They came to us
unwritten.
Full of stories
never recorded,
open to genres
never read.
We asked them to
“skate across the surface of a poem”
(Thanks, Billy!)
And…
they did.

Golden words
spill across the pages.
Books fly open,
pages shooting out wondrous words.
Eyes alight at the author’s craft…
While those same minds think…
“I can do that!”
and then…they do!

Readers who write and
writers who read…
This year- such a gift!
All wrapped up in book jackets
and the clear voice of writers
like water spraying over rocks,
spilling truth and pain and beauty.

What a lucky world –
One day soon
these shining children
will lead with golden hearts and minds.
Fast forward to fall
New faces, new places
Earth shifting beneath my feet
The children are the only constant…
the ones I dream of still.
And they have made all the difference .

 

So I began sorting through some of the notes, cards, and writing from the past school year today.  I came across some of my students’ 6 word memoirs regarding being able to choose for themselves every book they read this year:

Read with all of your freedom. – Haley

Reading whatever, whenever, is like flying. – Maddi

words, pages, chapters, books, series, Reading! – Cameron

Let reading rain all over you. – Sarah

Never stop the revolution of reading. – Belynda

Fiction and fantasy rule my world. – Chloe

They responded so intensely to this idea of choice.  This was the first year that I was allowed to completely embrace Donalyn Miller’s (The Book Whisperer) philosophy to focus on student selected independent reading exclusively.  Now we did read The Tiger Rising by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo together to start the year off right. We had to learn how to read as a writer so we could learn to write as a reader!  What a difference it made to these students. They became readers right before our eyes!  For some, it took a while to find that book, that one book, that made all the difference.  One of my students, Sam, would keep me updated each week in his reading response letters as to his status as a ‘real reader’.  It happened in February as he was reading The Hunger Games – he wrote, “…it finally happened, Mrs. McG.! I’m a real reader now!”  Somehow matching the right book with the right person at the right time can allow that student to see what a book can do for your life…and then they’re hooked because they want that feeling again…that ‘I can’t stop reading now because I HAVE to find out what’s going to happen next” feeling that those of us who are already readers know very well.