Literacy Now

Develop a love of reading.

Nurture your reading identity.

Connect personally and deeply with characters and stories.

All these are phrases I have found myself proclaiming to students as a literacy specialist. Understanding the critical importance of devoting time to reading for pleasure, I always charged myself with helping all students see themselves as readers. Equally, as an educator, I always understood the power that modeling can have on learning. However, it was in this area that I found I was not leading by example. This is my story of how I rediscovered my reading identity through friendship, connection, and a lifelong love of reading.

In February, as I was approaching my birthday and setting goals for the year, I suddenly realized I had lost touch with my connection to books. Though I was constantly reading educational research for my doctorate program and buying every professional development book I could to help me learn and grow as an educator, I was no longer the read-for-fun-and-enjoyment reader I had been years before. As a literacy specialist, this went against everything I knew of the importance of reading for enjoyment. So I decided at that moment I wanted to reunite with my dormant reading identity.

Energized by my mission to find great new titles, I woke up on a Saturday morning and sent out a simple tweet asking for any good book recommendations. Soon after, my friend on Twitter, Sean Gaillard, a high school principal and former English teacher, responded with a suggestion. Within the hour, fellow educators Lena Marie Rockwood and Connie Rockow also joined the conversation. Soon we were taking our conversation on books to a group direct message. By that afternoon, though we were states away from one another, we each were at our own local bookstores, messaging together with sheer excitement and joy. Four people who had never met were connected and inspired around the topic of books. Our passion was ignited!

We likened our conversation to a discussion over a virtual cup of coffee. After preparing our lists of must-read books, we decided we would challenge one another to read at least 15 minutes per day and would do a “status check” on Twitter on Sunday evenings. To make it simple, we created the chat hashtag #Read4Fun. We were set! We had our challenge, our book picks, and a date of March 1 to “meet” for the first time. This date, as it soon occurred to us, couldn’t have been more fitting, as it was World Book Day, Read Across America Day, and Dr. Seuss’s birthday! What happened next was pure “Connected Educator Magic!”

Over the week, as we were gathering our books, we had other educators express interest in joining us. When we finally got to our first chat on Sunday, we were amazed—we had hundreds of educators join in, and, within 15 minutes, we were the #1 trending topic! We had educators from all over the world joining us, and, in what felt like a moment, we went from being an inspired group to a truly ignited global community.

Over the months, extraordinary things have continued to happen with our group; it truly has been a life-changing experience. What we found was that teachers, a group who selflessly gives of themselves and constantly encourages children to find a love of reading, had often neglected to make time for themselves. Together as a #Read4Fun community of connected educators, we realized it wasn’t about having time, it was about making time!

This adventure has brought such positivity to a truly deserving group of educators, and we look forward to continuing our journey with #Read4Fun and with books this school year!

All educators are invited to join the #Read4Fun movement and share in our mission to connect with books and reading. Please visit our website for more information. The #Read4Fun “reading heroes” meet on the first and third Sundays of the month at 7:00 p.m. EDT sharing in conversations surrounding books, literacy, and teaching. Also, check out Shelfie Wednesday, where book picks are shared on Twitter and Periscope.

Jennifer Williams is the cofounder of #Read4Fun. As a literacy specialist, she is inspired by the power of books and stories of connection. Connect with her on Twitter and at the #Read4Fun chat hosted by @read4funchat.

Being literate means being able to connect the dots of learning between what we read, what we hear, and what we see. It is actually about how you create connections so that a student understands something and then once they understand it, they can do something with that knowledge. That’s the most important thing, and that’s the leap from learning something to actually become literate in it.
—Marcie Craig Post, executive director, ILA

Recently, I ran across a children’s picture book that echoes Post’s message. Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk is a delightful book telling the journey of Sam, a mouse who lives in a library. Sam discovers he loves not only reading books, but also writing them. Sam starts to leave his stories in the autobiography section and students stumble upon his creations.

The students begin to wonder who wrote the stories, but Sam realizes he cannot tell the students that he, the author, is a mouse. Sam hatches a plan to show both teachers and students that they all are authors. In essence, he helps students connect the dots of learning between what they read to what they can write.

Each year, I want to do exactly what Sam does: I want to show my students that they all are authors and have the ability to “do something with [their] knowledge,” as Post states. Each year brings challenges; already this year I have back-to-school forms that say I have students who do not favor writing. To be honest, most parents say they would like to see their child grow in the area of writing. Writing often is considered the most difficult of language skills to teach. It is a tall mountain to climb, but I know we all can do it.

