is one of my favorite quotes of all time from my favorite novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Now let me give you some context. Scout, the main character, had just been reprimanded by her teacher Miss Caroline for knowing how to read -- on her first day of school -- in front of her peers.  She had been punished because her father spent time reading to her; it is the one thing that they do together. She later refers to reading as a "crime" she committed.  This, my friends, cuts me to the core every time I read it.  Have I been a Miss Caroline to a student before?  Have I reacted out of fear and not embraced the differences in my class? Have I unknowingly killed reading for my students? Ouch. It hurts to think about this. I love this book; to me this book is like going home to visit my grandparents.  It is familiar. It is safe. It makes me laugh. It makes me angry. It makes me proud. This same feeling is what I hope my students will get out of this book, too; however, many view it as a ton of work or a book they would never pick out to read by themselves.

Two events this year have caused to me really dive into this idea of life-long reading. First, this fall, a mother shared with me that her son quit reading long books because he missed the due date for his book report because his book was over 300 pages.  From that point on he checked out books in the 120-150 page range. These lowered expectations in hopes of meeting a due date do not build up reading stamina - not when he will be going to college in a few short years and will most likely be assigned HUNDREDS of pages of reading PER WEEK. Second, this spring I had a younger student say to me, "I have to go home and finish my book report.  I haven't read the book yet, but to do what I need I think I know enough about the story to finish this assignment.  But don't worry, I'll read the book later." The odds of that happening once the assignment is over are slim.  These scenarios are exactly what we need to address - lowered reading expecations and fake reading.  How do we foster life-long reading? How do we get students to fall in love with books?  I have no doubt that assignments like this, or 10-questions per chapter, or lists upon lists of vocabulary words, and crossword puzzles kill good books. I also know that I am guilty of doing just that. I was doing the best I knew how to do, and I was teaching reading the way I had been taught because it was all I knew to do - but that isn't good enough. My students deserve more.  They deserve better.

This summer I have been reading a book called Book Love by Penny Kittle. I really think that she is in my brain, listening to all the questions that I have and then simultaneously putting the answers there on the pages of this extraordinary resource to guide me in my classroom.  (Ok, ok, so maybe she is just a dang good teacher who isn't afraid to share her knowledge with others in the hopes of creating readers.) Regardless, a quote from that book has stood out to me.  Kittle states: "I tried to listen to my department chair, but she told me students were lazy and I should give them a reading quiz each day to make them read. Quizzes don't make people read, and besides, teaching isn't police work.  I knew this. I wanted to become a master sorcerer and entice all students into deep reading; she wanted to set traps to catch criminals."

This is when my jaw hit the floor.  She captured my exact thoughts in a book.  This spring I assigned book reports to my students, and because they are good students, they did what I asked with really very little complaining. But we DIDN'T talk about their books. And we DIDN'T  share their themes. And we DIDN'T talk about how characters change and develop. And we DIDN'T  discuss writing styles and what we did or didn't like about them.  It was a one-way, written conversation and I hated it.  Yes, I HATED IT.  Mark my words, I will never assign another book report like that in my classroom. Why you ask?  For three reasons: One, because book reports have never made a student say, "Hey, I love all of this extra work that goes along with any independent reading I do in school, I think I'll check out another book!" Two, because book reports require me to try to catch cheaters - I see a word like "mundane" in a response, and I automatically have to copy and paste the sentence into Google to see if it pulls up an online summary; freshmen and sophomores don't typically use the word mundane.  Three, because I was able to "fake read" through most of my book reports and make an A on them in school, and it was a very hard habit to break in college. I was them; they are me.

There has to be a balance between creating this love of reading and holding students accountable for what and how much they are actually reading. However, I know one thing, we have to work to get to the root of the fake reading problem, and then work to fix it.  Each student's reading story is as unique as they are.  Many can't hear internal voices and picture what they see when they are reading.  Many get so lost in decoding words that they lose meaning.  Many are so over-booked with other activities that they give up reading. Many are paralyzed when we ask them to popcorn read in front of a class. There is always a root to the problem, and it is something that requires time, trust, conversations, and the willingness to try.

