Students who like to read do better in school and in life. Plus, reading is cool.

That's why I founded the Kindle Classroom Project. The program promotes a love of reading by providing Kindles and good books to high school students in San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward.

The Story of the Kindle Classroom Project
A few years ago, I launched an independent reading program as part of my curriculum. Influenced by research by Stephen Krashen and books by Nancie Atwell, Donalyn Miller, and Kelly Gallagher, I built a classroom library of 500+ titles and encouraged my students to read books they liked.

For the most part, the experiment worked. Reading went up, and my students started to say they liked to read. But not all students felt the same way. To them, no matter what I tried, reading was boring. Many said they couldn't remember the last book they finished. I needed to reach these students, too.

One day, likely out of exasperation, I lent a student my Kindle Keyboard, told him how to change the font size and set up text-to-speech, and let him go. He read. He couldn't contain himself. "This is so much better!" he exclaimed. At the end of class, he asked whether he could take my Kindle home for the weekend. I said yes. The next Monday, he'd finished Monster, his first book of the year.

Since then...
Generous supporters have donated 202 Kindles and 513 e-books to the project.
More than 250 students have read 3,000+ books.
This year, we're expanding to our 7th classroom.

Check out this slideshow of happy students with their Kindles!

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Don't they look happy? It's clear that Kindles help students reclaim their love of reading.

What next?
I have three goals before June 2015:

• Reach 200 Kindles and expand to 8 classrooms,
• Reach 500 titles in the e-book library,
• Create a promo video (in progress!),
• Create an online system to keep track of students, the books they read, and the overall success of the project. (I need help on this one!)

What can you do?
If you'd like to support the Kindle Classroom Project, check out the Contribute page. If you have a Kindle to donate, go to the Donate Kindle page. I'm looking for people interested in purchasing books, contributing money, donating Kindles, and getting the word out. Here's the Donate Kindle page on Facebook and the Kindle Classroom Project on Google+.

Also, feel free to contact me with questions, concerns, and ideas.

Read more about the Kindle Classroom Project:

• Donate your old Kindle to my Classroom
• $1,000 Donation to The Kindle Classroom Project
  
• The Kindle Classroom Project Receives $2,000 Donation
• The Kindle Classroom Has Reached its 200th Kindle!
• MarBlue donates 166 Kindle Cases!
• Kindle Classroom Project featured in Kappan!
• The Kindle Classroom Project is in Edutopia!
• All Kindle Classroom Posts!

Here's what others are saying about the Kindle Classroom Project:
(Thank you for the kind words!)

• Iris Meyers, life coach, Know Your Greatness Coaching
• Lori Sizemore, author of Ink Diva Diaries
• Matthew Despain, owner and developer of SmashText
• Dr. Alisa Cooper, instructional technologist and author of FreshmanComp.com
• Kiera Chase, blended learning coach and author at the Blend My Learning blog