Sunday Salon: What I Read Online January 5-January 24 2016

With the recent snowstorm that hit Kentucky and much of the East Coast, there's been plenty of time to curl up with our favorite books and devices for online reading. I definitely read more books during the snowstorm than online articles, but here are a few of my favorite online reads over the past few weeks.

This Washington Post article from a mom who just wants her children to love learning and enjoy school appealed to me because I want the same for my own sons and for all other children as well. If you've read my blog previously, you might remember previous posts I've written about the insane idea that kids should have to sit still for hours on end, spend hours at a time being quiet or day after day practicing for standardized tests. These are certainly not ways to help children love learning or enjoy their school experiences, nor are they ways to ensure students have what they need to be successful in life. We need schools that emphasize a love of learning, encourage problem-solving and curiosity, and that teach students the importance of healthy living.

While we're at it, let's also remember to listen to students from everything as big as education policy decisions to as important as classroom learning experiences. Nationwide, but especially in Kentucky, students are joining Student Voice Teams to share their thoughts on our education system. Super impressive is this Kentucky group who is also encouraging students to write op-eds about education issues in Kentucky. This article by a high school senior emphasizes the importance of adequately funding education in Kentucky to ensure ALL students have access to funding for college.

Whether students head off to college or immediately enter the workforce, we have work to do if we are going to make sure students are ready for the future. Ted Dintersmith's documentary Most Likely to Succeed continues to impress community members and educators all around the country. In Kentucky, we had the privilege of being Dintersmith's first state in his 50-state tour. Since his visit here in August, I've been following his tour via blog posts and other articles. This Atlanta Journal-Constitution article asks if we are educating teens for disappearing jobs. If you dig deeper into the AJC blog, you'll find the answer might be--no because if kids don't come out of high school today being innovative, they will come out being unemployed.

Speaking of being innovative, I enjoyed this Inc. article by the founder of an innovative Lexington based company--Big Ass Fans. Carey Smith writes about stock options and stock appreciation rights. It's an article worth your time.

Not only do we need to think about being innovative, we might also think about how we become mentally strong. After reading Amy Morin's book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do last year, I started following her writing via blogs and articles shared on Twitter. Earlier this month, I read a Psychology Today article where Morin says "mentally strong people don't give away their power--they do these 9 things instead."

Ultimately, we want to, among other things, know our values and be willing to stand out from the crowd. Though it doesn't seem as popular here in Kentucky as it is in Colorado or the mountains of North Carolina where I used to live, I still value hiking and nature. This article about 21 awesome places to see in Colorado captured my attention this week because I still long to hike and explore and I love Colorado. So, if anyone reading this blog is from Kentucky and knows of some terrific places to hike, please share with me! Thanks.

Sunday Salon: What I Read Online January 26 - February 08

My work week on January 26th began with a trip to Denver, Colorado. Coincidentally, The New York Times published this article titled What to do in Denver the week before my trip. Though I didn't get to take in all the sites suggested in the video, I did enjoy a couple of meals at local venues. My colleague and I enjoyed lunch at Earle's before a meeting downtown at the Colorado Education Initiative, and we were treated to dinner downtown that same evening. The following day we worked all day with teachers who were analyzing student work and planning revisions to their common assignment units before heading out to the infamous Steuben's (one featured on Diners, Dives, & Drive-Thrus) for dinner.

Morning walk in North Denver

Education

Students in Northern Kentucky took their desire to be makers into their own hands and created this makerspace.

Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world--read about a film exploring this truth.
Pressure for high-stakes standardized tests is apparently ruining creativity in China. Read more here.

"It's now more important than ever to teach students to think and speak critically" says Terry Roberts in this article.

Visions for Shared Leadership from district administrator Mike Stacey are encouraging.

In education (and other field) we are inundated with big data. In this article we are reminded of the importance of human perspective when we analyze data--yes!

Book review for The Test features a school right here in Kentucky using more performance based assessments to measure student learning.

Science teacher, Patrick Goff, writes about re-thinking the way we do science fairs, and I love this idea as a parent and as an educator.

We had the opportunity to see Jack Andraka live last weekend. If you've never heard him, I'd suggest listening to his dynamic TED TALK.

Health/Adventure

For inspiration to stay active, read about the American man who ran 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days.

