Overview:
In the post-pandemic classroom, teachers are revitalizing student engagement and fostering a lifelong love of reading by emphasizing choice, social-emotional learning, and collaborative, pleasure-focused reading experiences that connect to students’ interests and identities.
In a post-pandemic world, teachers have seized the opportunity to pause and rebuild their approach to learning. When life handed us lemons, we understood the need to offer more than just lemonade in order to reinvigorate students who are chronically absent and disengaged. Many teachers have increased student choice, social-emotional learning strategies, and centered learning around student interests. And, overwhelmingly, it has worked. Today, students are thriving, and, according to Gallup’s Voices of Gen Z study, correlate their positive classroom experiences to “feeling more prepared for their futures than at any point in the last three years.”
One major education remodel has involved students’ relationships with reading. In a world where, undeniably, we are all reading less, teachers and schools have made it their mission to foster a love of reading amongst teens, a demographic who have all but replaced reading with social media, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Adding a steady decline in reading scores on our national reading report card, it comes as less of a surprise that young people are reaching for less challenging ways to pass the time. Yet, teachers have been able to bring joy back into reading for students. How? The answer is simple: Read often, read for pleasure, and read together.
Reading Often: The “Million Page Challenge”
In a school setting, reading is often confined to English class, textbooks, or the library. But some schools, like my own, are going all-in on a whole-school approach to creating an environment of readers.
The “Million Page Challenge” is a reading competition that encourages individual students and collective grade levels to be the first to read one million pages, building camaraderie and competitiveness not only between students, but also teachers! My school participates in this challenge annually, and it has been wonderful to see students supporting each other and reading hard to win incredible prizes from community partners, like free bikes, pizza parties, and more.
Our school librarian coordinates the challenge, updating our school website, announcing winners over morning announcements, creating high-visibility posters around the library and hallways, updating individual, grade-level, and faculty scores, and posting book recommendations from students. But, the success of this challenge can not fall solely on our librarian–every teacher has pledged to encourage reading for pleasure in their class!
Starting in their English class at the top of the school year, students are asked to check out a book to be kept in their backpack for pleasure reading, with no strings attached. Students are given freedom to develop their taste and efficacy as a reader as they frequent their school library, even extending to their public library. Throughout each school day, students are encouraged to pull out their books and read in every class, not just English class: when they’re finished with their lab, after they turn a test, or if presentations wrap up early. Advisory or home-room classes are great places to strengthen this routine by carving out dedicated time for sustained, uninterrupted reading.
This top-down approach requires not only complete buy-in from all faculty, but through by joining students in pulling out our books in small pockets of time, modeling a love of reading in order to foster a community of life-long readers.
Reading for Pleasure: Building a Reader Identity
When getting to the root of why students aren’t reading, we must ask ourselves, Why do we read? And within the answer to this second question may also exist the solution to the first! We read to better understand what it means to be human–universal experiences like love, fear, coming of age, loss that have defined our existence for thousands of years. We read to deepen our empathy and compassion for people whose lived experiences and personal identities are vastly different from our own. We read to feel seen and validated when novels reflect back to us our own lived experiences and personal identities.
Since reading is a deeply personal act, it is understandable that students feel a disconnect when assigned specific texts for class, often traditional novels that lack connection to the daily life of a modern teen. In her research on “The Impact of Assigned Reading on Reading Pleasure in Young Adults,” Professor Stacy Creel determined that “teachers are assigning reading (rather than students selfselecting books) and that this leads to dissatisfaction.” One way to combat the lack of choice in assigned reading in the classroom is to design classroom learning experiences that model real life, like literature circles, where students rank-vote a list of books and are formed into small groups that will take on their reading journey together. Another idea is using comparative media, like comparing a poem to a painting, or a movie to the book, to get students talking about what they’ve read. Even writing assignments can bolster a joy of reading, like pitching a book that you love, or creating a movie trailer.
Although assigned reading can and should be an enjoyable experience, the key difference between this and reading for pleasure is the freedom for students to choose what they read, when they read, how, where, and, above all, why they read! A great way to do this is to develop a great working partnership with your school librarian, and spend time with your students in the library, allowing them to peruse the shelves, chat about what they are interested in, and ask you questions or for recommendations as they decide what to read next. If, like my school, yours does not have a librarian anymore, your local public library is a fantastic resource.
Reading Together: Sharing in the Reading Experience
If our aim is to instill a love of reading and create lifelong readers in our students, then modeling a reading community that looks like the ones that exist outside of school is an important way to give purpose and relevance to reading in school. Those of us further along in our journey of lifelong reading often enjoy socializing around books, reading titles together, establishing book clubs, and engaging in online groups. School shouldn’t look any different!
When we want to reach for a new book to read, we may lean on tiktok, or BookTok, recommendations, youtube reviews, or even Bookstagrammer accounts. So, where are young people–especially those who haven’t cultivated a strong reader identity–getting their recommendations for books? Most likely, your classroom.
One way that I model a community of reading in my classroom is by talking about books with my students. Each Monday, I give a “Book Talk,” where I pitch a novel to the class that I have read in the past and truly enjoyed. I bring the physical copy of the novel and spend a few minutes talking about why I loved it, so that students may also find themselves lost in its pages. After each book talk I give students the floor to pitch a book that they’re loving to the whole class or their small group to encourage socializing around reading!
It’s important not simply to tell my students that they should read, but to create an environment that celebrates the love of reading. If you were to walk into my English classroom, the first word to pop into your head would be: Books! Aside from shelves filled to the brim with donated books for students to read, I use “What are Students Reading?” bulletin boards to encourage student-led discussion and cultivate excitement with book reviews and recommendations. I also have a “What is Your Teacher Reading?” board that has my current read, along with a brief summary, why I love it, and a long list of not only my favorite reads of all time, but also curated lists of celebrated modern novels to spark student interest.
Lastly, extracurriculars are a great way to get books into the hands of young people and spark a love of reading with others. Aside from the usual suspects like Book Club, library club, or writing clubs, teachers can find creative ways to get books in the hands of students for any extracurricular or club! My colleague and our student’s football coach has each of his teams start a book together for the first practice, and uses the story as an inspirational through-line to inspire good sportsmanship, grit, and teamwork throughout the season. Student leadership groups like ASB or Link Crew are great opportunities use do the same strategy! Multicultural club, Queer Straight Alliance, Future Farmers of America, Teen Court–all are great ways to pick a relevant story to read and unpack together to guide the work that they do together and reinforce the joy of reading in community.
