Sunday Salon: What I Read Online October 27-November 15

Instead holding my Sunday Salon weekly, I've opted for bi-weekly, and I'll continue to share only a sampling of what I've been reading since there's no possible way to share absolutely everything, nor would most people want to know absolutely everything. I'll share the links I believe you, my readers, will find most interesting.

Empowerment

A thoughtful Edutopia blog post by Vicki Davis titled Social Entrepreneurship: 7 Ways to Empower Student Change Makers

In this white paper, read about teachers around the United States who are empowered to start and cooperatively run their own schools because they believe all students deserve equitable opportunities to learn and succeed.

The Teachers for Teachers blog had an excellent post titled Are We Creating Schools of Engagement or Schools of Compliance. Be sure to check it out. It gets me all fired up when I think about the all too often reality in most American public schools.

With the announcement of our city's school superintendent resignation came this brilliant op-ed by Kentucky students proclaiming the need for their voices to be heard in the search for a replacement.

The child who created this Rube Goldberg machine is empowered to learn through failure. Love this video, and I think you will, too.

Parenting Considerations

I really appreciated Harvard, Schmarvard: Why Getting Your Kids Into College Should be the Least of Your Concerns, and I agree whole heartedly with the importance of encouraging my children to be creative, independent, problem solvers who are passionate about what they decide to do in their lives and who enjoy their own company.

If you read my blog regularly, you know my thoughts about meaningless homework. In this blog post, I appreciated a fellow parent who decided it was more important for her son to play with toy engines and interact with others than to scribble responses on a piece of paper. What do you think?

Global Learning

Though you can only read a teaser at this link, I strongly encourage you to order a copy of Cake & Whiskey Magazine (or pick one up at a bookstore--limited distribution, but I hear they are now available at Barnes and Noble). The article, Conflict Kitchen, is about a business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that promotes discussion of global issues of conflict the United States has with various countries, and they apparently serve up some amazing food from whatever the country being discussed happens to be at a given time.

With all the talk about project based learning and its benefits, there's some raw honesty in these posts about students from Kentucky who are building a partnership in Nicaragua, and you absolutely must read about what they are doing. Read the principal's post here, and a post by an honest student here.


Educational Resources

Since joining Achieve's EQuIP Peer Review Panel a while back, I have continued to be impressed by the quality resources and tools submitted and shared on their website. Recently they reached the goal of 50 Exemplar CCSS aligned lessons. The rubrics for evaluating lessons are useful by individual teachers or larger groups working to ensure quality materials are utilized in schools.

Kentucky teacher, Brad Clark, shared his thoughts on What a Common Core Classroom Really Looks Like. I share this article under resources because it's especially useful for anyone battling the CCSS debate.

Read about critical technology integration lessons being learned because of a mishap in California, here.

Miscellaneous Fun

We have less than a month until Cheryl Strayed's book Wild appears on film, and I've been eagerly awaiting. Watching the teaser on this website made me long to see it even more--only to have my hopes dashed when I learned the film release isn't set for any place near Lexington anytime in December. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will eventually make its way to our lovely Kentucky Theatre downtown.

I used to teach Arts and Humanities and would have loved this project I learned about at the GAFE Summit last weekend, but now I can use it for my own fun and continued learning. You won't want to miss it.

My appreciation for old time jazz brought me to this New York Times article about a man who won a Thelonious Monk competition.

Pairing traveling with teaching? What could be better? I follow this blog regularly, and enjoyed an article about short term volunteer opportunities abroad.

I've read Into the Wild a handful of times, so when I saw Outside's article about Carine McCandless's new book, I was curious to learn more. Needless to say after reading the article, I now have another book on my list of books to read.

Experience English teacher/tech geek fun when you read Adam Watson's blog post titled Star Wars, Shakespeare, and Rebels.

My sons always have me on the lookout for information about Minecraft in education. There's a great example in this article of a teacher from Louisville, Kentucky using the game well in his school.

