Why Classroom Libraries Matter and How to Build Them - Season 1, Episode 2

Welcome to Season 1, Episode 2 of The Book Love Foundation Podcast! And thank you for joining us in this celebration of teaching and the joy of learning.

Subscribe in iTunes

Donate to the Book Love Foundation

Episode 2 Show Notes
You can learn more about the Book Love Foundation at booklovefoundation.org, where you can also make a donation. 100% of the money you give to the Book Love Foundation puts books into classrooms. We've given away $100,000 in three years, but the need is far greater. Help us reach more young people with the power of reading. Book Love Foundation awards are given to teachers like you. If you're listening to this show, you're already committed to kids and the power of reading. You can apply for a Book Love Foundation grant by visiting booklovefoundation.org. Applications for 2016 are due March 1st.

CONVERSATION SEGMENT
Ben Wilkinson has been an English teacher for six years, most recently at Knoxville Catholic High School in Knoxville, TN. He also teaches Creative Writing, and won a Book Love Grant in 2014. Find him on Twitter at @readlikeawolf.
Claire Gibson is a high school English teacher and instructional coach at Adams City High School in Commerce City, CO. You can find her on Twitter @Gibby86, read about her reading and teaching life on her new blog atateacherwhowrites.com or e-mail her at [e-mail].
Karlen Shupp has taught English since 1999 and currently at Trumbull High School in Trumbull, CT.  She has also taught at Pomperaug Regional High School and Western Connecticut State University.  She presented at the NCTE Annual Convention in 2014 on modeling and in 2015 on assessments linked to Independent Reading. Shupp, along with Stephanie Jalowiec and Jim McCaffrey is part of the Reading (R)evolution, a group of three educators dedicated to sparking the love of reading in students.  They have a blog at https://3lonenuts.wordpress.com and an active Twitter account @THSReadRev.
Karlen can be reached at [e-mail], @THSteacher, and https://sites.google.com/a/trumbullps.org/shupp-english/Steph can be reached at [e-mail] and on Twitter @MrsJalowiec.
Jim can be reached at [e-mail] and on Twitter @mccaffths.

Beth Hughes teaches high school English at Massachusetts’ Wakefield Memorial High School. You can find her on Twitter @MsBethHughes, read her musings on lifelong learning at msbethhughes.org and her passion to reintroduce her students to reading at fortheloveofreading.org, or email her at [e-mail].

BOOK TALK
Here are the books from this episode's book talk, courtesy of Serena Kessler:

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

I am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore

The Divergent series, by Veronica Ruth

Ender s Game, by Orson Scott Card

Rangers Apprentice, by John Flanagan

13 Reasons Why, by Jay Asher

Jandy Nelson books, especially The Sky is Everywhere.

Ellen Hopkins books

(That's two episodes in a row for both Jandy Nelson and Ellen Hopkins, in classrooms 2,000 miles apart )

Serena Kessler is a high school English teacher at Romulus High School in Romulus, Michigan.  She blogs at wholechildren.wordpress.com and can be reached by email at [e-mail].

STUDENT STORY
This episode's student story was from Lynn Hagen, a high school literacy teacher and Reading Specialist in Columbia, Missouri.  Lynne is a passionate advocate for choice reading for high school students.  You can follow her reflections on teaching at Blue-skyteaching.blogspot.com or on Twitter @lynnahagen.  You can reach her by email at [e-mail]. Lynn's student mentioned liking:

Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

The Bluford High series

Thank you for listening to the The Book Love Foundation Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a colleague or two.

★ Support this podcast ★

Creators and Guests

Host

Penny Kittle

Penny is Chairman of the Book Love Foundation and is dedicated to helping students and teachers develop a passion for reading and writing. She has taught English and coached literacy in public schools for 34 years.

BW

Guest

Ben Wilkinson

An English teacher at Knoxville Catholic High School in Knoxville, TN. Also teaches creative writing and was a 2014 Book Love grant recipient.

BH

Guest

Beth Hughes

Teaches high school English at Wakefield Memorial High School in MA.

CG

Guest

Claire Gibson

A High School English teacher and instructional coach at Adams City High School in Commerce City, CO.

JM

Guest

Jim McCaffrey

Teaches at Trumbull High School and is a member of The Reading (R)evolution, a group dedicated to sparking the love of reading in students.

