Links Worth Talking About is my weekly post of curated links about education, books, and apropos of nothing.
Speaking of apropos of nothing, yesterday I celebrated getting stuck in the snow since the first memory in our new house was getting stuck while trying to pull in the driveway for the first time.
Did you see the video of the 106-year-old woman who met the President and First Lady? If you didn't watch it, please do. It's sure to put a smile on your face.
Speaking of President Obama, the #ObamaAndKids hashtag that took Twitter by storm last week is an even bigger smile-inducing piece of clickbait.
Need more reasons to smile? How about kids reading to shelter dogs? Or asking yourself what does the sloth say?
I found this article to be incredibly thought-provoking and discussion-worthy:
America loves women like Hillary Clinton -- as long as they're not asking for a promotion
This week Travis Jonker shared some covet-worthy books:
2016 Books from Caldecott Winners
2016 Books from Newbery Winners
One of my favorite authors had a book birthday this week. Natalie Lloyd's new book The Key to Extraordinary finally hit bookstores.
Lots of great resources were shared during last weekend's #nctechat about celebrating and supporting African American writers. Check out the archive.
Back in 2013 my friend Sarah Andersen wrote a blog post that responded to the many people who ask her why she's just not a librarian if she loves to read so much. She shared this post again this week and her words really resonated with me:
"The reason this question bothers me isn’t because I don’t love and appreciate librarians (schools need librarians), but because it’s asked under the pretense that teachers, English teachers in particular, shouldn’t be so excited about reading and shouldn’t be reading so much. Maybe I’m wrong in that assumption, but the tone when the question is asked, especially at school, leaves me feeling like they think my passion for reading is misplaced. That it’s better suited for a library than in my classroom. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t the people asking that question wonder to themselves why they aren’t as excited about reading?"
Pernille Ripp started a fabulous hashtag this week: #1s1w, which stands for 1 School, 1 World. It is a way for students and teachers to see how schools around the world are alike and different.
I loved this Atlantic article about the wrong way to teach grammar. I was criticized by colleagues when I first began teaching because I was told my method of teaching was "new fangled" and that it was just a trend that would pass. Except for the fact that there's decades of research that proves traditional grammar instruction is detrimental to student success in writing. So whenever I come across articles like this I always add another mental tally mark for proving my former colleagues wrong.
My friend Kaitlin Popielarz, a PhD student and social justice warrior, wrote a beautiful poem: Stepping into the Uncomfortable.
As someone who grew up in this town, Brian Stone's Huffington Post article really resonated with me:
What If America Looked Like Dearborn, Michigan?
Given who is currently leading in the presidential race and the media's misplaced fascination with this person, we need to talk about why decency has suddenly fallen out of favor. Max Lucado is making the case for decency for president.
"We take note of the person who pays their debts. We appreciate the physician who takes time to listen. When the husband honors his wedding vows, when the teacher makes time for the struggling student, when the employee refuses to gossip about her co-worker, when the losing team congratulates the winning team, we can characterize their behavior with the word decent.
We appreciate decency. We applaud decency. We teach decency. We seek to develop decency. Decency matters, right?
Then why isn’t decency doing better in the presidential race?"
*Mic drop*