Hope you enjoyed reading about what I've been reading.  Please take some time to comment below to let me know which articles you liked most.

January 2014 Reads

Since December doesn't count for my 52 books in 52 weeks reading journey, I'll begin my notations and reflections about the books I read this month.  You can read more about my decision to begin this journey here.

The first book I read in 2014 was 46 Days:  Keeping Up with Jennifer Pharr Davis on the Appalachian Trail by Brew Davis, and really my decision for it being the first book to read came from my impatience in waiting for Called Again to arrive in the mail.  You see, while I was visiting my family in Western North Carolina during Christmas break, I learned about Jennifer Pharr Davis from my sister, Beth (who is also a hiker).  While we were in North Carolina I finished reading Wild and talked to Beth about how much I was enjoyed Strayed's journey of her thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Beth grew more interested in the memoir and then told me that she heard of a woman from the Asheville area who had hiked the entire Applachain Trail in 46 days. Naturally, I was intrigued, so Beth and I spent the next hour or so searching the internet for information about this woman who hiked the AT in 46 days.  I found her blog, and since I'm a blogger and hiker, too, I added it to my regular reading list. This month there was even a post by her husband who compared his wife's first book Becoming Odyssa to Cheryl Strayed's Wild.  I encourage you to check it out.

Upon returning home to Lexington, I immediately checked our local Lexington libraries for copies of Called Again, but they were all checked out, and I didn't want to wait, so I used a gift card I received at Christmas to order the book.  Still impatient to read about her story, I looked for an e-version, and that's when I learned about the book written by her husband.  I promptly purchased, downloaded, and proceeded to read 46 days in its entirety in a single evening.  I appreciated the details about the amount of calories she consumed per day, the number of miles she hiked, and the lack of sleep she endured all to accomplish her goal of setting the record for fastest thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

When Called Again:  A Story of Love and Triumph by Jennifer Pharr Davis arrived in the mail a few days later, I felt already familiar with the story and the details and was able to enjoy the author's writing and reflection of the journey.  I relished in the descriptions of the places along the trail because I have hiked sections of the AT in Georgia and North Carolina.  I read this book in exactly one week.

Knowing I was leaving for a week long work related trip, I decided to grab a longer book to enjoy on the plane and in the evenings at my hotel.  A friend had previously recommended The Aviator's Wife to me, so that was next on my January reading list.  I started reading it the Saturday before leaving on my trip, and honestly, spent the entire day struggling to enjoy it.  I kept talking about it with my husband who reminded me--"you know--it's okay not to like a book!"  I decided to give it a few more chapters before setting it aside in search of something I would enjoy more.  I'm glad I kept with it because by the half way point, it became much more interesting and engaging to me.  I still wouldn't rank it at the top of my personal favorites, but I'm glad I read it, and I did enjoy it by the end because I liked the characters and the time period.  This book took me a week and half, and I finished it right after returning home from my week in Colorado.

Yet another trip was on my calendar, so I checked our bookshelves at home for books I hadn't yet read.  Luckily, my husband is also a reader, so there's always something waiting on the shelves for me.  I pulled Girl Interrupted for my plane ride to Washington D.C..  By the first night I had finished this short (and excellent) memoir by Susanna Kaysen.  Topics of mental health have been intersesting to me since my college days and all my psyhology/counseloing courses.

Obviously, I couldn't be on a trip and out of reading material, so I purused my saved New York Times articles and book reviews for something I might enjoy.  Cheryl Strayed's review of Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala immediately caught my interest, so I decided to give my e-reader another try on this one.  The rich and powerful story of Deraniyagla losing her entire family in the 2004 tsunami was beautifully written, taking me into the author's thoughts and life for the past 9-10 years.  Her sons were just slightly older than mine at the time of their death, and her husband, an academic, only slightly older than mine.  The story was heart wrenching, but I couldn't put it down.  Something inside me needed to know Deraniyagala would work through her grief and that she would share that process in the memoir.