Barbara Thompson-Book, associate professor of elementary education, smiled and said she couldn’t have had a better last name.
Thompson-Book has been teaching children’s literature and reading courses at IU Southeast for the past 13 years.
She acquired her last name seven years ago when she married her husband, Bill Book, a dairy farmer. She also acquired four step-children and five grandchildren.
Bill is co-owner of Book’s Dairy and Produce, a 40-acre dairy farm with a milking herd of 150 dairy cows in Starlight, Ind.
“It took a farmer to plant my roots,” Thompson-Book said.
She said when she first met her husband, he claimed he couldn’t read.
“He thought just because he couldn’t read a novel, he was illiterate,” Thompson-Book said.
Thompson-Book said she noticed her husband was reading farmer’s magazines.
“Magazines, Wikipedia, video games with text, Twitter, Facebook and social networking sites are all resources for reading,” Thompson-Book said. “It’s how you define literacy.”
Thompson-Book’s quest to define literacy began as a child.
She said she followed in her father’s teaching footsteps. He was a principal.
“I became interested in how people taught reading,” Thompson-Book said. “I always loved reading and literature.”
She grew up in Los Angeles and obtained her Bachelor of Arts in English at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., in 1981.
After obtaining her undergraduate degree, she went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colo., to pursue a Master of Art in Education.
She graduated in 1982 and taught her first class to first graders in Craig, Colo.
After three years of teaching first grade in Craig, she returned to her home city of Los Angeles.
She began teaching at an inner-city school in Los Angeles, teaching bilingual classes to fifth and sixth grades.
Thompson-Book said she became interested in prominent research in child development and learning at the University of Arizona and wanted to pursue her passion of teaching children to read.
She obtained her doctorate in language reading and culture from the University of Arizona in 1993.
Her dissertation was on curriculum theory. She said she researched how curriculum and child development relate.
“By providing experiences, children explore,” Thompson-Book said. “Children create their own concepts of reading by different learning experiences.”
Thompson-Book said she decided to become a college professor to benefit more students.
“By teaching teachers I could affect more children,” Thompson-Book said.
Thompson-Book decided to teach at IU Southeast in 2007.
“I fell in love with the campus,” Thompson-Book said.
“I’m a city girl and didn’t want to teach at a college in a small town,” she said.
She waved to nearly every employee that walked by.
“It’s a wonderful community of colleagues,” Thompson-Book said.
In 2007, Thompson-Book created the Read Aloud Program at IU Southeast, a service learning project to accompany her Tradebooks in the Classroom course she teaches.
The Read Aloud Program is held monthly on Saturday afternoons in the IUS Library. Children from the community are invited to the free event. It provides elementary education students the opportunity to read and work on activities with the children.
Bridget Maurer, elementary education junior, said Thompson-Book’s willingness to help and to be flexible is wonderful.
“She’s always willing to work with her students,” Maurer said.
Thompson-Book said she has a collection of around 30,000 course books and children’s literature books in her office and mini-library. She’s accumulated a majority of her children’s books for free from students ordering books through book programs, such as, Scholastic Books.
“The greatest satisfaction is from students who I’ve had that come back and borrow books or e-mail for advice,” Thompson-Book said.
By LEAH TATE
Staff Writer
lmtate@ius.edu