ABSTRACT
This chapter frames a slice of life in Julia’s classroom-the first read-aloud of the year-to represent the classroom culture that Julia and her students enacted. To understand this slice of life, I must first introduce Julia, whose very comments about the read-aloud practice she initiates at the start of every year underscore its ritual power. When I asked Julia what she did to form a community in her classroom, she gave a lengthy and thoughtful response. (The book she refers to here is the one she read aloud at the start of the year, The Brothers Lionheart [Lindgren, 1985].)
Julia: I think the central, the most important thing I do at the beginning of the year is I read to them…and I think that’s the strongest message I give them of what life is going to be like-that we all have something to say, that there are no right and wrong answers, that, that I don’t know everything, that I use some strategies to put things together in my head and it might be different from the way you do and I want you to share what you do with me and I’ll share what I do with you…. I always read a hero tale. I would always choose a white hats/black hats book.
