The Book Whisperer

Taken from Introduction: I am not a reading researcher. I am not a reading policy expert. I do not have a Ph. D. What I am is a reading teacher, just like many of you. My source of credibility is that I am a teacher who inspires my students to read a lot and love reading long after they leave my class. I require my students to read forty books during their time in my sixth-grade classroom, and year after year, my students reach or surpass this reading goal. Not only do my students read an astounding number of books, they earn high scores on our state's reading assessment, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). I have not had one student fail the state assessment in four years, and an average of 85 percent of my students score in the 90th percentile, Texas commended range. I have taught students of all economic and academic backgrounds, from the children of non-English speaking immigrants who struggle with the English language to the children of college professors. The conditions I create in my classroom work for all of them.