Becoming Part of the Reading Community

by Lesley Roessing

I considered myself to be a very involved middle-level ELA reading teacher. I loved to read, and I loved to share books with my students. I book-talked books that I read and thought some of my readers would enjoy reading. I continually focused on making the match between readers and books.

Once a week I placed books across the ledge of my white board, labeled them “Roessing Recommendations,” and encouraged students to “gallery walk” and browse through the books on their way to their seats. I urged students to sign up for the last five minutes of class to share books that they read, enjoyed, and thought others may want to read. Students wrote reviews of their books and added them to our ever-expanding “Roessing’s Readers’ Reviews” binder that sat on the library shelf for students who might be looking for suggestions. Books were front and center in my classroom, and I thought we had become a real reading community. I was valuing my readers and their reading choices and recommendations.

Then one day Jessie raised her hand. “Mrs. Roessing, have you read Twilight? I am reading it, and I think you would like it.”

I smiled. “What’s it about, Jess?”

“Vampires.”

My smile faded. Vampires? Not in the least bit interested. Not even a little. I tried to look interested, happy that she was still reading her copy and that we didn’t have any copies in our classroom library, giving me an excuse to not read it.

I had read, and was reading, quite a lot of Young Adult literature and appreciated most of these novels, but I read the types of books I liked—historical fiction, relationships, street life, romance, a little science fiction, multicultural, adversity novels… I stayed away from genres I didn’t think I liked—mystery, adventure, and especially fantasy although I did stock those shelves in our classroom library for my students and bought books I thought they would like to read.

I went home and read about Twilight (At that time, this was only title in what would become a four-book series). I learned that Stephanie Meyer would be speaking two weekends later at the National Book Festival, an annual event in Washington, D.C. I attended each year. I told the class that I would make sure to see her at the Festival and bring back intel. And that I did, listening intently to the author speak and copiously taking notes about unfamiliar characters.

I stood in front of my class Monday morning, reading from my Saturday jottings. “Do you know characters named the Cullens?”

At least half the girls in my class nodded. “Ms. Meyer said that they are more like her own parents than Bella’s parents are.” Readers smiled.

“Someone named Edward?” Heads nodded vigorously, and I swear I heard sighs. Having no idea what that meant, I looked at my notes. “The author said that her husband thinks Edward was patterned after him, but he really was not.” They all laughed, as had the Festival audience, I laughed too, not getting the joke. I went on, feeling that I had fulfilled my duty to Jessie.

A week later she came up to me and handed me her book. “Here you are, Mrs. Roessing. I can’t wait to hear what you think.”

Inwardly I groaned. I’m not going to be able to get out of this. I am going to have to read this novel about—vampires!

During our daily 25-minute reading workshop independent reading time, I usually conferred with students for 15 minutes, chatting informally about the books they were reading and fitting in 4-5 conferences—unless I needed to hold a small-group lesson for ten minutes, leaving me with 2 individual chats.  Then I sat down and read a book for ten minutes so that my students could see an adult reading and realize that I truly believed having time to read is valuable and important. This was not a show; I was reading a book, sometimes YA literature and, at other times, adult literature. Many of my students had never seen an adult read voluntarily and were amazed that I was reading when, as the teacher, I was not obliged to.

Jess handed me her book, and after my conferences, I settled down in a camp chair and began to read. That day students had to pull the book away from me so we could have our whole-class 5-minute sharing time. The next day I read Twilght, that weekend I read Twilight, and the day I finished it, I drove to the bookstore to buy the sequel, New Moon, which had just come out—for me, also purchasing two copies for the classroom library.

The following day before class began I babbled with the eighth graders who had read Twilight, becoming not just a teacher who read and encouraged her students to read but a part of our reading community.

The next time a student recommended that I read a book, he wrote in in his journal. “Mrs. Roessing, you should read The Five People You Meet I Heaven. Then we can talk about it!”

Oh, no, a book about religion. I had not read Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie. Again I sighed and picked up the book from John’s desk. Somehow I will get through this. Long story short—wonderful book, so well-written that the copy I eventually bought myself has sticky notes all through, marking mentor passages for writing about setting and characters.

Not all students recommended that I read their books; some did, and some didn’t. However, I read all the books that readers specifically asked me to read. Over the years, as my readers followed my counsel, “After you read three books in a genre, just try another genre. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read that genre again” and discovered books they didn’t think they would enjoy, I encountered books and genres that I would have never have read on my own. Some I liked, and some I didn’t—just like any real reader. But I expanded my reading and found, and appreciated, new genres that surprised me—just as my students were doing.

I learned two things through these incidents: first, if I expect students to try new genres and authors and topics, I must be willing to do the same, and second, I needed to truly become part of the reading community I was building in my classroom and not merely suggest books to readers, to let students recommend books not only to other students but to me as a fellow reader. I had been valuing the reading choice of my readers for themselves but not for me.

Lesley Roessing was a middle-level ELA and Humanities teacher for 20 years before moving south to become Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and Sr. Lecturer in the College of Education at Armstrong State University where she designed and teaches a class in Bibliotherapy (and reads along with her students). She is the author of four books for teachers on reading, writing, and commas—The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension, No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect, Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core, and Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed; The Sentences They Saved. One of her goals these days is to read as many YA novels as Sarah J. Donovan.