KS

Guest

Karlen Shupp

English teacher at Trumbull High School in Trumbull, CT. and is a member of The Reading (R)evolution, a group dedicated to sparking the love of reading in students.

LH

Guest

Lynn Hagen

A high school literacy teacher and reading specialist in Columbia, Missouri.

SK

Guest

Serena Kessler

A high school English teacher at Romulus High School in Romulus, MI.

SJ

Guest

Stephanie Jalowiec

Teaches at Trumbull High School and is a member of The Reading (R)evolution, a group dedicated to sparking the love of reading in students.

What is The Book Love Foundation Podcast?

Celebrate the joy of reading with the Book Love Foundation podcast. This is a show filled with information and inspiration from teachers and leaders across grade levels, states, and school systems. We interviewed authors and educators for the first five years and now turn our attention to leaders in public, private, and charter schools. Find out more at booklovefoundation.org or join our book-love-community.mn.co of 2500 educators from 28 countries. We sustain joy together, one kid and one book at a time.

Penny Kittle 00:00
The Book Love Foundation podcast is produced by the teacher learning sessions, connecting teachers with ideas, experts and each other.

Lynn Hagen 00:16
He looked at me one day and he said, at the beginning of the school year you said you're gonna like books by the end of this. And he said, I thought you were a liar.

Penny Kittle 00:26
Every English teacher's world of books should surround the kids and create a space where kids walk in and go, oh, English class is about reading.

Claire Gibson 00:35
I just want you to look at them. I just want you to touch them. I just want you to pull them off the shelves and just kind of be with these books for a little while.

Serena Kessler 00:42
They really find some solace and feel sort of less alone in their pain as they connect with these characters.

Stephanie Jalawik 00:50
We don't need to wait for the book fairy to come along.

Jim McCaffrey 00:55
We're a year removed from where we changed everything, and I can't even remember what my classroom used to look like.

Penny Kittle 01:02
Today's podcast is focused on classroom libraries. Classroom libraries matter, not just school libraries, but libraries individual teachers create and then curate around the needs of the students they teach. I realize this is new thinking for many middle and high school teachers, why not just send kids down the hall to the school library to find a book to read, because kids need help matching their interests to particular books. They need a teacher.

Penny Kittle 01:33
Our school librarians, a most precious resource have become a scarcity in far too many schools. Some schools have libraries no longer staffed by anyone. Even in schools with librarians, it can be hard to give every student the one to one attention needed to make the right book to kid match. Kids need more than books to become readers. They need us and we need books in our classrooms, two of the most important predictors of reading frequency for middle and high school students are having time for independent reading during the school day and having 150 or more print books at home. This is according to the 2015 scholastic kids and family reading report, which is available on the Book Love Foundation website. Yet only 17% of students in middle and high school have a designated time during the school day to read a book of their choice. 17%

Penny Kittle 02:40
I'm not sure there's anything more important than leading all students to a love of reading. And students know what we care about by what we make time for. Clearly, if we want to see gains in the reading stamina of our students, time for daily independent reading must become a priority, but we also need books. Kelly Gallagher called for a book flood in classrooms in his 2009 bestseller. Read aside how schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. I've seen the library that wraps around the walls of his classroom in Anaheim, California. When you walk into Kelly's classroom, you know reading matters. The Book Love Foundation works to create a book flood in classrooms in the US and Canada, because access to books matters and in many communities there are few books in the homes of students. Teachers must have books because too many public libraries struggle for funding and school libraries have closed. There's only one book for every 300 kids living in poverty. According to Reading is Fundamental.

Penny Kittle 03:51
I dream of a day when there's a book for every reader in every classroom. We know that frequent readers in middle and high school read an average of almost 40 books a year, while infrequent readers read an average of fewer than five books a year. It's hard to develop a love of reading if you only read five books a year. And yet, we know what we need. We need teachers committed to developing reading lives, and those teachers need books. We can change the story of reading. We have to the teachers you'll meet in today's episode have been building classroom libraries for years. Today they'll share what a book flood has meant for their teaching and for their students. Joining me is Kevin Carlson from the teacher learning sessions.

Kevin Carlson 04:44
Today's conversation begins with Ben Wilkinson, who teaches in Knoxville, Tennessee. Penny asked Ben why classroom libraries matter.

