For the past few years, I have felt something was lacking in my English classroom. I had been working steadily on improving my students writing, and I felt I was making the right moves in that department.
Still, neither my students nor I could get engaged in my reading program. I always aspired to be the teacher with the cool books, but I had neither the book knowledge nor the funds to improve.
That's an odd statement to make. Not having the book knowledge? I graduated with honors in English from a semi-large state university, but I still felt I was missing something. I knew a lot about the classics, and I enjoyed them. I appreciated their style and structure and I wanted to share this with my students. However, I have learned that over analyzing kills a book, especially for reluctant readers. It wasn't fun for them, so it became less enjoyable for me.
As Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm, educators and authors of Reading Don't Fix No Chevys (2002), explain, I needed to give the students more of an immediate experience with the books. That means the book has to relate personally to the student--right now. Several classroom structures exist to help this happen, and I began using those. Still, I needed more.
I decided I'd better start reading. It sounds strange to say that I had stopped reading, but it was true. I busied myself with paperwork, class work, daily obligations. I loved reading stories when I was a kid, and that's what I needed to do.
After visiting ALA's Teen Reading Week website, I was impressed with their book list. I decided I'd create something similar, with a twist. The interactive graphic organizer, The Matrix, is a list of books cross-referenced by themes with other books through hotlinks. Future plans include adding links to external sites (other than Barnes and Noble and dictionary.com) so that students can find other electronic communications about their books. I would also like to devise a way for students to provide their input regarding the books and the site itself, like a discussion thread.
Building this website is my theory that you don't need money to start conversations about texts, but you do need to invest time--reading books, selling them to your students, and taking recommendations.
