The reading engagement campaign

The reading engagement campaign was Tony Danza’s attempt to make reading something his students would choose to do, not merely an assigned exercise. It grew out of a conversation with Howard, who said that he reread the same page without retaining it, and from Danza’s growing conviction that students who could read but avoided reading needed a reason to become engaged. The campaign moved from personal encouragement to a concrete classroom experiment: short stories on popular subjects and, most ambitiously, a class set of Twilight.

The problem the campaign addressed

During a unit on Of Mice and Men, Howard came to Danza after class and said the story was not sticking despite his effort. Howard was a large, athletic student who played football, soccer, and baseball, but in this conversation he appeared earnest about his difficulty. He also said that rereading the same page did not help him remember it. Danza showed him how to underline important passages, annotate in the margins, and return to sections that were unclear. He assured Howard that rereading was something he did himself, but Howard remained doubtful about his ability.

Danza then learned from David Cohn that Howard’s name appeared near the top of the school’s list of students identified as gifted. That information left Danza uncertain: perhaps the reading problem was serious and had persisted for a long time, or perhaps Howard was playing him. The account does not resolve that question. Instead, Howard’s complaint directs attention to a broader problem: Danza needed ways to make students want to read, not only ways to help them work through a difficult assigned text.

The required literacy initiative offered practice with preselected articles, short stories, informational texts, and textbooks, followed by tests on interpretation or the retrieval of facts. Danza recognized the purpose of this work, but found that its scripted exercises could consume full class periods and interrupt the central literary units. The assigned material did not, in his view, inspire much enthusiasm. He distinguished illiteracy from what he called aliteracy: students could read, but did not choose to. His concern was sharpened by an orientation finding that students who did not read over summer vacation could lose as much as a grade level in reading. He concluded that encouraging independent reading required first persuading students that reading could be enjoyable.

From practice advice to a classroom plan

Before changing the reading material, Danza tried to explain how practice can make an unfamiliar activity rewarding. He recalled beginning to learn the ukulele after a thought-for-the-day calendar suggested practicing for thirty minutes a day for thirty days. When he started, he barely knew what a ukulele was, and practice was not much fun until he improved. By the time he spoke with Howard, he had played for almost five years and described the instrument as something he loved and relied on.

Danza proposed that Howard apply the same routine to reading: spend thirty minutes a day with material he enjoyed, and improve through practice. Howard looked unconvinced and left shaking his head. The exchange nevertheless shaped Danza’s next move. Rather than rely on advice alone, he decided to make the reading itself more inviting, comparing the challenge to finding ways to make practice engaging for athletes. The campaign’s premise was that interest could help sustain the repeated practice that a reading skill required.

Twilight as an experiment

Danza first found short stories about sports and celebrities. Then he heard students talking about the movie version of Twilight and recognized the appeal of teen romance and vampires, together with a style of language close to the students’ own age group. He did not present the novels as great literature. His wager was narrower: if an accessible story could make students eager to read, that enthusiasm might help establish a reading habit extending beyond school.

He obtained thirty copies of the first Twilight book and placed one on each desk. Its 498 pages immediately startled Howard, who called attention to the book’s length. Most of the girls were willing to try it and helped persuade the boys. Danza kept the pace deliberately gradual: students read three chapters a week and took quizzes on Fridays. He prepared study worksheets, as he did for the regular curriculum, to direct attention to plotlines, support comprehension, and help students prepare for the quizzes. The structure kept the popular book connected to classroom reading work rather than making it an unmonitored diversion.

Reception and limits

The response was not uniform, but the book drew students into discussion and reading. Danza saw that the story of Bella and Edward—a sweet, innocent girl and a vampire portrayed as gentlemanly—resonated with students negotiating attraction to, and fear of, the opposite sex. The unlikely romance was precisely part of its appeal: students could relate to its emotional concerns even when Danza found the story far-fetched.

Eric Lopez broke the ice by openly acknowledging that he liked the book, helping other students come around. Howard laughed at the love scenes, yet had no trouble with the quizzes; he also stopped complaining as much about Of Mice and Men. These observations offered Danza evidence that a book students wanted to read could make classroom reading more approachable. They do not establish that every student became a regular reader, that Howard’s underlying difficulty was resolved, or that the campaign prevented summer learning loss. Its result in the account is more specific: students engaged with a book that had initially looked daunting, and Danza saw popular fiction as a possible entry point to sustained reading.

Significance within Danza’s teaching

The campaign set student interest against a curriculum dominated, in Danza’s experience, by prescribed texts and reading tests. It did not discard quizzes or worksheets; it used them to support a text students were more willing to open. The distinction mattered to Danza because the formal literacy exercises could occupy substantial class time without making reading itself attractive. Twilight offered a different route: begin with a story students recognized and cared about, then use the reading to practice following plot and understanding what they encountered.

The campaign’s logic was practical rather than a claim that popularity alone could teach literacy. Howard’s difficulty remained a source of uncertainty, and the book’s reception was not proof of long-term change. But the episode marked a shift in Danza’s approach from urging a reluctant reader to practice toward designing a classroom environment in which practice might feel worth doing. It joined his personal ukulele analogy to a concrete choice of books, a manageable weekly pace, and feedback through quizzes—and made enjoyment part of the reading lesson rather than an afterthought.