There are better ways to teach reading, and it will make many veteran teachers, myself included, uncomfortable.  It will, however, get those students' cute little noses in a book, or two, or twenty five. I want to try new things, even if I fail, because they old way of doing things is not creating new readers. I think this feeling of being uncomfortable has got to be better than the feeling of knowing that the majority of my students won't or can't read what I am assigning at a level they can understand.  As an adult, I do not create posters or write essays over the books I read for fun - I want to talk about them with others who are just as excited about the books they are reading as I am.  But how do you grade that?  In a world driven by GPAs. Could this be why so many teachers are clinging to the book reports and plot summaries? I know I always struggle with how to grade work like this, but does reading for fun really need a grade?  Shouldn't it be, I don't know, FUN? And fun doesn't have to mean fluff.  Fun means engaged.  Fun means diving into stories we can comprehend and lessons that change us as humans. Who knows, if I step out of my comfort zone a little, students might just fall in love with a character or a book.  It only takes one good book to break a fake reader, and it only takes one teacher who will allow it to happen on his/her watch.  I have no idea what reading will look like in my classroom this year, but I know it will look different. It's too easy to kill a good book; we must give students the time to fall in love with reading -- to snuggle up with a book and let the story take hold of their minds.  And then, we must listen.

Now back to reading about reading...

No, I Wouldn't Hate You

It is so funny when people ask what I do for a living.  It usually goes the same way:

Person: "So what do you do for a living?"

Me: "I am a teacher."

Person: "Oh. Well what grade do you teach?"

Me: "I teach big kids, high school kids."

Person: "Ohhh. What subject?"

Me: "English."​

Person: "Ohhhhhhhh. You're one of those teachers.  You would have hated me as a student. I could never sit still and I talked all of the time.  I was never a good reader or writer."

And then two thoughts enter my mind. #1. I am so sorry that you felt so unappreciated as a student that you would think that any teacher whether they knew you or not would hate you. #2. I like you as an adult, so I am quite sure I would have loved to have you as a student. Students like this are our puzzles - we teachers have to find ways to tap into how their brain works so that we can teach them what they need to know to be successful for the next 2-8 years of high school and college.​ We are not always successful, but we always try.

​And, ​truth be told, I have only taught 3 students who I prefer not to run into at Walmart.  Yes, I will walk the other way if I see them.  THREE students out of TWELVE HUNDRED. And in all three of these cases, our administration put the safety and learning of both myself and my students​ first.  I did not like the chaos those students​ brought to my classroom, but if those students would have shown back up at my classroom door and asked me to help them learn, I would have done it - no questions asked. I'll say it again: three students - only three - out of 1,200.  That is a .25% chance that I would prefer not to have a student in class or walk the other way when I saw him/her in the store.  Those are some pretty good odds. Teachers have too much to do, and we have too many students walk through our doors each year to hold grudges or to hate students. The emotion of hating someone is exhausting, and we teachers are pretty good at being exhausted without feeling hatred toward a student.  

What makes me the most sad is that I had a young man say to me the other day, "You're not going to like it when you have me in class.  I talk and wiggle, and I distract others."  He was shocked when I said, "No, I think you'd fit in just fine in my class - we talk and wiggle a lot." At ten-twelve years of age (sorry, I do not know his exact age), this young man has already established an identity for himself at school. He feels he distracts and causes problems. He has most likely earned himself a permanent spot in the hallway or an island desk in the room with no one around him. I have no doubt that he has had amazing teachers who are kind and loving towards him, but somehow he has felt like he doesn't belong.  I think we just need to figure out how to tap into his genius and let him lead. The more I teach, the more I realize that the "norm" for most students is to not fit the norm. If students fit the norm, we wouldn't need teachers to manage, facilitate and inspire; they could all learn from computers or robots.

As teachers, our words and actions are powerful. They have the power to build up or tear down.  They have the ability to make world-changers or to suck the curiosity out of students' minds. We must tell students they are important to us. We must praise them for learning gains, even if they are small - any improvement is praiseworthy; I try to remind myself that a mole-hill to some is a mountain to others. We must make our classrooms the places students want to take chances.  We need to create lessons that engage them so that they end the hour saying, "Wow, that went by quickly."

