Whatcha Reading?

It's quiet.  Occasionally I hear the plastic crinkle of a plastic-encased library book as a student flips the page.  Brad is engrossed in Looking for Alaska. Alex, sitting next to him, is just starting to dig into The Handmaid's Tale.  Alyssa picked up The Perks of Being a Wallflower just yesterday, and it already looks as if she is halfway through the book. I can tell from the expression on her face that she is deep into this story, empathizing with Charlie. My Independent Novel Studies students have just started our study of banned and challenged books, and our room is silent.  If I break in now with some instructions, I know that I will get pushback. "This is a reading day, Ward." Let's read!

And this is why I love March.

March brings with it our March Book Madness bracket, with students voting each day for their favorite books, pitting classics against contemporary YA novels, until one book reigns victorious just before our spring break begins at the close of March. For students that vote, we are giving away signed copies of books each school day in March. The number of students that voted yesterday compared to today has already doubled, and it's only lunchtime.  The school is buzzing with talk of books.  Who will win today? To Kill A Mockingbird or Where the Red Fern Grows?

Teachers have hung signs outside their doors declaring their current reading choices.  Students, high school students, are excited to share today their favorite titles for Read Across America Day.  "My mom would always read that story about the nutbrown hair to me right before bed. What was the title again, Ms. Ward?" Guess How Much I Love You. "Yeah, I loved it. I memorized the words before I could read it."

My students are readers.  In part this is because our district has placed an emphasis on independent reading and choice, from kindergarten all the way through senior year.  My students, whether AP-bound honors sophomores or struggling junior students, know that reading is a priority.  They have grown up with books always at the ready. They have their regular reading days each week, when they are encouraged to dig in to a novel of their choice. And don't you dare try to take that time away from them.  It is quiet now, not because they are bored or sleeping.  It is quiet because we are all immersed in the pages of a good book.

This is how you build a culture of reading. This is why I love March. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my book.

Mad About Books

By 8:00 this morning, already 30 students and staff had voted, and our poll had only been open for 15 minutes.  There is a buzz about books in our building.  Even the principal popped by to chat with me about books at the close of first hour. "Have your read Unbroken? So powerful!"

This is the third year I have organized a March Book Madness bracket for high school students and staff.  During the month of February, I sent out a Google form survey for all our students and staff to share their favorite books.  This year, we received over 140 suggestions.  The books that were recommended more than once made it onto our final bracket.  And then yesterday, March 1, our voting kicked off.

A large poster went up in the hallway outside my door to display the contending books and let our community know how to get in on the voting.  Our first day of voting, a choice between Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Paper Towns, was an easy choice for our community.  We are not a group of muggles at Ionia High. We're into some serious book magic.  Harry won easily among the 36 students and staff that voted.  And then we got to draw a name from those that voted to win a signed copy of Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist.  The winner? A special education teacher in our building.

And I think that's where the buzz began.  Because by the close of first period this morning, I had already surpassed the number of voters from the day before. Students and staff passed me in the hallway and tapped me to ask, "So you're really giving away signed books?"

Yup.

We connected with Jay Asher online who is sending us some books. And Ruta Sepetys is signing books for us. And Ernest Cline. And Tiffany Schmidt. How? Twitter! How have we built book buzz? Twitter!  I've been tweeting authors from my classroom account to ask if I can send them books to sign for our giveaway. When they've responded, I've read them aloud in class.  Students start talking about authors. About books. And then they've joined in, talking about authors and books online and in class.  We created a hashtag to talk about books online - #IoniaReads

So by the close of today, we were mad about books.  It seems quite fitting since today turned out to be World Book Day!

The Connection between Innovation and Ignorance

It's the first day of March, and in addition to being the start of our March Book Madness challenge, it also marks the start of the month long blogging challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.  The Slice of Life (#sol17) blogging challenge is in its tenth year and invites bloggers of all ages to share a small slice of their day.  Why a small slice?  As author and educator Ralph Fletcher writes, "The bigger the issue, the smaller you write," with the idea being that our voice becomes clear when we focus on a unique, peculiar detail. "Put forth the raw evidence, and trust that the reader will understand exactly what you are getting at."

In the midst of my second hour class, my tenth grade students working to peer revise their multi-genre writing projects, I received "the call." You know, the one that every parent dreads.  My son's elementary school was calling to let me know that he was sick at school. And so the scramble began to find subs and make arrangements to go pick him up.

That's how I found myself snuggled next to him near the fireplace watching TED talks this afternoon when we both should have been sitting in our respective classrooms. He would pick a talk, and then I would. I selected Sisonke Msimang's talk titled "If a story moves you, act on it," and my son picked Sam Kass's "Want kids to learn well? Feed them well." As we scrolled through the TED site, my son saw the picture and title for Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado's talk titled "To solve old problems, study new species." Mom, we have to watch this one! What is that even a picture of?! And by the time we got just a few minutes into the talk both of us were hooked, especially when Alvarado declares: "...if you don't feel like a complete idiot most of the time, you're just not sciencing hard enough."

