OCALA, Fla. — A+ Teacher Alysia Hoekstra has a passion for teaching students how to read. She doesn’t just want her students to have fun learning in her class; she wants them to develop a lifelong love of reading.

As Hoekstra was busy in the front of the classroom teaching her fourth-graders at Maplewood Elementary School recenrtly, she encouraged them to talk about their assignment and tackle their classwork by working together in small groups.

"So one of the things that I really try to instill with my kids is just to have fun doing whatever we're doing, to really get engaged to the stories, to feel comfortable, to talk about the passages with me," Hoekstra says.

She circled the room and approached the groups to hear their answers, learn how they came up with them and give them feedback.

It’s hard to believe that Hoekstra stumbled into a teaching career by accident.

"I actually have a degree in mass communication," she says. "When I was in school, as soon as I graduated, I was actually working at a daycare at the time, and I actually decided that I loved it. I love working with my little kids, so that kind of got me to change my career path."

Hoekstra has a unique style when it comes to teaching how to read.

"A lot of time when kids come into the classroom, they think that reading is just pronouncing the words correctly, but I really want to teach them comprehension," she says. "That is the art of understanding what they're reading. Unfortunately, you cannot do that with a child if they don't love what they're doing. So really, what I have to do is teach my kids a love of reading."

She says her class is a yearlong journey, exposing students to lots of different text.

"We read myths. We read fables, fairy tales, realistic fiction science fiction," Hoekstra says. "They're discovering that when they sometimes think that they don't like to read, what they're learning is that there are just certain types of stories that they don't like to read."

So, Hoekstra makes sure her students get to read more of what they do like.

“We just want them active and engaged," she says.