The Book Whisperer (22 page)

By creating this sense of responsibility within our students, we are preparing them to be informed decision makers and contributors to our communities. If we create a passion for reading within our students, they will be able to carry on the kind of inquiry that is needed to function in our democracy. Our students are shortchanged if we fail to teach reading beyond the narrow definition of a test score. Our students are shortchanged if the fundamental message of reading is captured only in an encouraging word on a poster or an impersonal voice in a public-service announcement. We who work with children every day in schools across America have an obligation to live the reading life ourselves.

We must believe that reading is fundamental for ourselves, for our students, for all students in order to help promote the ideas that will carry each of us forward. Reading must lead our agenda as public school teachers and administrators, not in a way that is narrowly defined but in a way that helps students discover their own sense of purpose. Whether these young readers are from a booming metropolis or a rural community thousands of miles away, we can help them envision other possibilities through the words of E. L. Konigsburg, E. B. White, or Harper Lee.

Donalyn Miller believes that teachers and school administrators are obligated to create powerful reading classrooms. Donalyn Miller believes that students are more than test takers. Donalyn Miller believes that all students are readers, that students must lead sustained reading lives well past their school years. Hers is an important voice that carries the message that reading is fundamental every day in her classroom.

Won't you join the book whisperer movement? By doing so, we will send a thunderous message that reading is critical not only for the welfare of our students but also for the continued health of our democracy. We will empower our students to sustain themselves and our nation. I challenge you to join this reading revolution, to do your part as a public school educator in the United States. Our children cannot afford our silence.

THE SMALL THREE-SHELF, PARTICLEBOARD BOOKCASE that I started with the first year I taught is still a part of my classroom, but it has been relegated to holding archived lesson plans and
The Reading Teacher
journals. The shelves began to bow from holding book tubs a few years ago, and like an old swaybacked horse, it has been put out to pasture. I won't get rid of that shabby, cheap bookcase until it collapses. On days when I despair that I am not accomplishing much with students, that pitiful bookcase reminds me of how far I have come.

When my school, Trinity Meadows Intermediate, opened in 2006, teachers raced to move into their classrooms while construction was still under way. Installing phones in the classrooms, one technician wandered into the office, confused: “Hey, do you want a phone in that library back there?” It took the office staff a few moments to realize that the technician meant my classroom.

To say that my classroom is overflowing with books now would be an understatement. There is no library corner. The whole room is a library corner. My students are literally surrounded by books (see
Figure A.1
). In fact, we have so many books in the library that all of the large sets of books for share-reading and our after-school book club are shoved in a closet across the hall. When a guest came to my classroom for a visit, my students and I stuffed several crates of books into cabinets in the workroom across the hall because there was no room under my computer table for them. I felt as if I were hiding dirty laundry from my mother-in-law, afraid that my guest would not understand our need to have piles of books all over the place.

FIGURE A.1
:
Our Classroom Library

Plastic bookcases full of fiction line the walls and wrap around the entire room. These shelves contain rows and rows of plastic shoe boxes. I buy these from discount stores when bins are on sale for a dollar apiece and leave the lids at the store. Each book bin contains books, covers facing out. Since our class reading requirements are based on genres, the books are grouped that way. I order the books according to the popularity of genres. The bins start with realistic fiction, then fantasy and historical fiction, then science fiction, mystery, traditional literature, and, finally, poetry. Every few bins sports a computer-generated bookplate with the genre on it as a guide for students who are looking for books.

The bins are numbered, and every book has a sticker on the cover to match the one on the respective bin. The stickers make it possible for students to reshelve books on their own. Each bin is alphabetical—roughly speaking—within its own genre. If there are not enough books for a particular letter of the alphabet to fill up a bin, one holds several letters. When the bin gets full, I add another bin with the same number, and put the overflow books into it. This way, I do not have to renumber all the books whenever our library expands. We have over 100 bins in the class library now.

Milk crates full of nonfiction are stacked on the floor, with science titles in one; history titles in a second; general nonfiction, including how-to books and advice titles in a third; and biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs in a fourth.

Hardcover books don't fit well in plastic shoe boxes; wider than the bin and too heavy, they tip the bins over. One tall wooden bookcase by the windows holds all of the hardcovers in rows two books deep. This bookcase is not in any order, and students cannot see the covers, but I have to make this concession in order to fit all of the books into it. There are a few students who prefer discovering books pulled at random from a bookshelf. I suppose this crazy-quilt assortment meets that need.

One large bookcase by the door holds dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, and other reference books for writing and social studies. The cabinet at the bottom of this shelf holds audiotapes, headphones, and the cataloguing supplies our class librarians and I need to run the library.

Each student in my classes, as well as other library guests, keeps a library card in a file box. When readers check out a book, they record the title, then check off the book when they return it. I use the same cards that librarians use in book pockets for recording due dates. They are available from a library supply company.

