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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What district are you in that doesn't have mandatory books?  You must not teach AP or maybe even not honors if you don't have to do some standards.  I think you are focusing on the wrong thing.  You should intermingle some classics, not just YA novels that don't require any skill in reading.  The Hate U Give, for instance, is a phenomenal book, and a great topic - but in terms of difficulty or challenge it is severely lacking.  They should have to learn how to conquer a challenging text, written in a different time period.  Only being interested in today and today's specific type of dialogue / writing / vocabulary will not offer any growth.[/quote]

I’m not going point by point but: no. You don’t understand literacy and education. Please don’t tell me how to do my job... [b]just answer the question I asked. [/b][/quote]

DP.  This is an incredibly rude response.  The pp's point about kids needing to be able to handle challenging texts seems valid.  It's fine that you choose not to have any mandatory books.  As a parent of a teen who will pick easy books every time, I see validity in pp's point.  Also, if you come on a forum like this to ask questions, you're going to get opinions about how to do your job if you given details on how you plan to do your job.  I've never seen a thread that only stuck to answering the OP's question.  I'd love to know why you think pp's point isn't valid, based on your understanding of literacy and education.  [/quote]

It’s just an old fashioned way to approach reading. Do we want kids to just read “challenging” texts or so we want them to connect with a story, ENJOY reading, learn more about the human experience, realize that they too have stories worth sharing? Some kids will gravitate toward texts that are written in challenging language but are emotionally empty for them. Some kids will gravitate to books that are written more  simplistically but grapple with some really big ideas. The amount of big words in a book doesn’t determine its value for learning. Books are about stories, about helping kids refine their own writing style, about making them ask questions and realize truths about life and humanity. Books don’t have to be a “challenging text” for that to happen and very often the challenging texts directly hinder those things. The beauty of choice reading is if your kid DOES want or like the challenging text or classics- they can pick those. For the kids for whom those will shut off a joy of reading, they have other options.

I get why people who were in high school 20-30 years ago think school should still look like that, but education research particularly related to literacy shows that this is the better approach for kids. Look up Kylene Beers and Penny Kittle- they are some of the big name pioneers of this newer approach to reading and literacy. [/quote]

No one is saying to force kids to only read "challenging" books.  The point is that, in addition to connecting to books, they also need to be prepared for the more challenging reading assignments they will get in college.  You clearly don't think preparing them for challenges beyond your class is a part of your job description.  I'm not sure why as an educator (with multiple goals to fulfill) you would be so resistant to interspersing a few challenging books with books of the student's choice.  There are multiple parents telling you that their kids will always pick the easy books.  Those kids will be unprepared going forward if they are never exposed to challenging books and required to unpack what they've read in those books.  [/quote]

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