For this month’s column, we had the pleasure of talking with Joe Monroe, director of Pupil Services for the School District of Monroe.

What are you reading right now?

I’m re-reading a book related to my professional work: “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. This is probably the third time I’ve read it. I’ve found, particularly when reading professional literature, that if I go through it multiple times, I pick up new meaning. That book is particularly meaningful to me as a person who works with at-risk children, because I think the mindset that we bring forward in working with children makes all the difference. I try to take little nuggets of wisdom from that book to share with the staff, to keep them motivated and reframe the way they’re approaching the work on a daily basis.

What did you read this summer?

This summer I did a fair amount of fiction reading. I gave myself a break from non-fiction professional reading. I read a couple of novels by Stephen King, and I’m now a big Stephen King fan. I read “11/22/63,” which is a huge book, but it was one of the best books that I’ve ever read. It was recommended to me by my wife. I love the combination of time travel and historical fiction, and all of the research that went into it. I did a little background reading about how the book was developed, and King started it many years ago, but then left it because it needed more research. I enjoyed it so much that I picked up another Stephen King novel, “The Outsider.”

As I shared these books with friends, most people are drawn to “The Outsider.” They like the idea of the small-town murder mystery. I’d recommend them both.

You said the recommendation came from your wife. Is she a big reader?

My wife is the reader of the family. She’s constantly after me to read books that she’s read. I can’t tell you how many she’s recommended. I’ll say, “Oh that sounds good. I’ll get to it some day.”

Is there a book you’ve read that you found especially inspiring?

Another professional book that was meaningful and inspiring is “Yes We Can” by Heather Friziellie. It’s about the very complex work of helping kids who have significant needs move up to grade-level expectations and achievements.

This is my 21st year in education here in Monroe, and pretty proud of it. We’ve done a lot of great work for kids, but we haven’t been able to get the majority of our kids in special ed to grade level. That book broke down the steps of what we can do to make learning more visible, to make it more explicit, so we can use those building blocks to get to the point where even those kids who are considered the most at-risk in the community have the opportunity to be successful at grade level. 

That book has shaped a lot of work we are currently doing, along with “Visible Learning” by John Hattie. If I pulled it out of the cabinet over there, you’d see that it has a bunch of tabs and it’s fraying. I’m constantly holding it up at meetings.

What was your favorite book growing up?

The book I read every year to the fourth graders at Parkside is “Where the Red Fern Grows.” I tell the kids that I was always a good reader, but I was not a student who loved reading. I was active, I liked to be outside and get dirty. Then I was assigned to read “Where the Red Fern Grows.” I tell the kids that it was the first book that ever made me cry, that made me have an emotional response. I love telling that story, because a lot of the fourth-grade boys are shocked that I would disclose that. But they also think, “Wow, how can reading make you feel that way?”

We talk about getting lost in reading, and about how you can connect to it and explore a world that you never knew about. We have multiple copies of it in the school library, and whenever I’m done reading, there’s always a run on the book. The kids come up to me later and say, “We read the book, it was great!” 

I think the school libraries have worked very hard to make them very functional, usable spaces that people want to be a part of. We want them to be active places where people can explore and enjoy the resources that are available.

Do you enjoy reading to your children?

I do, I wish I had more time to do it. Avery is at the middle school, in seventh grade, and Drew is in fourth grade, at Northside. Avery is an amazing reader. She’s in a wheelchair, and manipulating a book is a challenge for her. Thank goodness for the invention of touchscreens and the iPad because it’s really made reading and learning accessible for her. Reading was tough for her early on in school, but she had some amazing teachers who really believed in her and pushed her. That love of reading led her to being a straight-A student in middle school and identifying herself as a great student. Avery doesn’t let me read to her anymore. She reads herself. 

Drew is kind of like me when I was younger — he likes basketball, he likes to play — but my wife has done a good job exposing him to books that he’s really interested in.

If you could be a character from a book you’ve read, who would you be?

I don’t know if I’d want to be this character, but I love the Dan Brown books. Robert Langdon from “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons.” Those are books my wife recommended, saying, “You gotta read this book.” I read them back-to-back and then I had to wait for “Inferno.” I loved the analysis, the puzzles and the investigation. I love action-packed thrillers. I love his writing style, with short chapters that kind of punch you in the face and you think, “What’s going to happen next?”

If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only take one book, what would you want it to be? 

Only one book? It might be “11/22/63,” because it’s so big and there’s so much to read there. What would be another? “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich. The book was amazing, but you know how you read the book and then you watch the movie? That wasn’t even close. I love that book. I don’t know where it is now because I have lent it out so many times.