Every Child Can Become a Lover of Books
Editor’s Note: In the next five years, most of America’s most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of more novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. The Atlantic’s “On Teaching” project is crisscrossing the country to talk to veteran educators. This story is the eighth in our series.
When Michelle Martin thinks back on her teaching career, she identifies its starting point as second grade—not when her students were second graders, but when she was. Earlier this year, sitting in her office full of children’s books at the University of Washington, Martin told me that her first pupil was a classmate, a little girl whose family had moved into Martin’s neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina, and who “had had a turbulent childhood.” Upon noting that her classmate was having trouble reading, Martin simply told their teacher not to