As we get more books, I take more personal items or books on pedagogy home to make more room. (Let's not go into my book situation there!) I hide teaching manuals and ancillaries for textbooks away in cabinets behind my desk. I still use them, but I don't want them to take precedence over the books I read with students. Books we will read together; picture books I use to model lessons; delicate, easily damaged books like our Robert Sabuda pop-ups; and novelty books like
Dragonology
and
Egyptology
I keep behind my desk in built-in shelves.

I have purchased every book in our class library with my own money. I cringe a bit admitting that, but I have my reasons. There is not enough money available in school budgets for teachers to develop such extensive libraries. (I talk to many teachers who claim they cannot implement a free-choice reading program in their classroom because they don't have enough books.)

There are personal reasons for me to amass my own collection, too. I am a bit free with my book loans, passing out books to former students, siblings of students, and other teachers, some not even at my school. I have the freedom to do this because these books are mine, and I can loan my books to anyone I want to. If the books in my room were school property, I would never do this, of course. If they were, it would take herculean efforts for me to keep track of the number of books I loan out, and I just cannot devote this much effort to tracking every single book in my room. Yes, books wander off, some for years, but a lot of them wander back. Books from former students wash up in my school mailbox, literary messages-in-a-bottle, with notes apologizing for keeping the books for so long tucked inside.

Furthermore, if I were to change campuses, my library would go with me. No matter what materials I lacked at the new school, I could do without as long as I had my library. This was the case when I changed schools in 2006. I did not have textbooks on the first day of school, but it did not matter; I had my books.

I am not advocating that you purchase books for your own class library, but all teachers spend money on their classroom at one time or another. I never invested in decorations for my classroom; the windows don't have curtains, and there are no motivational posters papering the walls. I chide my students to pick up every pencil they find in the hall so we can have more books!

I do, however, employ methods for getting books that stretch every dollar. I scrounge books from book swaps, discount bookstores, and sales. I often purchase books from garage sales, where books are not big sellers. I frequently walk away with a box of books by offering the seller a few dollars to take the box away. I cull out the books that are worth adding to the library, and take the rest to a book swap later. My students and I buy books from book order companies, who give the ordering teacher points toward purchasing new books. Instead of holiday and teacher appreciation gifts, I encourage students to donate a book to the class library. Students bring me books that they or their siblings don't want anymore, too. I honor the benefactors by designing a computer-generated bookplate with the student's name and the year they were in my class on it.

When making new additions to the library, there are a few things that must be done to the books before they are available for checkout by students. I stamp every book with my name in two places, once inside the cover and once on the outside edge of the pages. I purchased a self-inking stamp from an office supply store for $15. It lasted five years before I had to get it re-inked. Based on the number of books that find their way back to me from the hall, the school library, and other classrooms, the money for this stamp was well spent.

The majority of our books are paperbacks because they are more affordable, but they do not hold up well. In order to extend the life of the library collection, I cover almost every new or used paperback with clear Con-Tact shelf paper, which you can purchase from a big box or discount store such as Wal-Mart. I trim the edges into flaps and fold them around the corners of the book the same way you would cover a textbook with a paper book cover. The vinyl strengthens and protects the book cover from creasing, tearing, and spills. Library supply catalogs sell rigid plastic adhesive-backed covers, but they are expensive, and for classroom use, they're not significantly better than the vinyl. Covering the books is labor-intensive, so I weigh the cost of the book against the labor and material cost of covering it. If I spent less than a dollar on the book, I just stamp it and put it in the library.

I teach my students how to take care of books. I talk to them about propping books open on the spines, describing how the glue breaks and the pages fall out after a while. I also ask them not to dog-ear books by folding the corners over to mark their place, encouraging them to use a bookmark instead. I used to purchase cute little bookmarks from library supply catalogs, but I decided that was a waste of money. My students often personalize their homemade bookmarks, made from index cards or Post-its, with their names or comments about reading—another tiny way to move reading toward their choices instead of mine.

I do not run the checkout or check-in for our library. In the early days of the year, I explain to students that the freedom to choose books and enjoy such a vast library means they have to take responsibility for keeping the library in shape. When we are choosing class jobs for the year, I pick two or three students from each class to serve as class librarians. The class librarians keep the library organized: applying stickers, stamping, and shelving new books. The librarians also make recommendations and serve as guides, helping their classmates find books when I am busy with other students. All students check out and reshelve their own books.

I am constantly digging in the library—helping students find books and pulling books for recommendations during conferences—but every month or so, I spend some time really looking at the library. Which books are in need of repair? Which books don't seem to get checked out? Unread books are an opportunity for a book pass or a book commercial that will expose them to more readers. Which books have I overlooked when making suggestions to children? Which books should be culled due to damage or long use? I also wipe down the books and the bins with antibacterial wipes every now and then. This job is too gross to expect the class librarians to do, and I want to scrutinize our collection. The library withstands heavy use, and that means a lot of hands come into contact with the books.