How could I forget?
I just remembered I used to celebrate #FridayReads with my students. Every week, after independent reading time, we’d talk about our books, maybe tweet a selfie with them, maybe imitate a favorite sentence. It was probably a Friday when we wrote book reviews in the form of haikus. It was a Friday when we became literary critics. That one was epic.
This year we’ve been having Friday discussions. Reading, talking, listening. That’s worked well — we’ve explored many interesting and important issues — but I completely forgot about doing more with our books. Dang it.
No wonder my students are not reading as much as they have in the past.
I won’t play the What/If game, but it’s staring at me in with weary eyes.
This morning I read about the 2019 National Book Award winners, and while I haven’t read any of them, yet; I gulped at the beauty of these lines, shared by one of the winners as she spoke of her mother–
“As a child, I watched her every move, seeing her eyes fall upon every word everywhere — encountered in the grocery store, on a bus, pamphlets, the package labels, my high school textbooks. She was always wolfing down words, insatiable — which is how I learned the ways in which words were a kind of sustenance, could be a beautiful relief or a greatest assault.”
Words. A beautiful relief or a greatest assault.
On this Friday, I think we will start here. We’ll write in response to this idea: How are words both a relief or an assault?
Then, we’ll explore books — in anticipation, and hope, that just maybe one of my readers will fall in love with words.
Amy Rasmussen teaches senior English in a large high school in North Texas. She’s still working on building her classroom library to its former glory, and knows she needs to read more herself if she wants to get every student into a book they will love. Follow her on Twitter @amyrass
Science –
Colored People, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s biography of growing up black in rural West Virginia during the Civil Rights movement. It’s a book that hooks my students because of its ties to our home state, but it’s universally appealing in that Gates creates a colorful cast of characters early on in the book, most of whom he defies in order to graduate summa cum laude from Yale University.
Will in the World, written by everyone’s favorite long-winded Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, brings William Shakespeare to life in this detailed biography of both the playwright and his Elizabethan London. I love reading this book as a shameless English nerd and London-lover, but my students love it because it’s a classic tale of an average guy succeeding against all odds.
Moneyball, one of Michael Lewis’ earliest books, hooks students often because it has a great movie adaptation to accompany it. But when you sit down with the book itself, it blends both narrative and statistics, the least “mathy” part of math that I can understand.
and this week it became a text I was sharing with everyone.
this morning, my eyes were probably a bit wild too, breath bated, satisfied smile projecting my hope that pens would fly across the pages of our “I want Read” lists. Basically, when I book talk, I feel like the author is standing next to me. “Get them interested, Lisa. Get them thinking. Sell it. Put my book in their hands, and hearts, and minds.” 
“Mrs.Dennis,” he said with a coy smile, “you’re super emotional.”
by Hilary Jordan – This text started my summer reading and while it’s justly won acclaim for it’s themes surrounding racial tension in the south, betrayal, and the secrets that can bury a family, I spoke to my classes about the rich voice Jordan is able to give a wide variety of characters. With a new narrator each chapter, you see this story from all angles and each is more personable and heartbreaking than the next.
by Margaret Atwood – I finished this book right before summer break and I book talked it then too. It has quickly become one of my favorites as a cautionary tale and an all too real examination of how gradually, but how drastically people can become complacent to the loss of personal freedom. I took students down a “let’s imagine” path by asking them which events in their daily lives they inadvertently take for granted, but would certainly miss if they were denied the privilege. What if it was the right to have your own money that was denied? Or the right to travel? Or learn?
by Sherman Alexie – This is the first book I read this school year. I took it down in three days and could not stop laughing. I told my students that my connection to this book surprised me, and I think that’s part of the endearing quality of protagonist Junior’s voice. He hooked me with fart jokes. Certainly not my usual forte, but Junior’s search for hope is so real. And as I said to students, we all search for hope in different capacities. Junior searches off the reservation. I search the room during reading time. Just as Shana suggested, 
opportunity/responsibility. With that in mind, showing you are a passionate reader is even more impactful. I feel like my students are getting to know the real me (dork and all). It’s the very best way to start building honest relationships. The kind that build trust, and thereby, community.
Three Teachers Talk 