With Gratitude to the Book Love Foundation

At the end of the 2018 school year I was notified that I had been selected as a Book Love Foundation Grant recipient. To say that I was excited would be a HUGE understatement. There is not much that I love more than adding new books to our classroom library. You might be familiar with this quote from Erasmus, “When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.” That’s pretty much me.

In our reading intervention classroom, I challenge students to read 40 books each year in a variety of genres (many thanks to the Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller). This allows them to figure out what they like and who they are as readers. I’m deeply saddened by the number of middle school students we have who don’t yet know themselves as readers (or worse...in so many cases, identify themselves as NONreaders). The Book Love Foundation grant allowed me to purchase multiple copies of students’ favorite graphic novels, series books, novels in verse, and nonfiction titles. I also chose picture books to use as read alouds. Other recommendations came from my Twitter and Goodreads reading communities.

I have never been more sure that we need to include Social Emotional Learning in our classrooms. Whether it’s hearing that students have disrespected a substitute teacher of a different race, bullied another student who doesn’t look or act like they do, or said repeatedly that something “is gay”, it is clear that we have some major work to do. While students are in our care, we need to model and inspire within them empathy and compassion. I believe that outside of our own actions, the best place to start building that empathy is in the reading of fiction. Fiction allows students to grapple with difficult issues within the safety of the pages of books. Students need opportunities to think about, write about, and have conversations about people and places that are different from themselves. Because if we’ve “met” people who are not like us in books, it’s not such a big deal when we encounter them in person. It is critical for teachers to have large, inclusive classroom libraries, and that students are given time each day to read books that they choose.

In 2017, having been inspired by Jarred Amato, I began a Project LIT Community chapter in our building. The Book Love Foundation grant allowed me to purchase multiple copies of several of the Project LIT Book Club choices. (I’ve included the photo so that you can check out the community, and take a look at the outstanding books that are being read and discussed by students, teachers, and community members in 48 states!). I am so proud of the conversations that our students have around these books, and continue to be amazed by the authors who create these important stories and support our students in so many ways.

I can’t tell you how much the Book Love Foundation has improved my classroom library for our students and book-loving staff members!

So how can you get involved? You can check out the Book Love Summer Book Club here.

This will be my second summer participating. Here’s how it works:
     1. We read and discuss four different titles with teachers all over the world.
     2. The money donated provides the grants that are used to spread the book
         love to classroom libraries.
     3. Everybody wins!

Many thanks to Penny Kittle for writing Book Love and starting the Book Love Foundation. And thanks to all of the participants who help fund the grants that impact so many students and classrooms! Please know that you are making a difference!

For the Teachers

Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible. Our job as educators is to make a difference in the lives of our young people. We have the responsibility of shaping what our communities, and by extension our nation, will look like in the future. Teachers understand that ALL kids are OUR kids. Starting on Day 1, we learn about them. We talk with them. We listen to them. We let them get to know us. We find out which teams they are on and go to their games/matches. We chaperone dances, we help out during tryouts, and we sponsor clubs and activities. And this doesn’t stop just because they are no longer in our classrooms. Once they move on to the next grade, they are still OUR kids. Because at the end of the day, we’re not teaching a set of objectives, a unit, or even a curriculum. We are investing in our collective future.        

Teaching is challenging for innumerable reasons that people outside the profession just cannot understand (even if they claim that they do).

There is ALWAYS a new initiative.

There is ALWAYS another meeting.

There is ALWAYS another deadline.

There is always, ALWAYS testing. 

SO. 
MUCH. 
TESTING. 

(They should really tell our preservice teachers how much time they will spend watching students look at computer screens.)

And while we love the kids (because we wouldn’t be here otherwise), they’re KIDS. They act accordingly.

Picture it...

I’ve had to stop keeping hand sanitizer in plain sight because they have figured out ways to weaponize it. I spend my own money on classroom library books, bins, and labels, and the students love nothing more than peeling off those labels and/or defacing the books. Picture the sheer panic when our community volunteer comes in to read with 6^th graders, and I’m trying to hide the books with the anatomically inaccurate drawings in them. They sit on wooden bookshelves and break them. They hide each other’s chromebooks. They steal candy (and pens, pencils, and books). And quite often, they do the exact opposite of what I’ve just asked them to do.

But, you know what else?

They see me in the stands at the track meet and come over for a hug or high-five. They seek me out in the hallway in the morning to tell me about the books that they’re reading. They trust me with things that are going on in their lives at school and at home. And on very rare occasions, they write me amazing letters from high school telling me that I had a positive impact on their lives; that something that I did or said mattered to them.  

We know that teachers don’t go into this profession for the money, or for the “summers off”. Teaching is a calling. We do it because we believe in our students and we truly hope that what we do makes a difference. As Pernille Ripp stated in her book, Passionate Readers, "Teaching would be so much easier if we could see the influence that the learning may have on a child, but most of the time we do not. We can only plant the seeds that hopefully will grow into something bigger than even we could imagine.”   

For ALL the teachers...

I see you. 

I value what you do each and every day. 

I believe that you make a difference.

Thank you. 🍎