Teaching, Existential Crisis, and Independent Reading

        I've been listening to Glennon Doyle's podcast, We Can Do Hard Things lately. If you've not read her most recent book, Untamed, I would highly recommend it. Yesterday, she had the famous relationship expert Esther Perel on her show talking about human relationships in the context of this moment in time and place. Perel had a really unique and compelling way of describing our current experience as humans as defined by an existential crisis. We are all in a kind of trauma from the pandemic, from living in a world with climate change breathing down our necks, a hostile political environment, and a sense that our time here is limited and unstable. She argues that these factors create an emotional acceleration for all of us. If we are partnered we are thinking about moving in together sooner, recently moved in or married, maybe thinking about babies. If we are unhappy in a job, we are quitting it. If we are not living the way we think is meaningful, it needs to be changed right now. "Why wait," we think. This is our "one true and precious life," as Doyle says. 

        For teachers, this feels more true than ever. We work hard every day to make sure that we are the stabilizing force for thirty-three students, five times a day. We try to generate creative, interactive, and fun lessons every day to be sure we are holding the attention of those precious beings, all the while competing with their shiny, blinking phone screens. We prepare for the administrative walk-throughs, officials in suits coming through to judge our worthiness. Some of us get to work early, some stay late, but none of us are getting the correct amount of sleep, the right ratio of vegetables to protein to carbs. We all are bringing home to work and work to home. It is a difficult time in our profession. 

        This year, I am trying to integrate some measures into my teaching routine that support me as a teacher, while maintaining professional standards. One of those measures is that Fridays have become an independent reading day for my 9th grade students. This is not code for free-for-all, but a structured independent reading program for students in which they are spending 20-30 minutes each Friday reading a book of their choice and then responding to a chosen prompt. Students are required to stick with the same book until they have read up to 50 pages, and then they are allowed to switch. Students who are finished a book are asked to write a tiny book review and post it to the bulletin board for others to read. The key for me was buying enough high interest books for students. I probably spent about $500 on books this year, but it has left me with a quiet Friday to look forward to each week, and gives me a chance to do student conferences, grade papers, and watch children enjoy reading. 

        I justify the choice to implement this program based on the National Council of Teachers of English  positive and formal stance on independent reading that you can read here. Also, in my years teaching middle school and 9th grade in an area where many students did not have grade-level reading skills, I have found independent reading to be incredibly useful. When I first started almost fifteen years ago, it was the "100 book challenge" which argued that if a student reads one hundred books at their independent reading level, they can level up one grade. I found this to be accurate.

        Independent reading is something that impacted my life immensely as a young person. Most of what I learned about the world came from novels that I read in my spare time. From history to human emotion, from friendships to cultural background, novelists taught me about worlds I could not imagine by myself. In this time of mass existential crisis, how could we better equip our students, and how could we better cope as English teachers? We need to give ourselves the gift of time, and our students the gift of books!

    My currently unfinished and free resource for independent reading is linked below. Feel free to check out and send feedback. More resources are forthcoming.