Ben Wilkinson 04:55
First of all, they matter just because, for the same reason that libraries in general matter because we all need access. Us to way more books than we can possibly afford to buy, and then, ultimately, because kids will read more when they have, you know, when you have a classroom library and you have more books that are easily accessible to them, they'll read more. Because I have a lot of students who they would never step foot into a bookstore, and if they did, you know, they'd be looking for the nearest exit. So to have them walk into my classroom and to be able to look at, you know, a full wall of bookshelves and books, seeing them and seeing a kid who may not really like reading or may not have identified themselves as a reader before, be able to spend time browsing the fantasy section or looking through graphic novels and kind of looking at the covers and reading the blurbs on the dust jackets. That is an incredibly important experience, I think.

Penny Kittle 05:50
Yeah, do you know it's so funny, because you made me think of a time I was teaching night school, which is our alternative ed program for kids who have dropped out of our day school, and I had about 15 kids in the class, and one night, one of the kids said something about a bookstore, and this kid next to him said, Well, I've never been in a bookstore. And I thought, what? And I said, is there anyone else in here who's never been in a bookstore? And 10 hands of the 15 went on, wow. And I said, Okay, next night, the next night, we meet next week, we're going to do a field trip to the bookstore, and there was one right at the bottom of the hill, close by, and most of the kids drive, so that was not a problem. But I was driving a little mini cooper at the time, and I remember piling four of these adult children in my Mini Cooper. We were like on top of each other. It's freezing outside right? And we went down the hill to the bookstore, and we walked in, and Rob comes up to me partway through. You know, we were probably only there half an hour, but he comes up to me, he goes, Miss Kittle, did you know these books? Like, they have all of the books about the same thing in one place, like, right here are all of the stories of the rock musicians. And I'm like, How did I never think of this? My own classroom library at the time was ABC order by author, and here he was telling me, this was a revelation to him, like he could find what he was looking for. And I'm thinking, Oh my word, wow. And so I went back that weekend and started creating categories, and I had, you know, an entire mess in my room for weeks over trying to figure out where books went but that power of what is it like to be able to just look at anything and decide, Is there a book in here that I would want to read?

Ben Wilkinson 07:32
I've never been a librarian before, until I started doing this, and I'm kind of learning, you know, on the job, we have a really great school librarian at the school that I work at, and she's been an awesome resource. So we partner and talk, and she sends me emails all the time about books I need to get, and if she has extra copies, she'll donate them to my classroom library and so, but it's a constant work in progress, because you're constantly having to update and maybe cull old titles or replace titles that are completely worn out because, you know, 25 kids have read them and pass them around. The covers now falling off. So, yeah, it's, it's like a, it's like a 24/7, 52 weeks out of the year, I'm constantly updating and looking for new titles and trying to find that next book that I'm going to be able to put in, you know someone's hand, you know.

Penny Kittle 08:21
I would agree with that completely. And the thing that some people don't understand is that 52 weeks a year job of locating the right book is one of the greatest, most enjoyable things I do. I like nothing better than wandering into my bookstore here in town, white birch books. This little independent bookseller, and I love to sit there and comb through her titles and read the covers and smell those beautiful new books. And you know, that's what I became an English teacher for this love that I had of reading.

Kevin Carlson 08:55
Claire Gibson teaches in Commerce City, Colorado, outside of Denver.

Claire Gibson 09:00
Serving kids in a lower socioeconomic environment. I think even just the physical presence of brand new books was really special for them. You know, when our books came in, I kind of organized them, and then we just had a, you know, like a party. And I called it that. I said, we're having a book party. And I see them, you know, the kids I see first thing in the morning, we ate donuts and drink orange juice. And I just said, I just want you to look at them. I just want you to look at them. I just want you to touch them. I just want you to pull them off the shelves and just kind of be with these books for a little while. And I just think that that that was kind of special, you know, I'm not sure how many, how many times a lot of my students have had that where someone just says, just kind of interact with with these new things, right, that are in front of you and that are here for you and really were given to you. And I try to say that a lot to kids is that, you know, these books aren't for me, these books are for you, and they're this gift to you. And so I think, just like the level of excitement in the class. Classroom went up, and now that kind of that has worn off a little bit. I think just having the books in the classroom makes it so easy for me to really connect kids to books that they might not have ever found before, and really just kind of push them in their in their journeys as they're figuring out who they are as readers, I'm really able to kind of push that, I think, a little bit further, you know, than if I every time I wanted a kid to get a new book, we had to walk down to the library, or I had to write them a pass, and they had to do it on their own. I can kind of guide them through that process. And I'm really not ever at a loss. You know, I'm never like, Oh man, I wish I had that book to give you, or I wish I had a book like this. I can usually, you know, find them something that's going to get them excited and kind of bring back that excitement, that initial excitement that we experience as a class just having the books in our room.

