I have always been slightly nerdy, ask my oldest friends and they will tell you stories of eye rolls whenever I discussed the latest sci fi flick I couldn’t wait to see. Or get me started on a favorite author and watch. I haven’t ever been a geek, I would have to be really good at math for that, but a nerd, that I could embrace. My adulthood didn’t change my nerdy ways but only sophisticated them. I could now pass ubernerdy things of as cool and stand behind them tall. And when being a nerd became kind of cool, I was so nerdy, that even my husband still laughed a little bit at me when i got too out there.
So when I fell into the Nerdy Book Club I knew I was at home. All of these book lovers in one group, oh and the hashtag and the chats; I was home. And yet even I could not have realized how much the Nerdy Book Club would change me and the way I teach.
So The Nerdy Book Club taught me that
- It is okay to get really, really excited about a book and want to give it to everyone I meet. I am thinking of you “The One and Only Ivan.”
- It is ok to want to talk books with friends, even if those friends are 20 years younger than you.
- It is ok to bring in my books to school and perhaps sneak a chapter or two during recess.
- It is ok to weed out my library and finally get rid of the books that no one has touched, no one will touch, and to give them to others who might.
- It is ok to not do book talks.
- It is ok to not do whole group books unless it is so deep and so rich that the whole class will actually stay engaged.
- It is ok to tweet out pictures of new books you have received because you are so gosh darn excited about reading them.
- It is ok to tweet authors and hope they will respond to you.
- It is ok to have your class tweet authors and hope even harder that they will respond to them.
- It is ok to have a pile of books beside your bed that never quite seems to diminish and yet entices you to sit down and read every time you pass by it.
- It is ok to change from a clothes shopaholic to a bookaholic as long as you don’t go broke.
- It is ok to watch your home library start to bleed into your classroom library because some of your kids are ready for a bigger challenge.
- It is ok to do book challenges as long as they do not suck.
- It is ok to not love a book and tell students that.
- It is ok to make book trailers rather than book projects.
- It is ok to think books, breathe books, talk books even if no one is listening or cares.
- It is ok to have the reading taste of a 5th grade boy.
- It is ok to think that reading and loving books is the most important thing we can ever model for our students and our own children.
Thank you Nerdy Book Club
Pernille Ripp 