Alvarado calls his audience to run toward ignorance: "We actually need to bring all of our intelligence to becoming stupid again - clueless before the immensity of the unknown. Because after all, science is not really about knowledge. Science is about ignorance. That's what we do."  Both my son and I loved this. His warm head resting on my arm, my son whispered, "We have to be detectives." And he's right.

Alejandro Sanchez Alcarado ends his speech saying, "We scientists need to teach our students to long for the endless immensity of the sea that is our ignorance."  I couldn't agree more.  Innovation will emerge from our ignorance.  We must teach our students to be comfortable with the unknown, to dwell in it, to question it, and propose interpretations and solutions.  Innovation comes from inquiry into our own ignorance.  Our students need more opportunities to develop their own lines of inquiry, and this means that teachers must be comfortable with being uncomfortable, with not having all the answers.  Because, to adapt the old adage, if we teach as we have always taught, students will only ever learn what they have always learned. That is not innovation. That is just tradition.

We, students and teachers, need to recognize the potential that lies in our own ignorance. It is our opportunity for innovation.

Connecting Readers

The excitement over our March Book Madness bracket is growing.  This past week as our school community voted on books in the initial bracket, I had the pleasure of handing out signed copies of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park and Patricia McCormick's Sold along with gift certificates to local book stores and copies of Looking for Alaska and Thirteen Reasons Why.

And not only have students been getting into our daily voting, but teachers have as well. On Tuesday, I drew the name of a fellow English teacher as the winner of our raffle from all those who participated in the day's voting. She was giddy as I handed her a copy of Thirteen Reasons Why. 

But yesterday afternoon, the excitement started to really gain momentum. And it all started with an email. From LOIS LOWRY!  Oh yes, you read that right. Prior to the start of our voting, I emailed every author in our bracket, explaining our March Book Madness bracket and requesting a signed copy of their book to give away. It is how we received copies of Rainbow Rowell's and Patricia McCormick's books.  Well, I also emailed Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, a clear favorite among both our students and teachers.  So when I saw that email signed "LL" in my inbox, stating that Lois Lowry was sending a signed copy of The Giver, well I couldn't keep that to myself! 

I've been using Celly, a text-messaging service, to conduct our daily votes. When I saw Ms. Lowry's email, I shot out a quick text to all our bracket voters sharing the news. Within minutes, I had teachers and students coming up to excitedly chat about their love of The Giver. And then, just a few minutes later, S.E. Hinton retweeted us! I had sent out a tweet earlier in the day from my class account sharing our daily vote between Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night and S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. And she retweeted it. By the last bell of the day, I had lost count of the number of students and staff that approached me excited, nearly giddy, wanting to talk about their love of these authors and their books. 

That bring us to today...

I'm sitting in the teachers' workroom typing up my Writer's Notebook prompt for my last block of the day, Creative Writing, when my phone buzzes that short zap. Someone has just tweeted me.  I turn in over and find...JOHN GREEN HAS TWEETED ME!  Not a retweet, mind you. He has directly tweeted my classroom Twitter account to put in a vote for today's March Book Madness battle which pits his Fault in our Stars against Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, our closest battle to date. I believe I squealed and that shouted, "Holy crap!"

Now this is not normal, every day behavior in our teachers' workroom. The English teacher sitting next to me at the large table in the middle of our workroom just stared at me when I could barely stammer out why I was so excited.  I handed her my phone to show her the tweet. And she laughed before clicking a quick photo of my phone to post to Instagram. I quickly retweeted and sent out a message to our student and teacher voters through Celly letting them know about the day's connection. We were giddy! It didn't take long for the buzz to spread. Not thirty minutes later when I walked through the lunchroom for cafeteria duty, a student called out from the din of conversation, "Ms. Ward - I just saw! John Green?! That is sooooo cool!" 

I love that we had an opportunity to connect with author John Green using social media (on Digital Learning Day, too), but here's the best part: students and teachers are giddy talking about books! These connections have sparked an interest in our community. We're talking about books, making reading recommendations, arguing the merits of one book over another. We are excited, engaged, and connected readers! 

Now, I wonder who we'll hear from next? Veronica Roth? J.K. Rowling? ;)

Proud Fangirl

It arrived today. I went down to check my school mailbox during my lunch period, and there it was. A big white envelop addressed to me...from Patty McCormick. Yup, Patty. So when I came back into the teacher's workroom with my white envelop, holding a signed copy of Sold which author Patricia McCormick donated for our March Madness Book Battle, I'm pretty sure I was floating. Earlier last week, as students and staff were suggesting titles for our March Madness Book Battle, I reached out to some of the authors whose books were nominated a number of times by our community. Ms. McCormick's novels Sold and Never Fall Down were recommended multiple times. I sent an email to her assistant and publisher. Within 24 hours, Ms. McCormick emailed me directly offering to send signed copies of both of her books. She signed the email "Patty."

When the email hit my inbox, I'm not going to lie, I may have spent the next 30 minutes telling every student and staff member in earshot that I had just received an email from Patty.

You can only imagine what happened when the signed book arrived today.

