Life Preservers and the Island of Isolation

Thank you Two Writing Teachers for creating this space for me to share my corner of the world.

I am in my ninth year of teaching, and I am amazed how much education has changed in that short amount of time.  Some of that change has been brought on by education reform, and some of that change has been my own reformation, which has not always been easy and many times quite lonely.

My first year of teaching, I taught 5th grade reading.  I used a basal series and all that accompanied it.  I hated it, and so did my students.  The following year I moved to 4th and my quest for change began.

That summer I read The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.  This book was my life

preserver, and I clung tightly to every word she wrote.  We are an Accelerated Reader district, and I knew better ways to motivate and create readers were out there; I just had to find them.  The Book Whisperer validated my beliefs while I tried to survive on that isolated island where we teachers sometimes inadvertently find ourselves.  This book was the catalyst in changing the way I taught reading.  

I began to:

• give kids more choice
• improve my classroom library with books kids wanted to read
• unlevel my classroom library
• decrease the use of worksheets
• increase the talking about books

It was slow, but it was a start.  Each year I implemented more and more of her ideas. My classroom was changing in ways I could not even imagine.  Now I read The Book Whisperer every summer to reaffirm my beliefs.

My eighth year of teaching I moved to middle school and felt like a first year teacher all over again.  I knew I could carry over many of the ideas and methods I used in my elementary classroom, but I also knew I needed to change some of the ways I approached independent reading.

My next life preserver was Book Love by Penny Kittle.  I read Book Love for the first time last summer and it completely changed how independent reading looks in my classroom this year.  Again, I held on tight and became brave enough to make some changes that I knew I needed to make.

I began to:

• include independent reading every day during my 48 minute periods
• establish reading rates and keep track of pages read
• have students keep track of books read using an online reading record
• have students rank the difficulty of their reading though reading ladders
• have students reflect on their reading
• conference with my 100+ students on a regular basis
• eliminate Accelerated Reader

I know that I am a much better teacher because of the influence of these two women and the books they have written.  The reading culture in my classroom is magical. And that is not an easy task to attain with middle school readers.  Turning students into readers has become my passion and my primary existence in the teaching world.  

Change is not easy, but when we have mentors like Donalyn and Penny who throw us life preservers, we musy grab them and not let go.  We must be brave enough to make the tough decisions.  And brave enough to swim off that island.