Penny Kittle 10:57
Absolutely, I really love the story about new things and new books for kids. I had a kid come up. I had a whole stack of brand new hardcover books, and he said, Can I check this one out? And I said, Well, of course. And he said, but it's brand new, you know, just this thought that maybe he couldn't have it yet. And I think that, you know, I have a high poverty rate in my town as well. And for many, many of my students, there aren't books in their house, and they that would not be something that would be top on the purchase list for their homes, for good reason. And so the chance to hold something brand new in their hands, and especially when it's a book that I haven't read yet, and I'll say, Who wants to be my first reader of this? I want to know if it's a good fit for you, for students in high school, you know, what do you think? And they feel such an honor in being the one to review a book that's brand new.

Claire Gibson 11:56
Yeah, they do. And I think that just as you were saying that, I was just thinking about a little girl who checked out a book from from our new books, and she had spilled all over it, and I could see that she was really nervous to give it back to me, like, like, oh my gosh, I ruined this thing. And as she kind of, like, timidly pulled it out of her backpack, I, you know, she was like, I'm, you know, I'm sorry. And I was like, why this is great. It looks red now. Now other kids are going to think that, like, this is the best book in the library, because it looks like it's been read a ton. And she was kind of like, Oh, I thought you were going to be mad at me. And it's like, you know, just letting them know, like, No, this is what they're here for. They're here to be read. And I have, can't tell you how many books that have chocolate on them or tea spilled on them, because I read and eat and that's just what happens?

Kevin Carlson 12:42
So how do you create a classroom library of your own? The first step is deciding to start Karlen Schupp, Jim McCaffrey and Stephanie Jalawik are colleagues in Trumbull, Connecticut. They are also known collectively as the reading revolution.

Penny Kittle 13:00
Karlen got $500 from the book club foundation, but the three of you have been working together forever, so I'd love to just hear about how the three of you have built these classroom libraries and this philosophy that you're working under.

Karlen Schupp 13:13
All right? Well, we came back from NCTE 14, right? And Steph and Jim had attended the session on Mamaroneck High School, and they said, we need to do this right now. And so then we just set about trying to establish anything we could. I know, the first thing we did was just rate our own bookshelves at home, and, you know, bring in anything that we could find that we would let kids take out. And then our department chair was very instrumental in getting us funding. She gave us was 3000.

Jim McCaffrey 13:43
Yeah, we got 10, 10,000 total. And basically we set out to then fund our libraries. So, I mean, we came back and we started thinking about ways to do, to do book drives, started thinking about ways to get people to donate books. And then all of a sudden it was, you know, our department chair was like, well, we have money, you know, why don't we buy some books?

Penny Kittle 14:04
You know, it's what's great about this story, if you unpack it, is that, first of all, you went to NCTE, or, yeah, it must have been NCTE, because that's the group that I watched as well. And you were so inspired that you came back and decided to make the change, and you started doing it on your own. And what that does is it begins to draw attention to the power of the change. And the fact that your kids were reading is probably why your department chair said, I'm going to free up all of this money so that you can do this. Do you think so?

Stephanie Jalawik 14:34
I definitely agree. Yeah. I also think it speaks to the power that a teacher can have inside their classroom. You know, we don't need to wait for, you know, the book fairy to come along, or, you know, the Board of Ed to say, yes, there are some changes we have the power to make that are, you know, can be implemented the day you come back from being inspired by a session.

