Literature Circle Succes at Young Magnet Middle

I was recently at a Literature Circle training at Young Magnet Middle in Tampa, Florida. This was a district supported training that was being taught by Ewan Brand. Ewan is originally from Canada and he told everyone that he was teaching reading through literature circles up there on his own and was seeing success with his struggling readers. He was not supported by a program like Plugged-In back then and his students were able to achieve great things just by his own trial and error method. He has been a reading teacher in Tampa for four years and has had Plugged-In in his classroom for the last 2 years. He feels that the program itself has allowed his literature circles to become "things of legend". He feels more confident in his ability to successfully conduct them with the guidance of Plugged-In as well as seeing his students get so much more out of them then ever before. I was shown a twelve minute video of his classroom literature circles in action and they really were impressive. The entire class was participating! Even students who you could tell did not want to be there were actively taking part in the group discussion. The class was made up level 1, inner city students. Ewan said that this really was an example of a normal day there and not a show put on for the camera. I could tell from the video and from hearing him speak that he is an energetic individual with a passion for teaching and he absolutely raves about Plugged-In and credits it to major success in his classroom. If we could get all the teachers like him across the country just one unit of Plugged-In, the success that would be attributed to it would make Plugged-In probably the best selling literary tool of all time.