She starts January 1st deciding which book is going to be the one she will start the year off with. This will be the book that leads to hundreds of others that she will read throughout the year. Her name is Nevaeh Mosher and I had the pleasure of interviewing this remarkable young lady last week.
Nevaeh is a 6th grade student growing up in the South Bronx. She didn’t really enjoy reading early in school; in fact she thought it was a waste of time until she got into the fourth grade. At that point she had a teacher who felt that reading was important; saw that the students needed to be reading more and also needed to be reading better. With her fourth grade teacher pushing her to read more books Nevaeh grew to love reading. In the fourth grade she read 200 books and last year in the fifth grade she read over 300 books. This year her goal is to read over 325 books, beating last year’s number. In her school, Nevaeh has teachers and a librarian who support her. She also has Ben Fechter, a representative from the organization City-Year, an education focused, nonprofit group that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to graduation (http://www.cityyear.org).
Nevaeh enjoys reading fantasy, mystery, historical fiction, and fiction. Her favorite authors are J.K Rowling, Rick Riordan, and Lois Lowry. I asked her what she was reading currently and she had just finished Anne Frank (by the way she found the Justin Beiber/Anne Frank comment very upsetting) and was reading a book from the Drama High series. When she has the opportunity she likes to watch the movie first for a book when it comes out and then compare.
I asked Nevaeh what she would tell other young people who might not be into reading and she said that she tells people in class that, “reading is awesome. Reading is a gift. You should rethink it if you don’t like reading because you will see how awesome reading is.†I also asked her how she would recommend teachers and librarians hook young people into reading. Her idea was to have plays connected to the books. Act out the books or parts of the books and then students will want to compare the play/acted scene to the book. (I have a background in drama, I liked this idea)
I finished up our interview by asking Nevaeh if she had any opportunities to work with tablet computers, iPads, or e-books. She told me not yet but she would love to have one. She would like to have her own tablet and all of those books at her fingertips. She thinks that students should have tablets; she can see many opportunities for classroom interaction especially for shy students who may not like to raise their hands but could answer questions via Twitter or other apps on the tablets instead. (Some good ideas indeed)
If you would like to learn more about Nevaeh a video has also been filmed about her as well. Take a look and see all about this young lady and her reading. She was a joy to talk to and this short video will offer even more insight into this amazing student: http://hooplaha.com/a-good-read-on-life/
