BOOK MANIA

Okay, so not really book mania so much as a minor book frenzy. I spent about three hours last night organizing my children's books by guided reading level (I discovered I have nearly every level from A-Z with a ridiculous number of J's). I don't know if this is the best organizational method - I may change my mind and organize by lexile level, but I think this gives me at least an idea of what kind of books I have. Why the inordinate number of J's? I have no idea. Also, these were only the fiction books that I have. Not pictured is the pile of non-fiction that I want to sort by subject and the pile of poetry that is going to get it's own little basket. However, I decided that while I have around 150-200 books or so, I want at least double that to feel like I have a well-stocked library.

(My boxes organized by level.) 

Literacy is one of my biggest passions and I definitely want to be a literacy-centered classroom.
However, I know that doesn't simply mean having a ton of books. I need to have quality literature and be familiar with it. As of now, I have a ton of books in there that I've never read (a lot of my collection was donated or I bought a lot of 'pretty' books at a huge book sale). I want to be able to recommend books to my students and hold book clubs and effective guided reading groups. All of which, I know, is quite an undertaking and realistically, I won't be able to do all of it in my classroom as a first-year teacher. But that doesn't mean I won't try to do some of those things. At the very least, I need to be familiar with the books I have as well as current children's literature.

So, here are some book related goals I am setting for myself:

1. Read 100 children's and YA titles a year. Most kid's books aren't extraordinarily long or difficult reads, so I should be able to accomplish this.
2. Bulk up on literacy content knowledge and read one professional development book concerning literacy a month. One a month should be reasonable. 
3. Cultivate websites and read articles discussing literacy and start a resource bank for yourself. 
4. Start collecting more diverse titles featuring a variety of ethnicities, skin colors, genders and sexualities. My second passion next to literacy is diversity and a culture of acceptance and understanding. I believe a lot of that starts with reading books that feature people of all kinds. 

These are some pretty scary goals, but I feel really confident in my ability to pursue them. Even if I don't quite reach every goal, I think that it will get me started in the right direction.