NOTE to Language Arts Teachers

Today I got an email from a language arts teacher whose class recently finished reading banned books of their choosing. She wrote:

I was wondering if you would mind if they posted their responses on your banned books blog. There are 30 of them, so it might flood your blog a little. I would just like them to know that this cause isn’t contained to our class, and that it’s an issue that inspires passion in many.

That's a great idea, isn't it? I wrote back:

I would be delighted for them to share their responses, and you may tell them I said so! Flooding the blog is NOT a problem. All of us have one or more other blogs, and most of us review all sorts of books -- banned or not.

If you send me their email addresses (which I would never share with anyone else), I will happily invite each one of them to post under their own names. If that isn't acceptable to you, let me know how you want to do it. Please include your own email, and I'll invite you as well. Then you would be able to tell the world about your class's project and introduce us to your students. (The most recent posts are at the top, so we may have to plan it if your post comes before theirs -- by having all thirty of them get their posts up before you add your own.)

After that, it's up to you how long you want them to continue to have access to the blog. As far as I'm concerned, they are welcome to remain as permanent contributors. That means in the coming years, as long as neither they nor I delete their names from the list, they will be able to post about other banned books they read. Each contributor has the option of choosing to end her or his participation at any time. It can be done without telling me, though I wouldn't mind knowing if you decide to quit. I'm sure at least SOME of the students will be excited enough to want to continue reading banned books because of your efforts to enlighten them. Thanks for the work you do.

It may interest you to know that, even a month after Banned Books Week 2008, this Banned Books blog is still my most visited blog.

Are any of you readers wondering why I'm posting this here? I responded to the teacher immediately and clicked "REPLY" to let her know how pleased I am, but Yahoo can't get the email through to her, for some reason. I hope she'll see this post and the invitation to post that I sent her, if Blogger is able to use that email address. Email me again, teacher (whose name I'm not using without permission). Other teachers who assign banned books to your students, please consider letting your students post here as well. Then email me for invitations: emerging DOT paradigm AT yahoo DOT com.