Our school has several unique challenges when it comes to fostering a reading culture. We are an alternative public high school with over 3000 students, 3 campuses and day, night, online and paper based classes for students aged 14 to 90. We run multiple specialty programs such as our multi-generational First Nations Graduation program, young adult Fast Forward Program, Adult Grad Program and teenage Futures Program. Consequently, the school often lacks a cohesive approach to anything as our basic philosophy is to differentiate everything according to student need. Our success lies in the ability of our different parts to tailor for specific groups in a responsive and timely manner. Add to this, no library (concrete or digital) and what you have is many different people fostering reading cultures in many different ways at all times.

Of interest, however, was our new principal’s attempt to foster a collaborative reading culture by distributing a novel he is passionate about to the staff and requesting a book club. However, three things were missing: (1) staff interest (book choice/topic did not originate from staff), (2) options (over 40 teachers were given the same book), and (3) collaboration options (when and how teachers would meet).  Our curriculum support teacher met with our principal and suggested the following: (1) a survey of staff to see if staff book clubs were of interest to them and, if so, what topics they interested in, (2) a minimum of three options, one of which should be a video, and (3) a minimum of three options of when and how to meet. This situation highlighted the importance of relevance, interest, choice and differentiation for all readers, student or teacher.

I think the most important strategy would be time carved out for reading during school time. This could be at different times but would need to be a minimum of 20 minutes at least every second day. As well, all adults in the building would need to visibly participate and relevance, interest, choice and differentiation would need to be emphasized and modeled. Finally, access to diverse reading material (likely digital) would be crucial. We are currently investigating a digital library as space is an issue at all campuses.

Modeling a passion for reading, respect for all types and genres of literature and respect for student choice has worked for me as a classroom teacher. What has not worked is: inconsistency, too short of time, no adult modeling and one novel fits all. I think a next step to build on the strategy above (school wide reading) would be digital book club forums where students and staff could blog about what they are reading, comment on each other’s’ posts and even create discussion groups if reading the same text.