Reviews from Bookshelf teaching

This book has been one of the most influential to my teaching, and it helped me to integrate my personal reading and writing life and my work in the classroom. Because of Bomer's book, I began each year by exchanging letters with my students about our experiences reading and writing. These were an amazing foundation for our work together. He also offers many manageable strategies for managing writing workshops and other classroom experiences targeted to turn students into readers and writers for life.

I encountered the ideas now collected in this book as a Teach For America corps member in 2004. These concepts shaped--and continue to shape--my teaching practice. If I could pick one book to give to a new teacher eager to effect change in the classroom, this would be it. It helped me to set aside excuses and work strategically every day to solve problems creating barriers to my students' learning.

Caution: the philosophy proposed here may change the way you think about teaching forever.