Lily Rosene began her teaching career in 2020 when COVID-19 derailed her career plans and anearby school was desperate for teachers. She entered her first 9th-grade English classroom without a clear understanding of her students or the curriculum. However, she knew reading was important to any English classroom, so she decided to make silent reading part of her routine. And personal experience showed her that personal choice could promote a love of reading, so she decided to let her students pick their own books. This aligned with some of the ideas a mentor teacher shared with her, but it wasn't a common practice at her school. However, after two years of building a classroom around independent reading and student choice, she saw positive results in her students' standardized test scores.