Writers can be motivated by talking with authors. Discussions can be arranged through Skype in the Classroom. Over the last two years, I’ve invited authors such as Jane Kohuth and Max Kornell and asked them to highlight the writing process as a guide for students as they made their way through the journey. Jane and Max were great resources who drew attention to obstacles and high points. My students referred to their feelings using the same experiences Max or Jane shared. The great advantage here is that Skype is free to use.

When planning, I plan backward. I look at my intended genre or topic and find authors who match. After finding an author, I reach out to him or her to see if he or she is available to talk with my students. Once confirmed, I allow for a week or two to prepare. My preparation includes using read-alouds of that author’s books to promote a more natural discussion.

Of course, I plant question stems such as the following:

• What would you ask the author about this book?
• If you could change one thing in the book what would it be and why?
• If you could add anything to this book what would you add?  

As students share their responses, I write them down frantically so when we get to talk with the author, we will have a bank of questions and responses.

To generate excitement, I have a countdown and talk up the event. I post it on social media and tag the author and publisher to encourage others and to let the author know we are ready. I am also promoting and engaging students about what is to come. When the day arrives, I do a quick walk-through of what will happen. I remind students of their question stems and responses so when the author opens the floor for questions, my students are ready.

For those who cannot use Skype, turn that challenge into an opportunity to explore other social media platforms. Twitter allows students to connect to a myriad of sources; most authors and publishers have Twitter accounts. I created a class account for us to use to connect successfully with authors and publishers.

What are you waiting for? It is time to connect the dots between authors and students and then “do something with it.”

Allison Hogan is a primer teacher at The Episcopal School of Dallas in Texas where she teaches kindergarten and first grade. She holds a bachelor’s in communications from the University of North Florida and a graduate degree in education from Southern Methodist University, where she specialized in reading and English as a Second Language. She has been recognized as both an Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader and a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future. She can be found on Twitter at @AllisonHoganESD or @PrimerESD.

I am sitting next to Meg Cabot eating chicken. The conversation is going well. I’m totally playing it cool, like I have no idea she’s a bestselling author. I even get a little piece of parsley stuck between my teeth, you know, to solidify my “we are just two regular chicks chatting over chicken” routine. She says something about her books, and I say, “Oh, are you a writer?”

She smiles graciously. “Yes, I am.”

“Cool, what do you write about?” I ask, throwing back a swig of tea.

“Oh, princesses,” she says.

“That’s awesome,” I say without missing a beat. “Are they published?”

“Yes,” she says.

“I should totally look those up,” I say and move on to my potatoes.

I could chock my wonderful performance up to the fact that I’m a trained actress, but that would be dishonest. My spot-on “I don’t know you are rich and famous” performance actually comes from the fact that I don’t know she is rich and famous. I guess I should have put two and two together. A man in a tuxedo led me to this reserved table at the front of the banquet hall. I am at the ILA 2015 Conference to receive the ILA Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for Beauty of the Broken, and Meg Cabot is scheduled to speak at this luncheon. So when this beautiful, poised, funny woman sitting beside me introduced herself to me as Meg, I should have said, ”A-ha! This is Meg Cabot, writer of the gazillion dollar-earning Princess Diaries.” But I didn’t. I didn’t because this whole weekend has been overwhelmingly hard to believe, so I seem to be coping by subconsciously deciding not to believe it. I feel like Dorothy transported to Oz, muttering, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” ad nauseam. I think I may be suffering from a mild shock.

It all started when I arrived at the Four Seasons in St. Louis after a two-day road trip from Minneapolis. My publisher, Simon & Schuster, had offered to fly me in for the event, but I wanted to bring my friend Polyxeni, you know, for moral support, so I wouldn’t make an idiot of myself in front of Meg Cabot or anything. Polyxeni is a book buyer for the St. Paul Library System, and from the minute I found out I won the ILA award, she told me it was a big deal. A huge deal. A life-changing deal. So did Simon & Schuster. So did my agent, Andy Ross. I didn’t believe any of them.

“Last year’s winner was Rainbow Rowell,” Polyxeni said slowly over coffee. “Do you get that? Rainbow Rowell?”

I nodded. Sure, I knew who Rainbow Rowell was. Who didn’t? What did that have to do with me?

“Her book is being made into a Pixar movie now! This award changes the career trajectory of everyone who wins it!” Polyxeni enthused.

