According to Goodreads.com:
“Donalyn Miller says she has yet to meet a child she couldn't turn into a reader. No matter how far behind Miller's students might be when they reach her 6th grade classroom, they end up reading an average of 40 to 50 books a year. Miller's unconventional approach dispenses with drills and worksheets that make reading a chore. Instead, she helps students navigate the world of literature and gives them time to read books they pick out themselves. Her love of books and teaching is both infectious and inspiring. The book includes a dynamite list of recommended "kid lit" that helps parents and teachers find the books that students really like to read.”
For me, this book is a DANGEROUS BOOK because it is a clear challenge to my pedagogy.
I am a High School Language Arts teacher who professes to have as a goal the desire to help students develop a love of books, but Miller challenges the practices I have employed for over two decades of teaching. Admittedly there have been successes in those years, but there have also been failures, and I wonder if a change in my practice of reading in the classroom might not be in order, after reading this book.
One of the things that I most appreciate about this book is its truthfulness. This book is clearly written by an active and engaged classroom teacher – not a researcher studying a teacher or looking into a classroom. It’s written from the inside of the room, and Miller doesn’t hesitate to show the challenges to her practice, as well as the success.
I really appreciate that Miller continually encourages her teacher audience to focus on the positive gains our students make, instead of getting our minds focused on the lack of success toward meeting high goals. Over and over Miller admonishes the active classroom teacher to frame conversation with students in the most positive terms. It’s a reminder the needs repeating probably even more than she does in this book. Throughout the book Miller also encourages teachers to set high standards and reminds us that students live up to the standards we set for them.
Miller seems to really know the characteristics of readers, and she frames her discussion and description in positive terms: developing, dormant, and underground readers. And in her description of underground readers I see myself, as I was in first grade, tenth grade, and even now.
Many aspects of Miller’s teaching practice seem to speak to my own personal experiences as a reader. For example, she writes “Do not pair your lowest readers with your most gifted ones. High-ability students resent being used as tutors, and they, too, deserve the ability to grow as readers—something they will not be able to accomplish by reading with readers who are less capable than they are.” This statement speaks to my personal truth; I was the child who decided in first grade to fail school because the failing students got to read. Because I had high grades and was a good reader I didn’t get time to read, I had to go to the back of the room and be a peer tutor. Listening to the plodding pace of those students sounding out the individual syllables of words nearly destroyed my six year old learning soul. I was also the high school student who read two books continually—the one I read in class because it was assigned (which I often enjoyed) and the one I read because I wanted to read. The only behavior problems I ever had in junior and high school were the times I got in trouble for getting so caught up in the novel I had hidden inside my text book that I forgot to listen to the cues of the classroom and got caught by the teacher for “not paying attention” to the lesson.
I also really appreciated, on a deeply satisfying personal level, Miller’s truthfulness about the lack of success of programs like Accelerated Reader or Scholastic Reading. She writes, “ . . . in which books are assigned a point value and students must complete a multiple-choice test after reading them, are the worst distortion of reading I can think of.” While I have never seen professional literature call out these programs and challenge their effectiveness, most teachers I know have an innate understanding that these programs are doing far more damage than good to our students. Those of us who teach grades after these programs are used especially see the effects: students who don’t like to read because they fear they will have to take a test or create a project. I remember a few years ago when I mentioned to my niece, Rachael, who loved to read, that we could have a book club at her school. She quickly dismissed the idea saying “No one wants to go to a club where we’d have to take tests. Just forget it.” Her automatic assumption was that book club would necessarily be tied to the Accelerated Reader program as used at her school.
I will admit that some of the claims Miller makes about her classroom and teaching practice are hard to believe and accept. As I read her continued descriptions of the sheer volume of books contained in her classroom, I wondered how she could have so many resources. She addresses this point toward the end of the book, stating that her extensive classroom library has been purchased at her own expense. While I could understand the reasons she gives for investing what must be upwards of a million dollars of her personal funds this way, I am frustrated because I know I can’t make that kind of investment, and it will take me years, even being as creative as I can be, to have the number of books at my fingertips that Miller says she draws from when pairing reluctant readers with books they might like.
Another concern I have issues with is Miller’s early claims that she doesn’t teach whole class novels now, instead relying on student’s choices to teach all the reading and analysis skills students need. That’s a scary feeling to me. Like most teachers I have relied on the whole class novel for my entire teaching career. Toward the end of the book, however, I began to realize that Miller hasn’t apparently done away with all class novels. She just doesn’t rely on them as the center point of the instructional method.
Now that I’ve finished with this book I have much to process and consider. Next year I’ll be teaching 9th grade Honors Language Arts, for the first time in my career. This summer I’m trying to read as much as I can about teaching (both reading and writing) as I try to form the first vision of what this new course will be like. I’m sure that Miller’s ideas about reading are definitely going to shape the course that I structure. While I may not go as far into independent reading that Miller has over her years, I will certainly be making changes in the way I share books and reading with my students, based on her ideas.
Overall I highly recommend The Book Whisperer” to any teacher looking to challenge their practice in reading education.
