Reason #12 They remind you

I remember my first time. For my ninth birthday my parents gave me a gift certificate to our local children's bookstore, The Red Balloon, and I chose to buy Matilda by Roald Dahl. It was a big deal to venture away from the many different "series" books I had been reading, like The Babysitter's Club, and Sweet Valley Twins. However, my sister, who I saw as a little lower than the gods, had recommended this book to me and therefore I had to read it.

Read it I did. Sitting at the Labor Day picnic with my parents and their friends, I devoured Matilda. I read and kept reading, despite laugher floating around me, and a full-sized children's playhouse to tempt me. I was lost in the world of reading. It was the first time I realized that reading isn't just telling stories. It's magic.

Yes, I am a nerd when it comes to reading. At the advice of Levar Burton, I took a look in a book, and the rest is history. Each year in my classroom, I see it as my job to transfer this magic to my students. It isn't just because I love reading, though that is a large part of it, but reading is necessary for student achievement. Students who are not on reading level by first grade are likely to stay behind in reading forever. One report says that 70% of prison inmates score below the 4th grade level of reading. Teaching a child to read doesn't just open up new worlds of books, it opens up legitimate and legal opportunities for their futures.

My favorite part of every day is the hour we have for reading. I sit down with students, pull out their reading folders, talk to them about what their reading, write their reading goals in their reading notebooks, and watch them transform into bonafide readers. Magic.

This has been taking place is a brand new way this year in my classroom due to my donorschoose grant I received for nook e-readers. In our latest batch of testing data, it showed that my highest readers were not growing at the rate of the rest of my students. This is not surprising, as many schools encourage teachers to teach the lowest readers, since the highest ones are slated to pass the tests with or without my instruction. However, at one time I was one of those "high readers" and therefore am unwilling to leave them behind. Each of the six readers has a nook to read and take home. They treat them as precious gold, cradling them in their arms like new born babies. One girl brought a hand purse from home to put her nook in, and she proudly struts the building with her new fashion accessory. The e-readers have piqued my students' interest for books.

However, that is just the start. Interest isn't enough, it has to be followed with commitment and determination. Enter: Shanna. Shanna is a sassifrass who is too smart for her own good, but has been listlessly thumbing through Frog and Toad for most of the year. In spite of many conferences, the extend of her reading log has been board books and the occasional Captain Underpants novel. Uninspired to say the least, she would rather chat than spend thirty minutes of her time reading.

I decided to introduce Shanna to Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I read this in fifth grade, and still haven't forgotten the epic "Man vs. Wild" saga of a teenage boy left to fend for himself in the wilderness of the north woods with only a hatchet for company. I gave her a short book introduction, and sent her on her way crossing my fingers that she would be drawn in by this new book.

Was she ever. The next day she had read not just the first two chapters as I had asked, but the first FIVE chapters. In the past two days she has gotten to chapter thirteen, and is likely to finish the book this weekend. I now get chapter by chapter status updates of Brian's progress in the woods, whether I want them or not, whether I am teaching the students about reading, or in the middle of a science lesson. I have to pry the nook from her hands when it's time for other subjects, because otherwise she is drawn back to her story like my other students are drawn to their flaming hot Cheetos.

Did I mention that this same sassifrass girl, the one who would look me straight in the eye and laugh in my face, has had almost no behavior infractions since she started to read Hatchet? (She did, after all, chase James around the room when he tried to take her nook) See, reading really is magic, and it really does change lives.