Why Teachers (and Tutors) Need Reading Lists

I’ve just cracked open The Vegetarian.

And then I stopped writing and carried on reading. That was my day yesterday.

Han Kang’s novel had been glaring at me from the IB syllabus and my own shelf for months (years).  The opening is unsettling, claustrophobic, and darker than many of the IB staples.  The rest doesn’t exactly lighten up.

But here’s the point: my students aren’t the only ones with a reading list.  Yes, teachers do spend plenty of time revisiting the same battered copies of Macbeth or Purple Hibiscus.  I can quote the witches on demand, which is either a life skill or a party trick.  But unless I keep feeding myself new, demanding books, my teaching risks turning into one of those limp reheated leftovers you shove in the microwave and hope for the best.  Nobody deserves that, least of all teenagers staring down a three-hour exam.

Fresh reading jolts your brain.  It disorients, it questions, it occasionally makes you wonder why you didn’t just settle for a cosy detective novel or Netflix instead (The Vegetarian, I’m still looking at you).  But it also sneaks into your teaching: images, language, and ideas you can’t help dragging into conversations.  Students know when you’re running on fumes.  Equally they know when you’ve just read something so bizarre, brutal or brilliant you can’t stop talking about it.  I’m not sure which one The Vegetarian is, but it might be all three.

When I first read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it changed how I taught dystopia.  After seeing a Jenny Saville exhibition, I couldn’t look at Othello without rethinking the body on stage.  Reading reshapes teaching, whether it’s novels, poetry or even visual art.  And for IB Lit/Lang students, being alive to imagery in the world around them is as vital as spotting it in a set text.

Reading lists aren’t dusty duties; they’re oxygen tanks.

So yes, my students have reading lists.  But so do I, and mine matter just as much.  If you want teenagers to keep reading, you have to show them you’re still reading too.  Exams matter.  But curiosity matters more.