Sometimes I think the education battle we face today is because of words that were said to people decades ago.  I hear adults talk about the punishments that they used to receive. I hear of them being ridiculed in front of their classes.  I hear so many stories that I hope and pray are stories of the past.  This is why we must tell our stories - to control the narrative.  Most adults know of mimeograph copies and film strip projectors.  They don't now about the world connections we make, the amazing discussion and projects that are happening in our classes each day - maker spaces, blogging, coding.  When we turn on the news, it is not unlikely to hear about a school scandal - one bad egg can ruin it for the other dozen (or thousands and millions of good eggs).  Again, that is why we must tell our stories.  And how do we do that? Through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  Through blogging.  Through dinner-time conversations with friends and neighbors. It's actually so easy to do, but it just requires time and the confidence that what we are doing is worthy of being shared with others. Each time someone tells me, I think you would have hated me as a student, I think to myself, "You have no idea what really happens in my classroom or you would never say that." So, I smile and say, "No, I wouldn't hate you." What kills me is that they will never believe it.    

I Choose Laughter

It has become habit, as a teacher, to take time over the summer to reflect.  What were the struggles during the year?  How would I have handed situations with certain students differently? Do I know that my students are better readers and writers after being in my class? Did I prepare them enough for their next year in high school?  But recently, one question has been added to my list: did we laugh enough?

Laughter has become one of the most important aspects in my classroom and my hallway. Years ago, my fellow colleague John Knapp started doing "Friday Funny" videos. And, like any good teacher does, I (and a majority of our department) stole this idea. Friday is one of the most popular days in our hallway because the students know we are going to start every hour with laughter. Of course, there are times that my idea of funny and their idea of funny are not exactly the same, and they remind me that I am 20+ years older than they are, but we still laugh. They dislike when we have a 3-day weekend that starts on Friday, and they beg like crazy to watch our funny on Thursday.

I think about the time a few years ago that my students followed me down the hallway as I had to go talk to a math teacher about a student's grade. I had no idea they were behind me - they were so stealth-like. The math teacher saw them coming, read and understood their signals for him to be quiet, and then continued to have a conversation with me while they hid behind me. Imagine my surprise to turn around and be scared half to death by my entire class. It was hilarious. We laughed about that the rest of the year.

We laughed our tails off during my 5th hour this year, nearly every. single. class. period.  It was unlike any class I had every taught before.  It was class of 13 boys, and 2 very, very quiet girls.  I'll be honest, at the beginning of the year I was quite nervous as to how this class would develop and engage with each other in our learning journey.  It was not always easy.  Some expectations had to be established, but once they were - WE LAUGHED.  These kids knew when and how to crack jokes that were appropriate, well-timed, and fall-out-of-your-chair funny.  Whether it was giving each other a hard time about Chevy trucks (or was it Fords) or making funny sounds as my paras and I walked into class, they were always laughing.  Now that the year is over, I wished that I had written down the shenanigans of this class, but to me, they will always be the class that made me laugh more than any other, yet they had the amazing ability to turn it off and get to work. 

They had no idea what was written on these boards.

This is what they wanted to do after they realized what I wrote.

My department laughs. In the hallway, it is not uncommon to see 2-3 of us dancing between class periods. It is not uncommon to have a rap battle as Greg Froese and I spit the lyrics to Rob Bass's "It Takes Two". It is not uncommon for one of us to start class by entering doing the running man. Okay, so maybe I am the only one doing the running man, but another one of my colleagues often breaks into the cabbage patch (I won't share his name, but his initials are Jason Kohls, I mean J.K.). 

Sometimes as a teacher, things get tough. The weight of planning, grading, emailing, politics can be pretty heavy. So what do we do? We laugh. We may rearrange each other's classrooms from time to time. (His students loved it - they wanted to keep it that way and have class on the floor.)

Proof.

We may steal the chairs of teachers who were gone for professional learning, and we may make them find said chairs by completing a scavenger hunt written in limerick form. We may take selfies and hide them in other teachers' classrooms - behind their coffee makers, in their teachers manuals, framed on the wall, or tucked away in books that won't be used until next year. We may move a colleague's clock from the east wall in his room to the west; any educator can tell you about the chaos something as simples as changing the location of a clock or picture can bring. We may have many more jokes and pranks to play on each other, but one thing is for sure -- WE WILL LAUGH. Why? Because it is fun. Because these kids are fun. Because teaching them each day is a true blessing, so why not fill it with laughter.

Our students need to see us happy.  They need to see that we like each other and that we love our jobs.  They need to see us being loud, excited, and positive.  Laughter is a cheap and easy way to do just that. I love my job. I love my colleagues. I love my students. I love how much they make me laugh. I choose laughter. When we laugh, we build relationships; when we build relationships, learning happens.