Sitting at the lunchroom table, a fellow English teacher commented, "I love that authors are celebrities for you. You are such an English teacher!" It's true. I've met a few celebrities. While on the set of Wonder Boys, I was able take a photo with and get an autograph from Michael Douglas. Wanda Sykes shops at my grocery store. But the nervous jitters and joy I feel when connecting with an author is unparalleled. There is something about first connecting with a text, with a well-developed character and a captivating story, and then meeting the writer. I can rattle off a list of writers that I have had the opportunity to meet in person: Georgia Head, Ishmeal Beah, Edwidge Danticat, Julie Otsuka...okay, I'll stop name-dropping. All to say, I am a fangirl. Squeal out loud and fluttering hands fangirl. I am a literature fangirl.

And proud of it!

Building a Community of Readers

On the first day of class, many English teachers will begin by asking students about their favorite books, a sort of innocuous ice breaker to get to know the readers sitting in the classroom. But all too often, I've had students respond to this question with:

"I dunno. I don't read." 

or worse 

"I'm not really a reader."

In the teachers' workroom, you'll sometimes hear similar statements: "I wish I had more time to read," "I don't really get a chance to read during the school year." So many teachers and students don't see themselves as readers.

One of my favorite writers on the topic of reading is Kelly Gallagher, and in an interview with Education Week a few years back, he stated:

"Schools have put all of their emphasis on academic reading and functional reading and completely abandoned the idea of trying to turn kids on to the kinds of reading we want them to do 10 and 20 and 30 years from now—and that’s recreational reading. We have forgotten that we want them to be readers, not just people who can pass a test. There are studies showing that adults who read regularly are much more involved in their communities and civic life generally, so I don’t think this is just a curriculum issue. I think it’s a cultural issue."

Reading, a real love of a good book, does not involve a multiple-choice test. The way that I read for pleasure is very different than the way that I read for class. And we are doing a lot to help our students read for class, but what are we doing to help our young readers discover the pleasure of reading? How do we build a school community that defines themselves as readers? How do you build a reading culture?

Okay, so I don't have all the answers, but I do have a few ideas.

After attending last weekend's Delaware Valley Reading Association conference, I came home inspired to find ways to encourage students to voice their interest in reading. So I quickly put together a Google form and emailed my students and all the teachers in my high school building, asking them to share their favorite books in order to build a March Madness Book Battle bracket. And in no time at all, I heard from all sorts of readers in our building. The quick response from our community, with teachers, students, and parents sharing over 250 book recommendations, got me thinking about other ways to encourage our community to see itself as readers.

Teachers are models of what successful readers do, of what readers look like. If students see us as readers, they come to understand that reading is a joy that continues throughout a lifetime. So, teachers need to share what they are reading. Students need to see their mentors reading, need to see that reading is done for purposes other than simply to take a test.

I quickly put together a little poster for teachers to share what they are currently reading, ran off copies, and will have them laminated Monday morning. Why laminate them? So that teachers can easily write on the posters with a whiteboard marker and erase it to add their next book!

Here's the little poster I created on Canva:

I'm curious to hear what others are doing to build a community of readers. What are the ideas and strategies you are using in your school?

Bring on the Battle...the March Madness Book Battle

Image from basketball-sports-books.com

I came home from Saturday's Delaware Valley Reading Association's conference inspired. We spent the morning sharing ideas for empowering student readers by promoting voice and choice in our school classrooms and libraries.  As we discussed ideas for building reading habits and engaging all members of our learning communities in reading, the idea of a March Madness style Book Battle came up. That's when the ideas really started to flow.

You'll find all sorts of clever bulletin board ideas on Pinterest for a book battle, but I wanted to do something that wouldn't just reside inside my classroom. Instead, I wanted to invite participation from students, teachers, administrators, and parents alike. This meant, I needed to think digitally. So, I started with a basic bracket design (feel free to use the graphic below).

I'm fortunate because I have an awesome sister who works on a production team for a printing company and is able to print this out large scale for me on vinyl for free, but you easily could print this out at Staples for under $30. Why vinyl? So I can write on it easily with white board markers that wipe off, making it easy to reuse it year after year. So this big banner will hang in the hallway, but how do I involve our larger community? That's where the digital aspect comes in.

Excited, I emailed my students, their parents, and fellow teachers on Sunday, sharing a Google form with a basic description of our book tournament - 16 books pitted against one another with daily voting to narrow down our book selections to two challengers by the close of March. I asked our community to recommend the books for the initial 16 challengers. What are your most loved books? Within 24 hours, 56 people had responded with over 250 book choices! So in the coming week, whichever books are most recommended will become the 16 in the initial bracket.

Then over the course of March, I'll be sharing our book battles through our daily announcements and classroom Twitter account, asking all community members to cast their vote using Celly.  At the moment, I'm reaching out to local bookstores, publishers, and authors to help us by sponsoring reading prizes for community members who participate in the voting. I would love to be able to giveaway signed copies of books and bookstore gift certificates to daily participants. The idea is to reward readers with reading prizes, and throughout the month of March sharing the joy of reading! 

What are you doing to spread the joy of reading in your community? I'd love to hear your ideas!

UPDATE:

Here it is! The final 16 books as recommended by teachers, students, and parents: