I’ve seen a lot more of my students bringing in their own books this year than I have in the past 7-8. A lot of that is due to booktok. Some absolute fuckin trash, but reading is reading.
I'll have maybe one or two students a year who have a book with them to read during downtimes/when they're done their work. Everyone else is on their phones. Next year we're moving to a model where the students will not have their phones in class anymore. I've got a ton of Time and NatGeo magazines I'm hoping they'll utilze, but am also thinking of expanding on my class library a little bit with some fiction books
I think I posted this elsewhere, but it was booktok via Instagram that made me realize that my one senior AP kid that brought in books to read during downtime was reading what I understand now to be basically smut lol (it was the red Thorn and Roses book)
Could be worse could be abuse apologism And I feel like bringing a book to school is guaranteed bullying
It is a literal nightmare. I get to see in real time why kids are doing worse in school and scoring worse on tests and etc. I mean we technically have a no cell phone policy but as it is right now it's virtually impossible to enforce. NExt year we're moving to the "Everyone puts their phones in this pocket at the start of class" thing that other schools in our district already do and I cannot wait.
Yeah my bad looks like I underestimated booktoc. Dont know why I thought siding with Specksouls was the move https://creative.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/australian-book-readers-24-05-592762e0c3ade-1.pdf Though Im getting mixed messages and the mainsite I want to look at australiareads.org.au is down. Is reading in crisis? https://creative.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/australian-book-readers-24-05-592762e0c3ade-1.pdf from the 2016 survey
I was going to pivot my attack to the genres being read by the kids but more people reading trash is the only path towards more people reading good books. Its not like trash tv is any better than trash books
It's weird that they think they're protecting any of the kids that would actually pick up that book and read it from seeing something they're not supposed to see. If they're reading that book, they're either 1. already reading fantasy books with sex in it or 2. watching porn or 3. Probably both lol. YOu're saving literally no one by banning them.
The smut part isn’t even worrysome to me, the poor writing is haha. Kids are gonna find smut anywhere.
The thing is the alternative is probably not good smut 99% of the time it’s smut fanfic that makes those kinda books seem like literature
My kids are doing a book assignment and they had to pick something with a lexile score of 1000 or more or else they were trying to pick little kids' books.
We do that and it's effective. Of course, they also have laptops which they use to aimlessly distract themselves now...
I mean from what I know, most of the smut available in these "spicy romance" novels, at least the ones you can get in bookstores and take in public, is significantly healthier than the porn was the only real outlet for decades. Teens will always be horny. At least let them have stuff that isn't shaming, abusive, misogynistic, etc.
Monitoring student laptops is always good for a laugh. Today one student was looking up how to fight an ostrich.
We just had that discussion the other day in class. What’s the biggest animal you could kill with your bare hands? My coworker said ostrich. No shot
It blew my mind a few years ago when I found out male ostriches can reach 9’ tall. One kick from an ostrich and it’s lights out.