Thursday, January 22, 2015

My Reading Profile

Trying to think about my Reading Profile leads to so many complicated thoughts.  I have always loved reading and been a voracious reader all of my life.  I chose to become a Language Arts teacher.  However, due to a chance encounter during my senior year of college, I realized I had chosen the wrong major and should have been a Library Science student...and, unfortunately, it was too late to change my career direction.  

I was a middle school Reading and Language Arts teacher for eight years, and even earned a Master's Degree in Education.  The teaching profession has changed so drastically in the past ten years, and I began to hate it--not the students, the job.  My favorite thing about teaching was inspiring my students to read and teaching novel units that allowed us to have great class discussions.  I built a classroom library that contained over 1,000 titles to encourage free choice and was very proud of that collection.  The pressures from testing began to take those things away--no time for free reading (according to a horribly ignorant principal)!  My husband and I had a very serious discussion, and I decided to begin applying for jobs in the library profession and go back to school.  It has been a huge sacrifice, but completely worth it!!!

My courses for this degree have introduced me to a great deal of reading material and information about reading.  I now feel guilty that I have not been as diligent as I should have been about reading.  I have kept a reading journal for over ten years, but it has huge gaps where I didn't record what I was reading, so I don't have an accurate count of what I've read, how many books in a year, etc.  At times I become overwhelmed thinking about all that I NEED and WANT to read.  My "To Read" list is ginormous.

My favorite books in no particular order:

  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  • Unwind (book and series) by Neal Shusterman
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Harry Potter Series (especially book 5!) by J.K. Rowling
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larson
  • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
  • Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
My favorite books to teach:
  • The Giver by Lois Lowry
  • The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
I'm, generally, fairly open to reading all genres---except non-fiction!  It is very very very rare that I will enjoy a non-fiction book.  (Although, I recently finished Yes Please by Amy Poehler  and loved it so much several family members received it as a gift for Christmas.)  I want to be a Teen Librarian, so my choices tend to cater to that age group.  




I would love to be a part of a book club.  Unfortunately, most of the ones through my local library meet at very inconvenient times, or choose books that I have no interest in reading.  One major drawback of online courses, I keep meeting people that I would love to be in a book club with, but we don't live anywhere near each other...

2 comments:

  1. I love every single book you mentioned. It breaks my heart that teaching has taken such a turn. I was the guest speaker for career day at the high school yesterday and when I asked how many wanted to be a teacher, NOT ONE student raised their hand. I remember when I was in high school we had an afterschool club, Project Teach, and almost half of every class thought they'd like to be a teacher. These students are feeling and experiencing the changes too. Very depressing.

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  2. I see we share quite a few favorite books - To Kill a Mockingbird, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, The Fault in our Stars, and Eleanor & Park. Yes, Please by Amy Poehler is also on on my list of books I want to read. Happy Reading!

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