Confessions of an English Teacher

Richard Sinay has written a book with a single conviction and the stamina to argue it across eighteen chapters: that the English classroom exists to build literacy, and that reading, not the cultivation of "little literature lovers," is how that happens. The conviction is not borrowed. It comes from thirty-five years at the front of the room, a master's in reading alongside a master's in literature, and a personal history he is willing to put on the page.

That history is the book's strongest evidence. Sinay lists all thirty-two works he read at La Habra High School between 1962 and 1966, from The Iliad to Paradise Lost, and then describes teaching honors juniors in the 2000s who stole Huckleberry Finn quizzes rather than read it. The contrast is specific, checkable and a little startling. The senior-year Chemistry class is better still: an English teacher assigned to a subject he didn't know, reading quietly at the front while a sophomore reads the textbook aloud, and Sinay absorbing a dozen Steinbeck novels in the dead time. It is a small, funny, true scene that makes his case for independent reading better than any statistic.

The practical machinery is where the book earns its keep for a working teacher. He explains how to match students to books using the San Diego Quick Assessment and the Nelson-Denny, how to rate a 200-title classroom library as easy, medium or challenging, how to interview a student to confirm they finished a book, and why context vocabulary beats the Friday word-list quiz. His argument about readability and cultural suitability, such as Steinbeck for readers who will recognise his characters, is a clear position a reader can adopt or argue with.

It is a candid, opinionated, experience-driven book. Its arguments about frustration-level reading and the Title I reading lab his district never applied for carry real conviction.