When Miller described her daughter in the introduction, it reminded me of me in middle school as the Twilight series hit its peak of popularity.  However, I saw myself more in Miller predicting the likely future of her daughter’s friends.  The friends who will eventually grow up and stop reading for pleasure as life will get in the way and school will suck the fun out of reading.  

Ideas that are resonating with me but am also afraid of is the fake reader.  When observing my own classroom one day, I am sure that I will be able to spot a fake reader or two.  The challenge and fear, come from not knowing how to address the student so that they will continue reading but not view reading as a form of punishment.  

However, I really am looking forward to teaching reading and mixing it up.  My personal reading habits consist mostly of short articles found on the web and magazines.  In school, when I get to pick, I stick to short stories.  In my classroom, I am hoping to avoid workbooks but rather encourage actual books.  Students should have the freedom to choose what they read at levels appropriate for themselves.  Ideally, I would rotate books in my classroom library so if I wanted students to read a book with a particular theme, the library would books with a common theme.   Students could pick whatever book they wanted and would never have to know that their books all have the same underlying theme.  By doing this, I believe classroom discussion will be diverse and interesting to see how books connect to one another.

No fish, no food to cook

But indeed there is a hook.

Prayers cannot save her dying mother,

Still needing to escape her father.

No jewels nor broken kitchen,

No stepmonsters sneaking

But rather a godmother to be witching.

Hi, I’m Paige O’Callaghan Jones and I love learning. It’s true! I’ve always loved school and have always known that I’ve wanted to be a teacher. I am a sophomore here at Chico State with a major in Liberal Studies and a minor in Special Education. I have one teacher in my family, my aunt. She’s taught in private primary schools, middle school English courses and after sometime as a principal a private school in California, recently moved and became a principal in a private school in Portland, Oregon.

What it means to be a teacher is someone who always has a book in their hand, who’s reading it for pleasure and for academic reasons. Outside of school, I read pop culture magazines, both paper copies and online. Something I took away from reading the article was that choice is very important when it comes to reading. Choice keeps students engaged and usually driven by passion.