Humanity
 
As we approached the anniversary the 70th anniversary of prisoners being liberated from Auschwitz,  hear and read a survivor's story here.

Female Militants published a manifesto about it being acceptable for girls as young as age 9 to be forced into marriage. How is this possibly right?

For weeks now, I've been following the story of Raif Badawi, and was pleased to hear his flogging was once again postponed, and I keep hoping for his freedom.

Remember the nearly 300 Nigerian girls who were kidnapped? They are still not free. Here's a reminder.

A story about girls from Chibok who escaped and are now returning to school, defying the militants.

Music/Art/Business
Madame CEO, Get Me a Coffee articulates some of the gender bias woman still endure in the workplace.

A story about Bob Dylan's speech at the Grammy's was a fun read as was this article about the intersection between art and literature.

8 New Jobs People Will have in 2025 was intriguing.

A delightful Google Doodle on the birthday of poet Langston Hughes.

Sunday Salon: What I Read Online January 1 January 11

December brought a break in my Sunday Salon series, but I'm back now to share a sampling of what I've read online the past couple of weeks. Since starting this curated bi-weekly post, numerous individuals have contacted me to share what they like best about what I've been reading, and they've also been sharing their own reading lists with me--making this an ideal learning/sharing opportunity.

Education

Teachers Know Best: Teacher's Views on Professional Development from Impatient Optimists

Obituary for John I Goodlad, Progressive Educator


A Valerie Strauss article in the Washington Post from a blog post by Peter Green in which he writes about The Biggest Public Education Win of 2014.

Valerie Strauss also published an article that includes a piece by Pasi Sahlberg reflecting on the question--What if Finland's Great Teachers Taught in America? This article left me feeling inquisitive and wishing I could talk to Sahlberg.

Student athletes in Utah attend a public charter school designed to support their interest in competitive winter-sports. The Heroes of America's Only (free) All Winter-Sports School by Heather Hansman left me thinking about other schools we might design focused on allowing kids and teens to pursue their own interests. 


I found A New Brand of Superintendents and their Visions for 2015 encouraging since the focus was on providing more distributed leadership and opportunities for teachers. 


From School to Shining School: 52 Stories from Educators Across the U.S. in an interactive map format.


Read about a new library focus in this Kentucky Teacher Magazine article titled No More Shushing in these School Libraries.

Technology

How My Mom Got Hacked by Alina Simone in The New York Times chronicles a real story of a woman whose computer files and photos were held hostage until she paid the ransom (via her daughter's assistance) in bitcoins.

Why, and How to Teaching Computer Hacking by Rachel Williams explores a new computer science curriculum.

I enjoyed this question--What's the Impact of Overzealous Internet Filtering in Our Schools.


For two reasons, this article BCTC's Hour of Code Program Was a Hit with Students. 1) I, too, participated in Hour of Code at a different local school, and 2) some of the students highlighted in the article here are from a school across town where I used to teach.

Te@ch Thought Blog offered a post titled Start Something: 13 Digital Strategies for Teacher Collaboration.

Hiking and Adventure 

An avid reader of adventure travel for the past 20 years, I found a new type of adventure travel to read when I learned about a couple of climbers free-climbing the Dawn Wall in Yosemite National Park. This article introduces life when Hanging Out 1,200 Feet Up. 

I'm planning a vacation for my family to Colorado (and maybe a day trip to Wyoming) so I was looking at hiking trails that might allow us to day hike a tiny section of the Continental Divide Trail. This site offered useful reading about Steamboat Springs Hiking Trails.


Section Hiking is Hard by Jennifer Pharr Davis serves as a great reminder that I better be thoughtful as I plan our tiny hike.


The Continental Divide Trail: A Long Way from Nowhere by Julie and Matt Urbanski is a blog post about their hike. I read their entire book last year, but enjoyed this blog post this week.

Miscelleaneous (But very intriguing reads extremely worthy of mention here)

Wal-Mart an Economic Cancer on Our Cities is well worth a read if you care about small businesses and economics in your area.

Personally, I'm driven to continue with my work in education because I'm passionate about issues of equality. The article Inequality and the American Child speaks to many of the concerns that keep me going in my work.