Jim McCaffrey 14:59
I mean, we're a year removed from where we changed everything. And I can't even, I was talking to Steph about this yesterday. I can't even remember what my classroom used to look like. And again, all of us are 10 plus year veterans of teaching, and it was, it's amazing to think about the amount of change we've gone through in the year. And like looking around our classrooms, looking at all the books that we have, all the readers that we have, I mean, it's been a it's been an amazing thing now again, like when we got our libraries, didn't happen overnight. You know, our our classrooms are in disarray for about a month, like we had books everywhere. We had category lists like taped to walls. And, you know, it was, it was, it was a crazy month and a half, just feeling disjointed. But then, you know what? What kept us together? I think for all of us, was that we had kids actually read it, you know, and at a higher percentage than we had.

Karlen Schupp 15:47
So it was messy, but it was good messy because it happened mid year, so they were literally boxes all over the place. And then we were trying to think of, well, how are we going to get these books on the shelves? There's, you know, 1000s of titles, and you know, what are we going to do? And then we decided, well, we have all this child labor here. And so we took, I took a day, and I want to say, took me a full day, all eight periods, and we just had the kids. We put the books in their hands. We said, Where do you think it belongs? And that was one of the coolest things ever to see them, looking at the front, looking at the back, searching inside and deciding what category. And that was, I think, really instrumental in getting, you know, books were literally in the hands of kids, but also they were able to decide what they liked based on that experience.

Stephanie Jalawik 16:30
Gonna say that really built excitement. As we were unpacking the books, they they couldn't believe what was in front of them, and then, and then they were, you know, anticipating the change in the curriculum and the change in what was about to happen in their daily reading lives. And that was really fun to watch, because it was so different from anything that had ever done, you know, through their whatever, nine or 10, 11, years of school.

Penny Kittle 16:55
Wow. A couple things that I love that you talked about. One is that you're not sitting around waiting for the book fairy. Because in the foundation, in our application, we say that we want to know that you're already committed, that you've demonstrated this connection to the philosophy. Because the truth is, if the book club foundation were to just give teachers books that don't already have a commitment to this kind of teaching, we would end up with books serving as wallpaper, just classrooms full of books and the teacher not knowing what to do with them.

Jim McCaffrey 17:25
Yeah, 100% I think one thing we've talked a lot about this year is we've tried to encourage other teachers to follow us a little bit here, follow the model that we've followed from you is, is like the fidelity of the program is the one of the like, the Paramount elements of the whole thing. We have to, we have to invest in the readers and in the reading. And I think that that's been, I couldn't agree more, it's been the biggest part of what we've accomplished.

Penny Kittle 17:51
I also love that you said you started in the middle of the school year. You know, how many teachers will say to me, especially if I'm there in February, Oh, wow. We're going to think about this over the summer and get started in September. And I always say, start now with whatever you have while the energy's high.

Karlen Schupp 18:05
Yeah, we were literally building bookshelves in class.

Kevin Carlson 18:11
Your classroom library will never be smaller than it is right now. Beth Hughes started her library with just 40 books. She was awarded a $500 Book Love grant in 2014 from that start, over time, she has built a tremendous resource in her classroom.

Penny Kittle 18:32
You know what I love is that you took that little 40 books you started with. You already knew you wanted to make the change. That's the mark of a professional, right? You question, what's going on? And you go, I can do this differently. And then you get this influx of 75 books, which you know now you're just over 100 you can give every kid one book, but you have grown that into 1500 books.

Beth Hughes 18:54
It's, I have a problem. I'll I'll email you a picture. I took a picture of my library and that there's a guy my kids know that Randy and Carlene. We make them Southern, even though they're from Boston, but Randy and Carlene are on Craigslist, and it was a little creepy at first, but they ended up being really, really nice. And he looks for bookshelves for me, and I'm sure he's making a little bit of money, but he will, he will text me or message me and say, I found another bookshelf. So I have 10 full bookshelves in my room, and they're all from this little guy on Craigslist that was trying to clean out his app. Clean out his attic, who's retired, who's now like running around all of New England, trying to find trying to, you know, equip my library and my room. And so the kids are cute because they know all about Randy and Carlene.

Penny Kittle 19:35
You know what I love about that piece of what you're what you answered is, one of our questions is, why do these libraries matter? And then how do you build one from scratch? But, you know, the practical thing, like bookshelves, that's a real issue.