I wondered why she was being so pushy. And why was she using big words like “trajectory”? Did she think I was a scientist or something? Show off. Suffice it to say, out of self-preservation, I decided to miss the point. I think it was because I had been a struggling artist for so many decades, the thought of all that changing seemed impossible to me. I didn’t want to get my hopes up only to find them dashed. It was easier not to believe.

We arrived in St. Louis looking just about like people who have been driving and eating Pringles for two days should look, which is to say, dead shmexy. I knew Simon & Schuster was going to be putting me up at the Four Seasons, but I didn’t know what that meant. I guessed Four Seasons was sort of like Holiday Inn—nice, clean, probably no roaches in the showers. When we walked through the doors, I thought four things:

1. Now I know what the phrase “smells like money” means.
2. Maybe I should have put on a fresh T-shirt, one without the Jaws emblem.
3. Is everything here made out of actual marble, or is that pen faux marble?
4. I hope that minivan-sized chandelier doesn’t fall on my head.

After checking in, Polyxeni and I stepped onto the elevator. “Why do you have to put your key in?” she whispered.
“To keep the riffraff out,” I said. “Which is weird, because until now, I was the riffraff.”
We laughed and rode the elevator to the 15th floor where a beautiful woman was waiting for us with our luggage (a very stained polka-dotted roll-along and an army green duffel bag). She showed us around our room, making sure to point out the television hidden in the bathroom mirror, just in case we wanted to watch Seinfeld reruns while we were freshening up, after which she offered to bring up bath salts and bubble bath, should we decide to take advantage of the amenities. She pointed at the marble encased tub, as if we could miss it. The bathtub was roughly the size of the Aegean Sea. I suddenly understood why rich people so often drowned in their bathtubs. I asked Polyxeni if she had brought our life jackets. She hadn’t. We decided to take our chances with the drowning and said yes to the bath salts.

After the woman left, Polyxeni and I glanced around our room in awe, commenting on the St. Louis Arch glinting in the sun just outside our window. Then we flopped on the giant bed at its center.

“It feels like a cloud!” Polyxeni giggled. She was right. It did. I was pretty sure we’d been transported to heaven. We bumbled around for a bit, smelling shampoos and tasting pillow mints and acting like a scene from The Beverly Hillbillies.

That night, Polyxeni and I went to the hotel restaurant for a celebratory dinner. Our waitress was a lovely girl. She seemed to know who I was. As she poured my champagne, she called me Ms. Waters with a sort of reverence I am not used to. Sometimes, my community college students would say my name that way at the end of a semester, when they deserved an “F” and wanted a “C”. But this felt sincere. During the course of dinner, every waiter in the restaurant came to meet me. They brought me a little dessert plate that had “Congratulations” written on it in chocolate. Polyxeni assured me that she hadn’t told them about my award. That’s when I started to think that maybe, just maybe, Polyxeni and Simon & Schuster and my agent hadn’t been lying when they said this award was a big deal.

The next day’s events were even more surreal. I had a signing at 1 pm. Beauty of the Broken was released almost a year ago. I have pretty much been on book tour since then. I am not new to signings. I have signed books all over the USA, in coffee shops and bookstores and libraries and schools. What I have learned about book signings is that they are very unpredictable things. Sometimes, 50 people show up (if you are signing in your hometown). Sometimes, two people show up, and you take them out for wine and Chinese food because you are embarrassed they bothered to show up when no one else did. So I warned Polyxeni at lunch. “Don’t expect much from the signing. I’m not sure people will show up.”

“Oh, they’ll show up. Trust me,” she said. Poor Polyxeni. She just didn’t understand the nuances of the publishing business.

Or maybe she did. The second I sat down to sign, a line formed. A long line. It stretched out of sight. People gushed as I signed their books.

“You’re my daughter’s favorite author. I can’t believe I get to meet you!”

“Make it out to my wife! She’s your biggest fan!”

“Can I get a picture with you?”

I handled all of this with the grace and dignity of a seasoned author, which is to say, I didn’t throw up on anyone. After 20 minutes, we had to end the signing, not because the line had dwindled, but because we ran out of books. I don’t know how many books we had to start with, but I can tell you we had bunches. Bunches and bunches. I walked away dazed. Again, it occurred to me that this award might actually mean something. Could it be that my career was really going to change?

