Although author and teacher Penny Kittle has shifted from working with high school students to college freshman, she notes in this piece that they are not that different. They still show up the first day of class as "nonbelievers" needing to be "nudged" toward the love for books that she forges through her sensitive context building and unflagging personal identity as a reader. It is Penny Kittle's hope for each one of them that they will embrace by the semester's close the hallmarks of a literacy classroom -- sustained reading, engaged response, coaching conversations, high expectations, thinking, empathy, joy -- and they do.