Monday, August 18, 2025

No Book Banning

Last February, the Florida governor called out the "book ban hoax" spinning recent censorship legislation as a parents' rights issue. 
“Over the past year, parents have used their rights to object to pornographic and sexually explicit material they found in school libraries,” said Governor DeSantis. “We also know that some people have abused this process in an effort to score cheap political points. Today, I am calling on the Legislature to make necessary adjustments so that we can prevent abuses in the objection process and ensure that districts aren’t overwhelmed by frivolous challenges.”

The governor tells a different story than Leslie Postal reported in the Orlando Sentinel reported. He tells a different story than my teacher friends do. They experienced books being disappeared. They had their classroom bookshelves sealed away with banner paper. They scanned and uploaded titles in their rooms to monitored databases. Teachers' experience doesn't jive with the governor's spin.

Thankfully, this August a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza,  struck down key elements in the overly broad Florida House Bill 1069. Great news! As the AP reports, educators in Florida are encouraged to, "revert back to a U.S. Supreme Court precedent in which the test is whether an average person would find the work prurient as a whole; whether it depicts sexual content in an offensive way; and whether the work lacks literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

Good news! All of the books in my current middle school classroom library have recognized value. Many have won awards. Many are on recommended reading lists. I'm sending a letter home to share the value of reading with parents. I'm scanning the titles in my classroom library using Beanstack, so all can see what's on offer and then. 

Then, we are read. 

Our classroom library is open! 





References

"Judge Strikes Down Key Parts of Florida Law that Led to Removal of Books from School Libraries." 

    4 August 2025. https://apnews.com/article/florida-schoolbook-ban-a3448c8f0bdfb863d1

    a495580b8ce6e4. Accessed 5 August 2025. 

“Governor Ron DeSantis Debunks Book Ban Hoax.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 15 February 2024. 

    https://www.flgov.com/2024/02/15/governor-ron-desantis-debunks-book-ban-hoax-calls-on-florida-

    legislature-to-amend-the-law-to-prevent-abuse-from-activists/. Accessed 2 February 2024.

Postal, Leslie. "Orange school district pulls 673 books from teachers’ classroom shelves." The Orlando 

    Sentinel. 20 December 2023. Accessed 15 June 2024.



Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Nurture Readers' Joy

 Let's face it. We love stories. We tell them. We watch them. We share them. We laugh and wonder over them. Stories move us to action and to tears. We may read with our ears, with our eyes, or even with all of our senses while playing in immersive worlds. Our human love of stories does not always translate into a love of reading the printed word. 

Seeding students' love for books and the printed world of story, takes time, intention and a whole lot of practice.  I am just beginning that practice with seventh graders. Here are 6 moves I make to nurture readers' joy. 

1. I use excerpts from books from our Sunshine State readers list for this year in most of my initial assessments and strategy introductions at the start of the year (Writing that Shows, Letter to Students). Those excerpts give me a chance to book talk books I've read over the summer in order to introduce them to kiddos.  We start a conversation about books during the first days of school. 

P didn't write about books when he wrote back, but S did. I learn a lot about students as readers and writers from the first things they write in my class. 

2. Do a book pass or book tasting to introduce books to kids. This activity has gone by many names in the thirty years I've been teaching: speed dating, book tasting, etc. This year, we went to the media center. I sat students in their regular groups of 4 and I put a book bin of 9-12 books on each table. 

I began by talking about the word buffet  and the buffet at Basilico in Singapore (it's cheese room is pictured on the slide). Then I invited students talk about how the media center is like a buffet. Once we shared, I demonstrated how to preview a book and how to take a few notes for our reader selves so that we could remember the titles when we were next looking for a book to read. Then I released students to preview the books in their small groups. Once they'd looked at and taken note of 5-7 of the titles I had curated for their groups, they were able to free range through the stacks in the media center.


3. We will kick off independent reading in class on Monday. I will give students 8-10 minutes of reading time at the start of class. Reading is our bell work, our do now, our default whenever we finish something early. I am teaching that routine right now and I know that it will not be well rooted for a many weeks. Short bursts of reading keep kids engaged. I have found that if I allow too much time for reading, especially when I do not yet know the readers in my room, many kids fall asleep or disengage. 