Beth Hughes 19:47
It is an issue that was, that was probably, as my husband will tell you, when he printed out the mint report of what I spent on books. And I teased, but I said, I think I worked for free last year the book shelves. Yeah, the bookshelves alone. Were probably like $75 used. And these aren't like, nice bookshelves, but just someone else loved them and but just a place to house the books is like, the school's not going to provide that for me, and I'm disparaging my district, but this is my thing. So they shouldn't have to necessarily prepare that. You know?

Penny Kittle 20:16
Well, you know, I would, I would push back and say that every school, if they committed to every English classroom having a library, we would make fundamental change in this country. But why wouldn't we say every English teacher's world of books should surround the kids and create a space where kids walk in and go, oh, English class is about reading about me finding a reading life.

Beth Hughes 20:38
And about me enjoying reading, and not just read what I tell you to read because you'll like it.

Penny Kittle 20:42
Well, it's that dramatic difference between engaged reading and skim scan. I'm getting a few facts here reading. There is no comparison, but what we miss is engaged reading got set aside as, oh, you can do that on your own time, as if it's not the center of what we're after as teachers.

Penny Kittle 21:02
In these podcasts, we will also talk about books that turn students into readers. Book Talks are essential in my classroom because they help me connect students to books that they're interested in reading. I'm certain book talks will work for you as well, to help you in this ongoing a joyful challenge of connecting books to kids. Listen to Serena Kessler, a teacher in Ann Arbor, Michigan who shares a few hot books in her classroom this year.

Serena Kessler 21:30
Right now, the hot book is a book I just picked up. I heard about it on NPR. It's called All American Boys.

Penny Kittle 21:38
Oh yeah, book club going in my room.

Serena Kessler 21:42
Oh, you do. So this is, I mean, it's the hot topic in my my ninth grade classes. I have two 9 grade classes, and I've got 35 students in each of the classes, and of those, 35 in one class, 25 are boys, and in the other class, I think it's maybe like 22 or 23 are boys, and they're almost all African American boys. And you know that the issue of racial profiling and police brutality is just so forefront in their minds. And so All American Boys is just super relevant, and they can connect to it. And it's, this is a book that's engaging kids who had previously been mostly non readers. So that's, that's sort of the now.

Serena Kessler 22:41
We have the the Sci Fi fantasy is pretty big. I am Number Four, the Divergent series, Ender's Game, Rangers, Apprentice. Those are some, some hot titles right now, kids are still reading 13 Reasons Why that that again and again. And then the Jan D Nelson books, yeah, and that, and those I discovered through you. So that was last year. I heard you speak, and I think you talked about the Skies Everywhere. Oh, probably I usually do.

Serena Kessler 23:22
And then I would say, finally, the Ellen Hopkins books are, you know, mostly with the girls. So I have a lot of my students have really tough and stressful lives, and have had some pretty rotten things happen to them that you wouldn't wish upon anyone, and they really find some solace in the Ellen Hopkins books, and feel sort of less alone in their in their pain as they connect with these characters.

Penny Kittle 23:54
Oh, that's such an important point there. You know how, how books can help kids cope with the pain that they're experiencing, or even just allow them to see the struggles of other people and build empathy for that.

Kevin Carlson 24:08
The books that Serena mentioned will be included in the show notes at teacherlearningsessions.com/go/booklove, or by going to the podcast network menu and selecting the Book Love Foundation podcast, you can also have that list sent directly to your inbox by joining our special Book Love Foundation podcast email list. On the day each episode comes out, you will receive an email that includes a list of the books we book talk, along with other info about the show that's at teacherlearningsessions.com/go/booklove

Penny Kittle 24:46
To close out this episode, I want to share a story from Lynn Hagan, who teaches an intervention class for high school readers in Columbia, Missouri. I met Lynn at the International Literary Association Conference in St Louis last summer. She has a contagious enthusiasm for readers and books.

Lynn Hagen 25:05
I will tell you about one of my boys who I just left that classroom. He came in a ninth grader, very talkative, very squirrelly, little guy, and the first day of school, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to kick out my first student ever on the first day, because he is going from I'm not going to do this, and being very vocal about that, to just non stop talking, and he's up and he's moving around the room, and he's going to have to go. But I made it. Made it through the first class. Well, by the second class, the negativity had gotten kind of ugly, and I ended up sending him out. And so this was my oh my gosh. How am I going to do this with this one kid, and he's kind of set in a mood for the rest of the room, so I got to figure out something. And the semester went along, and we had our ups and downs, but in December, when we were doing our final portfolio reflection, he looked at me one day and he said, at the beginning of the school year. You said, Sorry, I'm trying not to cry as I tell you this. He said, You're gonna like books by the end of this. And he said, I thought you were a liar. I thought there's no teacher that's gonna make me like reading. And he said, You know what? I found this book. And he was he was showing me a couple of sports books that he had read, and then he had also read a couple of Walter Dean Myers. He really liked monster.

