Choice Reading in the Time of Corona by Katie Sluiter

This week we have another post from Katie Sluiter. Katie is a busy mom, a middle school teacher, a graduate student and who know what else is on her to do list. I always appreciate having current teachers as guest contributors. Their insight and expertise is valuable as we consider what can and can't be done when we work to promote choice reading among our students. 

Take a look are the rest of Katie's posts when you get a chance.

Previous post by Katie Sluiter:
YA in the Middle School Classroom
When We Love Books; Writers Are Our Rock Stars: Why Author Visits Matter
​Revisiting the Classics I Never Visited in The First PlaceMoving to Sameness: Climate Change through the Lens of The Giver
This One Time...at nErDcamp...
​Getting Books in the Hands of Readers

Choice Reading in the Time of Corona by Katie Sluiter

When schools and libraries closed down in Michigan back in March, my biggest disappointment was that my 8th graders would not get to finish reading Speak and have our author visit with Laurie Halse Anderson. My biggest concern was that my students wouldn’t have access to books to continue reading on their own. When I expressed this concern on Facebook, my friends and family rallied with a resounding, “What can we do to help?”​

After much brainstorming, I decided to put together a Classroom Wishlist on Amazon with about ten titles. My students filled out a survey asking which of these titles they would love to read if they had a copy. From there, I entered quantities for each of the titles on the Wishlist. My amazing social media network did the rest.

Titles included: Guts by Raina Telgemeier, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez, New Kid by Jerry Craft, Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds, George by Alex Gino, Wish by Barbara O’Connor, Pax by Sarah Pennypacker, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and of course Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

​As the books came in, I wrapped them in bright paper, wrote a personal note to the student about how it was donated specifically for them, and then put it in the mail. I was able to send out, thanks to donors who also gave money for postage, over a hundred books.

As fall approached and we found out our district would be offering both virtual and in-person options for students, I began again to wonder what getting books to students would look like. I am one of the fortunate teachers to be entirely in-person, but we are still in a pandemic, and there have been many policy changes as far as sharing materials including books from our classroom libraries.
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Due to budget cuts, our secondary media center specialist had to return to the classroom leaving our media centers and the junior high and high school to be fun by paraprofessionals, not that students were allowed to wander the stacks for books anyway. I was going to have to reconsider everything I do at the beginning of the school year.

Thankfully, I was not alone in my worry and we were able to act quickly to develop a policy for checking out books--students could request books, we could give them the books, and the returned books would be quarantined for three days before returning them to the shelves. But we wouldn’t be able to pass books around for Book Tastings or Book Speed Dating. Students couldn’t handle books they wouldn’t be checking out, so again we had to rethink how we would introduce choice reading in our classrooms.

Typically, I start the marking period with a trip to the Media Center for book talks from our Specialist. Since that is not possible this year, I increased my own number of book talks in class. Rather than passing the book around while I talked, I put an image of the book on my screen so students who were interested could copy the title into their Want To Read Lists in their notebooks.
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As part of my doctoral studies, I am currently taking an Multicultural Adolescent Literature course, so as I finish a book, I book talk it for my students. Titles have included With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo, Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram, Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith, We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Meija, Stamped by Jason Reynolds, and Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson.

My 8th grade teaching colleagues and I also created a virtual Book Tasting Event for students where they moved from table to table virtually (each table was a different slide deck consisting of eight books) where they could see the cover, read the back cover/inside flap, and read an excerpt from the book. This was another opportunity for students to get some titles on their Want To Read Lists.

Our media center paraprofessional created a Google Form for students to request/check out titles by using our online “card catalogue” and developing a “curbside pickup” style service in which she would email the student once she had the book ready for them, the student would pick it up and then return it for its 3-day quarantine before it was reshelved.

​I spent class time helping the students learn to navigate and use this system. I also showed them a video tutorial one of my colleagues made for how to access our local public library to get an online student library card that would give them access to ebooks and audiobooks.

In years past, students have done the checkout process themselves for my classroom library. This is not possible this year, so I developed a system similar to our media center’s: students can either ask me for a book and I’ll get it and check it out to them in class or they can use a Google form to request the book. Because books have to be quarantined after return, this also means I am back to checking books in and reshelving them myself after quarantine. It’s more tedious than having the students run it all themselves, but it’s getting books into my students hands.

Sometimes it feels like a lot of work and I wonder if students are getting as much out of it as I am putting into it. Just last week, though, a couple 9th graders who I had as 8th graders last year stopped by to talk about Speak with me. They had been so sad not to be able to finish it as a class, but had requested it as their “gift” book. They had both gone on to read more of Anderson’s work and remembered that I had met Laurie on several occasions. And then today, as I was getting ready to sit down to write this post, three book requests came through with students asking for books their friends had read and talked about earlier in the marking period.
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So yes, it’s a ton of work, but getting books into the hands of students is so crucial--especially in these weird times as these kids are growing up and coming of age in the time of a pandemic and political and social unrest.

Until next week.