That night, Simon & Schuster hosted a “family dinner,” which meant that they brought a handful of really cool marketing people and authors together in a posh restaurant and fed them amazing food. (Full disclosure: I had never been invited to a Simon & Schuster family dinner before.) It was beautiful. I ordered steak and three glasses of champagne because I could. (I noticed another author ordered four neat whiskeys, so I figured I was OK.) After we were well into the main course, Candice, the extraordinary library and marketing person who had organized the event, suggested we go around the table and introduce ourselves. We did. Everyone said his or her name, the title of his or her latest book, and the name of his or her editor. When my turn came, I said just those things. Candice looked at me expectantly. “Don’t you have something else to tell them?” she asked. What was she talking about? I looked at her blankly.

“Your award?” she prodded. “I think we can tell them even though it’s a secret. No one will say anything.”

My award? It was a big enough deal that I could say it to this room full of important people and expect them to be impressed? “Well, Beauty of the Broken won the ILA Book Award for Young Adult Fiction,” I said, feeling almost sheepish, expecting everyone to nod politely and go back to nibbling cheeses. I probably will never forget that moment as long as I live. The expressions on the faces at the table changed. They were impressed. Amazed, even. Everyone clapped and congratulated me.

“Thank you,” I said, learning to love the attention.

And then, a bunch of naked guys rode by the window on bikes and stole my thunder. No, I’m not making this up. There was a nude bike rally in St. Louis that night, and it happened to pass the restaurant where we were eating. Everyone forgot my award, ran to the window, and started shrieking, “Oh, my god! Did you see his—?” (Side note: If you ever want to be cured of the demon of lust, watch a naked bike rally.) Which made me go, “Ok, now I get it! This is a dream!” But it wasn’t a dream. I don’t think. Maybe it was. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet.

The next day, I accepted my award shortly after I realized who Meg Cabot was. “Oh, my god! You’re that Meg!” I said, looking at the giant screen behind us, onto which was projected a God-sized picture of Meg, along with photos of her zillion best-selling novels.

“Yes,” she laughed.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I feel so dumb.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I get tired of that other stuff anyway.”

I don’t know if I will ever be Meg Cabot. I don’t know if I will ever get enough of this “other stuff” to get tired of it. Right now, two days after coming home from the ILA Conference, I’m still blown away that any of that “other stuff” is coming my way at all. Already, people care about Beauty of the Broken in a way they never have. People I don’t know are tweeting about me. I’ve already been asked to speak at a major conference. Facebook, the litmus test of all that is good and likable in this world, tells me that people like me way more than they did two weeks ago. And this is just the beginning.

After the banquet, I attended a panel where a brilliant professor taught people how to teach Beauty of the Broken in the classroom. I looked down at the worksheet she handed me, taking in phrases like “feminist critique” and “Marxist analysis” in relation to my characters. Stay with me here: Those weird little figments of my imagination are now going to be used to torture high school and college students everywhere. Someday, a few months from now, a year from now, some poor NYU freshman will be popping NoDoz, analyzing the socioeconomic implications of Iggy’s quilt. “Why do you think the author used Iggy’s quilt so often in the text?” some well-meaning teacher will ask, and the student will write an essay about this, a terrible essay, an essay that mixes up “you’re” and “your” and postulates that Iggy’s quilt is a symbol of the various facets of bourgeois oppression in the 21st century.

And I will be sitting at home saying, “Ha, suckers! The author used Iggy’s quilt so much because she knew she needed to write a few physical details to help readers visualize the scene, and she was way too hopped up on caffeine to think of anything fresh, so she referenced the dumb blanket again!”

Maybe I shouldn’t write that down. Maybe I should just pretend I meant all the profound things students will someday say I meant. Thanks to ILA, I am a serious writer. But the transition is hard.

After all, up until now, I was the riffraff.

Tawni Waters won the ILA 2015 Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Award for Young Adult Fiction for Beauty of the Broken. This was reposted with permission from the Andy Ross Literary Agency’s blog.

Want to stop a room in its tracks?

When the conversation slows, say this: “When I was in middle school, I read one entire wall of our library. The fiction wall. A to Z.”

Mouths will drop open. Faces will register both suspicion and respectful awe. Skeptical voices will ask, “But how big was the library?”

I always think, “Does it matter?”

There were eight fiction bookcases, floor to ceiling. I remember the exact position of the green bindings of the Nancy Drew books—about halfway across the wall, filling the bottom three shelves. Beverly Cleary’s books were near the door; one entire shelf was devoted to her work, and sometimes it spilled over onto the next. I remember convincing our librarian that I needed to check out more than my allotted three books at a time on the weekends. (She agreed to bend the rules.)

I brought a book with me everywhere. Family gatherings, car rides, dinners out. My parents were alternately annoyed and proud.

