Read part one here.

You believe “Reading is both a cognitive and emotional journey.” Can you speak to this idea?  

At one level, reading is a skill that can be taught and learned. How to locate information, analyze a plot, or decode vocabulary — these reading skills are necessary and can be learned. Everyone who is literate has these skills to some degree. Beyond reading skills, we cannot overlook or discount reading’s emotional, spiritual, and intellectual value — discovering things about ourselves and the world that we didn’t know, learning from the accomplishments and failures of others, inspiring action, and expanding our knowledge. If children do not develop this aesthetic connection to reading, they won’t see reading as anything but a skill. I believe that basic literacy is important, of course, but I think education should do more than teach workplace applicable skills. Education should teach students to question and provide them with the tools they need to find their own answers.  

How might a teacher with a heavily scheduled day find time to add in independent reading?  

I know that there is never enough time to teach what we are expected to teach under the time constraints given. I get it. If I cannot find evidence-based and research-proven reasons for using a particular activity or tool, I don’t use it. I don’t have time to waste on activities that don’t benefit students’ growth as readers, writers, and thinkers. I take the minimum number of grades my district requires. There is no busy work. We read. We write. We share and talk about reading and writing. That is it. It is very liberating, actually.

I suggest that all teachers critically evaluate every activity they are doing to determine whether or not it moves students toward independence or just more school. Independent reading has more influence on students’ long-term reading achievement than any other activity. Why would we put it last? I recommend that students read every day for a minimum of 15 minutes. Divide your class into thirds-1/3 for independent reading and conferences, 1/3 for mini-lesson and guided practice, and 1/3 for more reading and more writing.  

Catching the reading bug: I loved hearing about all the ways your kids bring reading into their everyday lives. Tell us about your student who once read in the shower!  

Ah, that was Molly. She was desperately trying to finish a book, but her mom kept calling down the hall for her to get in the shower. Realizing that she couldn’t hold off her mom until she finished the book, Molly held the book out of the shower to keep it dry and kept reading it.  

You have an extensive classroom library largely run by your students. I’m curious if you find certain titles “have legs” — seem to wander away more so than others. In my room my Shel Silverstein and Sara Holbrook poems had to be replaced often. What about you?  

When I taught middle school, the books that “walked” the most were Smile by Raina Telgemeir, the Skeleton Creek series, Bone graphic novels, Clique by Lisi Harrison, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, and innumerable copies of The Hunger Games and The Lightning Thief. I imagine that many of these books are sitting on shelves in a former student’s home. I hope they are. Every once in awhile, a younger sibling returns books that were discovered. I enjoy reading the apology notes attached. I think my books have more adventurous lives than I do.  

When I taught I hosted an annual Book Auction. Kids would donate books they no longer wanted. I gave all my students five “dollars,” whether they donated or not, and those who donated got an extra dollar for each title they brought in. At the end of the day, everyone went home with a pile of new-to-them books. What are some other creative ways a teacher might get books in kids’ hands?  

I love your book auction idea. We held school-wide book swaps at my previous school. Students and families donated books and received coupons for each title. During the swap, kids could take home a book for every coupon. We gave away extra coupons, so that every child had one. Extra books were donated to charity book drives.  

As I read The Book Whisperer, I kept wondering if you’d read Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader. And you have! Which of these rights do you think are hardest for kids to embrace? For teachers?

For students, it’s hard for them to see these rights as normal reading behaviors. They have been told by adults that skipping pages, abandoning books, rereading favorites, and not reading sometimes are negative behaviors. We spend a lot of time during the early weeks of school discussing these rights and sharing our experiences with them. For teachers, I think that accepting times when students just don’t feel like reading is normal. When a student actively avoids reading all of the time, this is cause for concern, but some days are OK. I notice that my students don’t want to start another book right away when they have recently finished a great one. I encourage students to spend their reading time writing a recommendation or reflection about the book instead, or researching the author’s other work.     

“Every lesson, conference, response, and assignment I taught must lead students away from me and toward their autonomy as literate people.” Can you talk briefly about the ways you use reader’s notebooks and one-on-one conferences in your room and how they build autonomy?

John Dewey said, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” I think that notebooks and conferences provide a formal way for students to collect information about their reading and reflect on their experiences. In their notebooks, students record the books they read, notes from lessons and research, and their reading responses. When we confer, I usually begin the conversation with what the students are currently reading and move into looking through notebooks for trends in reading behavior, as well as strengths and goals. My students and I develop individual goals for their reading during these conferences.

You don’t use the terms struggling or reluctant readers but instead identify readers as developing, dormant, and underground. Could you define for us what these readers are like and what they most need?

Developing readers lack reading confidence, experience, or ability, but are somewhere on the path toward developing reading self-efficacy. I prefer this term to struggling readers because development implies progress and effort instead of failure.

Dormant readers possess the grade and age levels abilities expected from them at school, but don’t find reading personally meaningful beyond school expectations. I find that most of my students are dormant readers. They haven’t experienced enough pleasure or engagement with reading.

Underground readers are avid readers who live two reading lives–one at school and one outside of school. These children are often avid readers who may underperform on school reading assignments because they don’t find them meaningful. They may not fill out reading logs, participate in whole class discussions, or complete reports, then excel on reading tests.

