All Teachers Need to Read This Book: Book Love by Penny Kittle

So, while Penny Kittle is not presenting an original idea and admits that throughout her book with research from other professionals, she is putting forth an edict which all teachers and schools need to abide by. We need our students to love and enjoy reading. We need them to find their reading niche and passion. We need our students to read, a lot, especially if they are to be prepared for the rigor of the reading expectations in college and beyond. We need our students to read books they love, that keep them hooked. As educators, we need to challenge ourselves in how we think about teaching reading. The classics are just that, classics. While some of our students will enjoy and understand those masterpieces of literature, many of our students will hate the classics and not be able to comprehend them. So, why force students to do something they won’t and can’t enjoy? Neuroscience research tells us this is the wrong way to teach. So, why are we doing it? We need to stop. We need to help our students find books they enjoy, that challenge them and get them hooked on reading. We need to read books ourselves, as teachers. We need to talk about books and create a school culture that embraces reading. Penny Kittle’s Book Love is an important read in this digital age where our students are losing the ability to read deeply. We need to bring them back into the fold. We can’t force feed our students books we think they need to read. We need to change the way we teach reading, now.

It’s About Volume Not Quality When it Comes to Reading

It wasn’t until the sixth grade when my Language Arts Teacher employed the Reader’s Workshop method of reading instruction that I started to enjoy reading. I remember being so excited to purchase and read Matilda by Roald Dahl. I loved to read. Then in high school when I had no choice in what I had to read, I began to not like reading again. I used Cliff Notes to get through reading assessments in high school. My teachers forced me to read books that they thought I should read. They never thought about me as a student or reader. They never questioned if I was reading or enjoying what I was reading. Luckily, I had a teacher that made me read Catcher in the Rye at the right time in my life. I was hooked. Thus began my life-long love for reading. What about our students? What about my son? How can we make sure that the next generation of students have a love for reading?

In reading Book Love by Penny Kittle, I realize how important it is that all teachers make use of a Reader’s Workshop approach to reading. She uses specific examples and research from great educators to make her point. It’s not about what books the students are reading, it’s about how many. If they are only reading four books a year, even if all of them are considered classics, that’s far from enough. Usually more than 75% of the students will not engage with those books and not actually read them anyway. Thus, we create a generation of non-readers. Is that what we want? No, of course not. We want our students to read and love doing so. So, we can’t force our students to read specific books, but we can help guide them to the right books for them by giving them choices. All English teachers need to strike a balance between whole-novel instruction and independent reading. Our students need to read books that interest them.

I taught my son in the sixth grade two years ago. This May he just finished his seventh grade year and so I asked him which approach to reading he enjoyed more. I told him to be honest, which is not difficult for him. Did you like the Reader’s Workshop approach to reading or the approach used in the seventh grade where you had to read three books all together as a class. His response, “I loved being able to choose my books.” I wasn’t surprised of course by his answer, but it just goes to show that when our sixth grade students leave our class, they almost all love reading because they have been given options and choices. They are in charge of their reading and they love that independence. Then, when they move up through the grades, they have no choice in what they read. They have to read specific novels at the same pace as their classmates. What if they don’t enjoy those books? What if they can’t read that fast? What if they need more time to process what they are reading? Will they begin to not like reading? Will they give up and go online to read the SparkNotes version of the books? I hope not, but unfortunately most of them do and will. We need to continue to help our students grow the passion they foster in the sixth grade throughout the rest of their middle school years.

So, when I finish Book Love I’m going to pass it on to as many teachers as possible to spread the love and help them realize the value of choice when it comes to reading for our students. Hopefully this will help ignite the spark within others. It’s not about which famous books our students read but about how many books they read that they truly enjoy. Let’s get them hooked.