Giddy Book Love

A few weeks ago I ordered a large number of books from Scholastic. I had a whole bunch of points that I had been saving. I ordered a variety of information texts, picture book biographies, some series books that had peeked the interest of a few different students in my room, a couple of books related to baseball and football, as well as some other popular or new release chapter books.

My formal observation was scheduled and the week was planned. This was a couple weeks ago, and I had forgotten to check the arrival date of the books. The day of my observation came, and I walked into the teacher's lounge to check for any mail. There on the table was a big beautiful box! It was all my new books. I thought, "Maybe I should leave it here. I can't bring that in the room. I will get totally distracted, and everything will get thrown off. Wait...who am I kidding. I'm not leaving these books in here. He can come in for my observation, and we can be drooling over the new books."

I brought the box, which by the way was a challenge, all the way back to my room. I had left my room earlier and turned off the lights, so it was dimly lit by my lamps. It felt like perfect mood lighting for my book reveals. While my students were in music, I started displaying all the titles on the bookcase and front table. I was giddy. I fanned out the books that were in multiple sets and balanced the series books on their spines so all the titles could be seen. It was quite beautiful.

I started to walk toward the music room to get my class and saw my principal.
"See you at 10:30," he said.
"Yeah, just a heads up, a great big box of books came, and I decided to deviate from the plans I sent you. We really need to look at the books. I know it will get them excited."

*          *          *          *          *

When we debriefed after my observation, I wondered if he would mention the fact that a good 20 minutes of my reading block was spent not "instructing." I wasn't holding formal small groups, or conferring sessions, but a lot was happening. I wasn't all that surprised when he told me how much he appreciated the fact that I let my passion for reading and readers make the decision instead of waiting because I had an observation.
I'm glad I didn't second guess my decision to go with it and crack open the box. I did hesitate for a moment, but I knew the right move for kids was to open up all those new and shiny, beautiful books.