Lynn Hagen 26:26
And he said, I can honestly say I liked these books. And he said, I can't even believe I'm telling you that right now. So that was, like the best Christmas present that I got. And he was in class right now, and so I reminded him, I said, I think I'm going to tell your story first. He says, Well, that's not true. I don't even like reading. And then we walked out because we had lunch in the middle of class, and we walked down the hall. He said, But you know that that new book that you gave me, you gave me one of those blooper books, you know, I think I finally got to a good part. I think it's pretty good. So I mean, just that, you know, sometimes their language does not match what they're truly feeling. And so those one on one moments when they let you know that you're making a difference, that's just it's he's the frosting on my cake right now. He's just to be able to see such a profound transformation in a short period of time has been great.

Penny Kittle 27:17
That is just a beautiful story. I know that, that it's really hard for a student to change his identity. And you know, that's an example of a kid who's kind of lived in the place of, I don't like reading, and as we often know as educators, they do that sometimes to hide the fact that they're not good at it. It's easier to say I don't like it than I don't know how to do it, and we know how important it is that they find some books that they read on their own, because being dependent doesn't make anyone build confidence. It's that sense of independence I can do this. And so you've given him a path to discovering that, and that is probably the most powerful work we do.

Penny Kittle 28:02
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Book Love Foundation podcast. You can learn more about our foundation at booklovefoundation.org we've given away $100,000 in three years, but the need is far greater. If you can help us reach more young people with the power of reading applications for the 2016 Book Love Foundation awards are due March 1, and I want to urge you Yes, you to apply as you listen to this podcast, did you ask yourself, what would you do with that many books in your classroom library? A better question, what would your kids do with them? But another reason to apply is to take the opportunity to reflect on your current teaching practice around books and reading. The Book Love Foundation application is designed to help you reflect and articulate your thinking about why you teach the way you do. This is Beth Hughes, who received a $500 award last year.

Beth Hughes 29:01
It is about books, and it's about getting books into the hands of kids. I get that, but I can't even tell you, just winning the grant was fabulous, and it sounds like it's just an honor to be nominated. But what you said, you know, hopefully, if nothing else, this is clarified or crystallized your thinking and with the reflection. And I really do believe that I feel like I was kind of like, Hey, this is how I feel, and I know that's why we teach our students to write. Is partly for clarification, but going through the application process, I think, renewed me. And then winning $500 which wasn't the whole library, but was enough, it just it had such an impact on me professionally that I think it's made me even more excited, which will impact not just the 100 kids in my classroom this year, 120 classroom this year, 125 this year, but just every year. I don't know i To me, the intangibles I think are are almost as valuable as the actual books in my hand.

Penny Kittle 29:53
Again, that deadlines coming soon, march 1, go to booklovefoundation.org, for more information. In thank you so much for listening. This is Penny Kittle.

Kevin Carlson 30:05
If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues about it in person or through your online social network and help us spread the word about the show. And if you're listening to this podcast on iTunes, please subscribe and take a moment to leave a rating and a review. That's a great way for you to help support us, because it helps other teachers learn what the show is about. We will leave you with some scenes from our next episode, which comes out in two weeks. It is about how to connect your students to books.

Future Guest-1 30:37
I don't think we should worry about level. I think that if we can find things that that they're interested in, they're going to read. That's never fail, never it has never failed. Even if it's a really tough book, if they're really into it, they're going to read it.

Future Guest-2 30:49
Last year, I would have never picked up a book that big. I'd always go for the smallest books and but like this year, I realized that, like, even if books are big, if you like them, they seem a lot smaller.

Kevin Carlson 31:01
That's next time on the Book Love Foundation podcast. The Book Love Foundation podcast is produced by the teacherlearningsessions, connecting teachers with ideas, experts and each other.