Yet, inexplicably, when my seventh-grade English teacher asked us to write a book report each quarter, I was annoyed. One lousy book report? Only one? My biggest problem was how to choose my favorite. It was like trying to choose between my children. How could I possible pick just one?

So, unable to choose, I did what I knew was the right thing to do. I invented a book. I wrote two pages in response to my imaginary book, front and back, entirely in the required and proper format. Title. Author. Plot summary. Main character descriptions. Theme.

When the day came to turn them in, I passed my work—neatly stapled, with the fuzzy notebook edges cut off —forward in the stack with the others. I held my breath.

Then I waited.

I dreamed of two scenarios:

One, the teacher wouldn’t notice at all, proving I was a genius at writing fiction. She would ask me to bring her this book so she could read it herself, without even knowing she had been duped. When I explained, she would gasp, clutch her heart and tell me I needed to write this book. I owed it to readers everywhere.

Two, she would immediately recognize the book as a fake, but encourage me to take my place among the great fiction writers of the day. Surely this book, once finished, belonged on the shelf next to Blume and Cleary.

Ah, but my work went unnoticed. I’m sure it was placed in the “completed and formatted correctly” pile, graded accordingly, and passed back with a scratch-and-sniff sticker attached.

Meanwhile, we completed grammar workbook pages and diagrammed sentences. We memorized the list of prepositions.

But never once did we talk in class about what we read. Reading was a quiet, isolated activity.

That was then, this is now. (Yes, that reference is intentional.)

I’m so thankful that my own middle-schooler now lives in the world of real reading. The authentic reading world we learn of from the likes of Donalyn Miller, Kelly Gallagher, Doug Fisher, and Teri Lesesne. Talking about what we read is expected, especially during class. Nonfiction reading is encouraged and celebrated. Reading is meant to inspire. 

Although my students and my own children may not ever read an entire wall of a library, I know they read widely and voraciously. They compare and contrast book characters and genres. They debate authors’ plot choices.

Authors have become their heroes—and rightly so.

Julie Scullen is a former president of the Minnesota Reading Association and Minnesota Secondary Reading Interest Council and is a current member of the International Literacy Association Board of Directors. She taught most of her career in Secondary Reading Intervention classrooms and now serves as Teaching and Learning Specialist for Secondary Reading in Anoka-Hennepin schools in Minnesota, working with teachers of all content areas to foster literacy achievement. She teaches graduate courses at Hamline University in St. Paul in literacy leadership and coaching, as well as reading assessment and evaluation.

I have long been a lover of children's books, particularly picture books. A wise man, Mr. Mimi, learned quickly that I cannot be trusted with a debit card and long stretches of free time in Barnes & Noble. I am not alone. One of my favorite things to bring when I visit schools is a new and exciting title. If I have come to understand anything about teachers in my role as a literacy consultant, it is that all teachers love new books. (I have found that teachers' love of new books is second only to their love of fantastic pens and book lists. These are primary reasons why I am proud to call myself a teacher.)

I thought I had reached the peak of my love for picture books—and then. Oh, and then! I was asked to write a unit of study focused on the reading of wordless texts or texts whose stories are told primarily through pictures. Friends, I kid you not when I say I fell harder and more in love with picture books over those few weeks. Not only are they beautiful, but also their rich images (with or without words to accompany them) allow an even broader range of students to engage with and access text. Even as I type those words, I know they don’t make sense logically on the page, but they came to life for me when I shared a few pages of Kate DiCamillo's Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, a graphic novel, with a group of third graders. For many, the text was quantitatively too difficult. However, as we dug into the images on the page, these kids blew my mind with their insights into the story. And it wasn't just the ideas they shared, it was the confidence with which they shared them that truly took me by surprise.

There are a number of books that I hold dear to my heart and that I want to share with children. They include titles that make me laugh, make me think, or just make me happy. If I'm honest, most, if not all, of these stories are told primarily through words. Many could be considered traditional in their format. These books represent what I love, but not what every student loves. Perhaps graphic novels get some students excited about reading, for others it is biography, and others still prefer informational articles.

I spend a lot of time talking with teachers. I also spend a lot of time listening to teachers. Frequently, I hear the same titles mentioned over and over. I hear the same conversation pooh-poohing trendy humorous series and condemning graphic novels as "frivolous." I am not here to slam teachers. I am here to gently nudge you outside of your comfort zone and to suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should focus more on what makes students excited to read instead of what we think they should be reading.

Mrs. Mimi, aka Jennifer Scoggin, is a teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.