Teach with' your heart

I'm reading the book Teach with Your Heart. It's the Chinese version because I haven't bought the original. It's about how a practice teacher led a group of "impossible" students to love learning. I just started and reached the part in which the teacher guided the students to read great literary works, such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (梅岡城故事) and Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (麥田捕手). She made it! They listened and were willing to say something about the story.
This reminds me of the time when I discussed E.B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan with the students in Advanced English class. There were no test, no analysis of sentences, no study of vocabulary word by word. We just discussed the story and shared personal opinions about the story. Students read 1~2 chapters at home, with the help of the study guide questions I handed them, and we "chatted" about the chapter(s) in class. It was really fun to teach reading that way.