WHERE STORIES TAKE ROOT HOW CATHEDRAL BUILDS A CULTURE OF READING HABITS OF SCHOLARSHIP
by Alli Decker, Librarian
WHEN YOU WALK INTO the Cathedral School for Boys library, you will hear quiet: the soft turning of pages, a whispered conversation between friends, the clicking of keys as a student hunts for just the right book. But behind that quiet is something alive. Curiosity sparks there. So does connection. In that calm space, a reading life begins.
The library is more than a room with books. It is a place where boys begin to figure out not just what they love to read, but who they are becoming. Reading is foundational to academic success, yes, but it’s also one of life’s great joys. In February, Head of School Burns Jones wrote to
The Cathedral School library lives right where those two moments meet. We cheer on early readers as they sound out syllables and spot familiar patterns. We stand beside older boys as they move from decoding to choosing, from understanding to owning their reading lives. The goal isn’t just to raise students who can read; it’s to grow readers. That journey starts early. In Kindergarten, boys learn how to use the library: how to browse, how to pick a book, how to care for it. But even more importantly, they learn that books offer mirrors and windows. They see themselves on the page, and they glimpse lives different from their own. We read together. We laugh together. We plant joy. As students move through the grades, their reading identities deepen. They begin to talk about genre and voice. They wrestle with representation. They read widely, think critically, and connect emotionally. By the time they reach Upper School, they’re running book discussions, swapping recommendations, and showing up in the library not because they must, but because they want to. It feels like theirs. Literacy doesn’t happen by accident. It takes
families about two essential turning points in a boy’s academic life: the moment of literacy and the moment of agency. Literacy, he said, is when the world opens up. Agency is when a student realizes he can chart his own course.
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CATHEDRAL SCHOOL FOR BOYS
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