Once rooted the reading routine will begin producing joy, but that takes months, sometimes until January even. 

4. Instead of keeping track on a share a google sheet as  I've done in the past with older students.  I will  record their progress on anecdotal notes I keep in GoodNotes 5 as I confer with them. For our first session though, I used Nanci Atwell's Status of the Class: called names, gathered titles and page numbers. I  praised students progress who surprised me by having books they were in the middle of already. This formative check in is quick, about a minute to call and jot. Sharing that way once a week, creates space for students to hear a variety of book choices and see each others' excitement. Plus, if I am the one monitoring, I can make sure we  read more than we count or account. Reading is not accounting after all. 

5. Weekly, I will ask students to write about what they have read in their Readers' Writers' Notebook (RWN). This practice I learned from Linda Reif, though the title has morphed into ELA Journal at present. This quarter I invite students to write using these prompts. There is a time and a place for prompted and unprompted writing in our class. I prompt my readers who are writing about their independent reading because our prompts help us practice what we are learning in class. 


6. Once we've begun reading and writing about what we're reading, I begin conferring with the kids. Our first conferences about their reading have many purposes--here they are described in terms of high school readers. I imagine there will be some shifts with middle school readers as their reading lives are at different stages. 



When I taught high school sometimes the Best Laid Plans still need to be adapted when it comes to Conferences and Time. Making conferring a routine roots us in reading practice that cultivates and shares joy.  I'll be sure to share how these routines work or go awry in my middle school classroom too.  We eventually shift from talking about their reading, to using their journal writing to discuss reading and writing. It is all Reading and Practice.

Setting up reading and writing routines takes time. We've got to plant the seeds. Let them germinate. The sprouts, sometimes takes weeks.  There is a science to reading and we need to use that data to check readers' skills and growth along the way. 

Eventually after many months of consistent care, readers will harvest joy. They will bring the book love to each other and we will come together in community to share in the bounty of story. 

Tuesday, August 6, 2024

8 Lessons for People from the Pack


This year, I am on the opening team for a new public middle school here in Orange County.  During our pre-planning days we are doing a lot of talking about establish culture and community. We can take away many lessons from wolves for our community. We are the wolves and #onepack is part of our story this year. 

To bring our new wolves into the pack, many of us will build community with ice breakers, team builders and other team challenges.  With 50 minute class periods, a quicker 5-8 minute activity makes for the perfect “do now” or transition into class at the start of each period or a wrap up for the end of each class period. 

I love Playmeo for activities and ideas. Stacey Jensen, an extraordinary teacher and advisory coordinator, introduced me to the site years ago. I can quickly find an ice break, an energizer, or a trust builder and I love that I can create lists of activities to use for units I'm planning. Our first week, with pack plans in pink,  is looking like this so far: 

I observe the pack while we engage in these community builders. Yetta Goodman used to call it “kid watching." Observing learners informs instruction. I question a lot of what I see: 
  • Who's leading? Who's encouraging? Who's shy or hanging back?
  • How can I use this data with students? How might I use photos to support students' reflections?
  • How are students' talents, interests or needs showing up?
The start of a new school year is magical. To bring that magic,  I am reminding myself to avoid activities that could resurface trauma.  Instead of writing or talking about our names' origins, turn initials into mantras for the traits we most want to showcase this year. Instead of doing Blueprints of a Lifetime sketching our homes and basing stories on homes' floor plans, now I'll give students choices for sketching and storytelling: a favorite place, a room, a learning space, a community space, a park or an outdoor space. Even a thing can be sketched and storied.

I remind myself, if and when things seem to settle into silence in the first weeks: get kids moving. Get kids talking to each other. Get kids laughing. Get them reading and writing.  As we play and work together—connections build.  Our pack will be richer for it.

Thanks to the team at Two Writing Teachers!
Jump over to serve yourself another slice today.