Every so often we like to ask our authors about the books that most affected their teaching, the books that served as a turning point in their practice or opened their eyes to a new way of approaching their work, thinking about education, or seeing children. In this first installment, we bring you the professional book top five of Katie Wood Ray, whose professional background includes both elementary and middle school teaching experience and two years as a staff developer at The Reading and Writing Project, Teachers College, Columbia University. She was also the coeditor of the journal Primary Voices K–6, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English. She has authored and co-authored many titles , including In Pictures and in Words, What You Know by Heart, Already Ready, and About the Authors. Katie spent many years as a professional development presenter, and is currently an Executive Editor of professional books at Heinemann.
I read my first professional book in 1988. It was the first edition of Nancie Atwell's In the Middle. I was in my third year of teaching, and the book was assigned reading for a graduate class. I had never seen a book like this—a professional book for teachers—and at the time I had no idea that books like this would become the mooring that tied my practice to a set of deeply held beliefs. Every professional book I have read since, and there have been many, adds another thread to the cable of that mooring, each one making it a little bit stronger.
When so many have meant so much, choosing just five books seemed a daunting challenge. But as I sat in front of my bookshelves and considered the question, something became very clear. For a small handful of books, without even opening them, I can name very specifically what it was in the book that made such a difference in my practice. I can quote the parts almost word for word that have stayed with me and guided my thinking. The words and ideas are alive inside my head.
So in no particular order, here they are, with the words I know by heart.
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I think my world may have tilted a little the first time I read Frank Smith’s collection of essays in Joining the Literacy Club. Smith’s words are alive not just in my head but in my writing as well. Some version of “joining the literacy club” can probably be found in every book I’ve written, and of course “reading like a writer” is the foundational idea behind my book Wondrous Words. Here are both ideas in a single excerpt from the book: “Once more we are casually reading, and once more we find ourselves pausing to reread a passage . . . We go back because something in the passage was particularly well put, because we respond to the craftsman’s touch. We have read something we would like to be able to write ourselves but also something we think is not beyond our reach. We have been reading like a writer, like a member of the club” (24). Every single idea I’ve ever had about craft study as classroom practice is built from the foundation of these words.
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Peter Johnston’s Choice Words (Stenhouse) made me so aware of every little thing I said to children and exactly how I said it. It was tedious at first to think so specifically about language, but that thinking took me to a whole new place. And like so many others, Peter’s exploration of “agency” was a game changer for me. One idea in particular was especially compelling: “Teachers’ conversations with children help the children build the bridges between action and consequence that develop their sense of agency. They show children how, by acting strategically, they accomplish things, and at the same time, that they are the kind of person who accomplishes things . . . To understand children’s development of a sense of agency, then, we need to look at the kinds of stories we arrange for children to tell themselves” (30—emphasis mine). This idea of helping children to have a narrative sense of self, in which they understand and can tell their stories of process, has profoundly shaped how I think about both conferring and the share and reflection time in a writing workshop.
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I look at this list and I realize if any one of these books was missing from my reading history, my professional life would be noticeably, qualitatively different. They’re that significant.