I think there are other types of readers who don’t express these marked habits and abilities, but I chose to write about these types because these the students that benefit most from free choice voluntary reading and more classroom choice.

“Students need to receive encouragement for the skills and knowledge they do have and be allowed to make mistakes as they work toward mastery.” What are some “mistakes” you’ve seen kids afraid to make? How have you helped liberate them from this fear?

Reading is hard because so much of it involves subjective interpretation. Kids who want to get it right struggle when I push them to determine their own meaning for a text. They want me to tell them what it means. They want explicit answers to every question. When we read shared texts, we look at the basic plot events or main ideas first, then delve into the deeper meanings or implications of a text. This assures everyone understands the universal meaning or key points before exploring personal connections and meanings. I think this values all of the learners in my class.

I also share my mistakes and misconceptions with students. They don’t realize that even the most experienced readers and writers need to reread, revise, and mull over ideas.

Thank you, Donalyn, for your time and your commitment to young readers. Find out more about Donalyn and her books at BookWhisperer.com.

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Of all the things I did in the classroom, the most satisfying — and, I believe, furthest reaching — was getting kids excited about reading. I was still teaching when Donalyn Miller‘s The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child published in 2009, but I knew nothing about it.

It still feels like a missed opportunity.

This is an interview that I ran shortly after discovering The Book Whisperer. I still believe it’s one of the most important posts I’ve ever shared on the blog. If you are a teacher, parent, author, homeschooler, or book lover with young people in your life, I highly recommend this book.

I’d describe your beautiful book, The Book Whisperer, as a reading teacher’s manifesto for free-choice reading. You state “students in free-reading programs perform better than or equal to students in any other type of reading program” and that students’ “motivation and interest in reading is higher when they get the opportunity to read in school.” Could you briefly walk us through the changes you experienced as a teacher that led you to embracing this mindset?

When I first began teaching, I followed the other teachers in my department. I passed out reading logs, taught whole class novel units, and assigned book reports. I didn’t know any other way. I knew that there was a disconnect between what readers do away from school and what I asked my students to do, but I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. School reading and the reading I did on my own never overlapped when I was a kid. When I began questioning why this was still true for my students, I began to read and study reading workshop and look for ways to make school reading mirror what readers do “in the wild” as I call it. I gut check everything we do against these questions: Does this help my students become more independent readers? Do readers actually do this (or something similar)? If I can say, “No,” then what’s the point?  

Students in your class are expected to read forty books from a variety of genres in their year with you. How do your students first respond when hearing this? How does this compare to what they feel about their reading at the end of the year?  

I am known as the teacher who expects students to read a lot, so I think my reputation precedes me now. In the past, my students (and their parents) were shocked and worried about my reading expectations. I urge my students to try reading more at school and home. In turn, I promise them that I will do everything I can to teach them how to read and enjoy it more. We start with these mutual commitments. After a few months, students are amazed at how much they have read and feel more confident. By the end of the year, most of them have read substantially more than 40 books. For the past four years, our class average is 56. My students also discover that I don’t really care about the number of books they read. I just want them to find books that mean something to them. I want them to enjoy reading and find personal value in it. The children who read 20 books matter just as much to our class reading community as those who read 100.  

One of the things I love about your classroom is the way you read alongside your students. In giving your students choice, you have shifted the power from the all-knowing teacher to a place where readers meet and learn together. While your young “apprentices hone a craft under the tutelage of a master, ” you feel strongly that “meaning from a text should not flow from my perceptions… [but] from my students’ own understandings, under my guidance.” This is a huge shift for children. How do you teach them to take the reins and trust their ideas?   

It takes time to build a classroom community where everyone feels valued. The children don’t trust me at first because they think I don’t mean it when I say they can choose their own books, writing topics, and methods for responding. I work hard to encourage every student. I try to listen to them as a person before I respond as a teacher. When a student tells me he cried reading Love That Dog, he deserves to get an authentic reaction to his emotions before I ask him to evaluate how Sharon Creech crafted the story. I cannot tell you how many students tell me that they think adults don’t really listen to them or see them. Through feedback during conferences and one-on-one conversations, I encourage students to set their own learning goals and evaluate their work against standards and class-developed rubrics. Teaching students to critically look at their own work before turning it in for my evaluation is hard for many of them who seek my approval as indication that they are successful.  

I love how you play book matchmaker for your kids throughout the year. Can you explain how you learn of their interests and pair books with readers?  

I learn about my students because I talk to them constantly — about their life experiences as well as school assignments. I know who plays sports and who likes origami. I know who has a new baby brother and who is an only child. I also keep an endless database of books and authors in my head (and use Goodreads), and I read several books a week. If I see that a book is popular with my students and I haven’t read it, I get a copy and read it immediately. When I can’t find a book that matches to a student’s specific interests, I fall back on titles that have wide appeal to most kids like Holes or Number the Stars. I also ask students about the other books they have read and enjoyed. I read a lot of book reviews, reading blogs, and book lists, too. Remaining current on the newer books helps me provide titles that are relevant to my students. I also talk to a lot of teachers and librarians on Twitter who recommend books to my students and me. Knowing my students and knowing books — there’s no shortcut. I often joke that I spend my life introducing my shelf children to my classroom children and facilitating friendships between them.  

Stay tuned for the second part of the interview, coming next time. This post contains affiliate links. More details here.