Inspired by Elisabeth Ellington's weekly Links I Loved Last Week
posts, I've decided to curate my own set of notable links from the past
week.
If you missed last weekend's #nctechat on censorship and young adult literature, you can read the Storify archive. I also curated my own set of Tweets for the chat that I found the most valuable.
Brian Wyzlic shared the letter he sends home to parents about his classroom library and why he won't censor books. This letter is especially poignant because, like me, he works at a Catholic school.
"If the rules of your classroom were the rules of the world, would you want to live there? "
The longlists for the National Book Award came out this week and the list for Young People's Literature is fabulous. I'm rooting for X: A Novel because we need more diverse books like that in our canon of young people's literature. Even though it's historical fiction, it is still so very rooted in our present.
Speaking of NCTE, If you're a teacher who has always wanted to attend the their Annual Convention but knew you'd never be able to get funding, this year NCTE is helping you make a case to your administrator as to why you should be able to go.
Continuing with more awesome NCTE info, they have a pretty epic #nctechat scheduled for next Sunday in honor of the upcoming Banned Books Week, which revolves around YA Lit this year.
YA author Jason Reynolds gave this amazing virtual keynote for School Library Journal where he said that the reason he writes books is "to acknowledge the lives of those who seem to have been unacknowledged.”
After watching this video, I DEFINITELY want to read A Fine Dessert and make blackberry fool with my students.
Michigan principal Ben Gilpin shared some amazing classroom cribs in his own building. Leaders like Ben Gilpin and Sue Haney are certainly making a name for themselves and showing that the small town of Parma, Michigan is an enviable place to work.
And speaking of Kevin English, he shared this video on Twitter last week with a great suggestion to pair it with the book What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom
This Washington Post article about the right and wrong way to get kids to sit still in class is everything. Bottom line: kids need time to play, not just sit on bouncy balls.
This week I hastily gave my students some reading to do to go along with a writing assignment, not realizing just how challenging the text was.
You know how I found out?
I read it (after I assigned it).
Go figure.
See, I gave them the text of JK Rowling's 2008 Harvard commencement address because we have been talking and writing a lot about failure and why it's good for you. I remember some students at my old school did a portion of the speech as part of their forensics declamation performance and being so impressed with the speech's message. Ever since that moment, it has always been a part of my classroom mantra.
But it had been a while since I had watched the speech in its entirety and I foolishly asked my 8th graders to read it for homework without having gone back and reread it for myself. After all, if 6th graders were doing a portion of this speech as a forensics performance, surely 8th graders could handle reading it on their own.
None of my 8th graders actually complained about how hard the speech was to read. I just happened to point it out in class the next day and they affirmed my hunch. The thing is, I get the sense that they didn't mind how hard it was. They have seen that I have been modeling a reading and writing life for them, and as such, I wouldn't assign them anything that I don't see value in. Because they knew that I thought the message of that speech was worthwhile for their writing and for their lives in general, they were willing to try without complaint. As a result, I have been reading some really thoughtful responses in their writer's notebooks. I'm looking at the printouts of the close readings they did and they have pulled out some really meaningful quotes to apply in their own writing.
So today I am celebrating my students' grit and determination to try hard things. Their acceptance and willingness to fail. Their inherent ability to know that the only way out is through and experience the rewards on the other side. 8th graders, you are awesome.
For every adult that has a lament over "kids these days," I have just as much, if not more, praise to dish out. To modify the well-known quote from R.S. Grey, "I believe they can, and they do."
Inspired by Elisabeth Ellington's weekly Links I Loved Last Week
posts, I've decided to curate my own set of notable links from the past
week. Last week was my inaugural post so I'm hoping, like Elisabeth, to make this a weekly event.
Another weekly event I participate in is Ruth Ayres' Celebration Saturday. Yesterday I celebrated the music of my heart -- and even got brave and sang for my blog post.
On my other blog, I reviewed three books:
A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen
This is finally the Berlin Wall novel I've been waiting for since I first visited the city back in 2004 and fell in love with its vibrant, youthful energy.
Remember, stakeholders are just another group of students, and there’s no better
way to engage students than by getting them to actively participate.
Linda Darling-Hammond, the renowned professor at Stanford who in my opinion should have been our Secretary of Education these past 7+ years, is launching an education think tank "aimed at shaping education policies nationwide." I'm excited to see where this leads.
This Chronicle Books blog post talks about the many benefits of coloring. Given my recent realization that I am struggling with anxiety, I think it's time to start pulling out the crayons and colored pencils again like I loved to do when I was a child.
Sarah Larson writes a New Yorker piece about Why You Hate Google's New Logo. Not only do I agree with her, but I also think the writing is stellar and worth sharing with students.
Thanks to Colby Sharp and Travis Jonker's new kid lit podcast The Yarn, I have begun to explore other podcasts, because sometimes I just don't feel like committing to an entire audiobook, but I can handle a 15-20 minute podcast episode. A couple of my favorites right now: Stories from the Teaching Life with Penny Kittle and Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert. What are some of your favorite podcasts?
Speaking of Travis Jonker, how can you not want to watch an Ignite Talk he gave at the 2015 Michigan Reading Association conference entitled "Be the Flava Flav of Books"? Though I was really hoping he'd wear sunglasses and a clock necklace when he gave his talk.
My friend Sarah Andersen wrote about helping high school teachers in her district and neighboring districts spread book love in their schools and classrooms.
And congratulations to my friend Kevin English who made the International Literacy Association's 30 Under 30 List. So well-deserved!
I love Pernille Ripp's and Kristi Mraz's reasons for discouraging teachers the use of public behavior charts in their classrooms -- and also Kimberly Moran's empowering way she took the behavior chart that she was required to use and turned it over to her students.
Two Vlogbrothers videos I loved this week: John Green talks about how everyone's been misinterpreting the famous Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken" all these years and Hank Green talks about society's unproductive addiction to outrage.
Also apropos of nothing other than my husband and I are big Michigan football fans and have season tickets for the first time this year (and I love Charles Woodson):
I'd like to say I play it all the time and that I've gone back to the dedication and ability I had when I was younger and took piano lessons from age nine until twenty-two.
But here's the honest truth: Even though I play more than I used to, it's nowhere near as much as I thought I would.
But that didn't happen. I just don't have the time or the stamina anymore.
What I do have, however, is the love of music. The desire to still grace my fingers across those keys, no matter how awkward and clunky it might be. The pleasure to play has come back where it wasn't before. But I have resigned myself to the fact that I will likely never really perfect a difficult piece of classical music ever again. Very rarely do I have the stamina or attention span to attempt an entire piece from start to finish. I dip in and out of songs, playing a phrase here, a section there. When my hands don't feel like playing a particular piece, I move on to something else. When my hands tell me that they love the way a particular song feels as they move along the keys, I oblige. And while it's never close to perfect or even always pretty, my heart has finally come back to the piano. One imperfectly attempted song at a time. Just like this one (my hands are particularly a fan of playing this song):