The beautiful photography of dessert art drew me into this blog post. For complete fun and appreciation for art, check out Brain Pickings and an article titled Modern Art Desserts From Mondrian Cake to Matisse Parfait.

Playlist: TED Talks to Watch With Kids includes 11 different talks on a variety of topics, all with kids as the speakers.

100 Years of the Christmas Truce. Longing for a New Narrative on the Public History Weekly site.





 

GAFE Summit Kentucky

A week ago at this time my head was spinning with excitement and overload from all the learning at GAFE Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. Though my teaching now happens one course each semester at the college level (pre-service literacy methods course) rather than full time in K-12 public schools, Kentucky's first Google Apps for Education Summit provided opportunities to connect, learn, and rejuvenate. 3 reasons this is important to me...

• In my work at a non-profit, we wish to disrupt the normal systems and operations in public schools as we support teachers and leaders because we believe all children deserve opportunities to learn in relevant and meaningful ways.
• I now spend most of my time working with teachers, and in my desire to stay relevant drives my desire to learn about new technology tools. 
• You never know when I might just live my dream of opening a Teacher Powered school. 

Creativity, Inspiration, and Excellence: Opening Keynote by Rushton Hurley
Have fun.
Save time.
Make learning meaningful.

The session wasn't about flashy technology but about ways technology can enhance learning, make it meaningful, let you have fun and help you save time. Hurley shared thoughtful, real examples relevant in the academic world. Check out Hurley's resources for ideas about using images and videos with students and competitions for students to create their own videos.

Inspiring Your Staff with Free Technology: Featured Session by Rushton Hurley
Free tools for discussing (though I have used all of these free tools myself, I'm sharing them here in case you haven't, and I'll also say the other tools and ideas about how to use the tools were new to me...)

• Google groups
• Padlet
• Today's Meet

Ponder: Do you have something happening at your school that makes a memorable experience? What's your story? You have a story to tell!
Free tools for wondering (all except the Google Art Project were new to me)

• Geogusesser 
• Geosettr
• Google Art Project

Ponder: How do you get people to share creative ideas?
Free tools for telling digital stories (all were new to me, and good stuff for use in classrooms)

• Edpuzzle.com (allows you to annotate online video)
• Narrable (narrate uploaded images)
• WeVideo (online video editing: Youtube's editor)
• Meograph (stories with maps, images, and more)
• Next Vista for Learning (Creative edu-videos)

Free tools for using Chrome

• Read and Write for Google
•  Google URL shortner
• Undo Recently Closed Tabs 
• Google Translate (I've actually used this one previously!)
• Tips: Command T (opens a new tab) & Command Tshift (opens tab you just closed)

Google Apps in the Classroom to Engage Your Students by Monica Martinez

My favorite take-away from this session was World Wonders, but Monica's link above takes you to her site with a treasure trove of other tech ideas for use in academic classrooms.

My biggest take-away from the entire GAFE Summit experience was about hope--hope for humanity, hope for meaningful learning experiences, and hope that we can make it happen with so much free technology available to us now.

Check out the Storify of the event created by James Allen & check back on my blog for more posts about this fabulous learning experience.

Why Teachers are Important: Insight from an 11 year old

As my boys grow older they are beginning to think about college, jobs, and careers. On a recent afternoon drive home from cross country practice, the boys started asking me about our evening. You know--the usual--What's for dinner? (pasta because they needed to carb load before their big cross country meet) When will dad be home? (late due to open house at the school where he teaches)  May we play computer games before homework? (no)  When I told them their dad would be home late, my oldest son immediately launched into all the reasons why he would "never become a teacher." I guess growing up as a child of educators, he's seen the good and the bad, but he mostly feels impacted by a desire to make more money than his parents ever have. While my older son was listing all the reasons why he would never become a teacher, my younger son piped up from the back seat "but, we need teachers or the world would be chaos." He went on to explain how he sees teachers as essential to helping students be well educated. It's true. Teachers are important, and they have the power to influence and impact change in our world. Teachers teach students to think, to dream, to create, to learn, and so much more, both academic and social.

Sunday Salon: What I Read Online September 14-28

The weeks are flying by with plenty of online reading. Here's what I've read the past two weeks.

Women and Girls
I'm committed to continuing my part in raising awareness about violence against women, and so I enjoyed the article Why Global Violence Against Women and Girls Must be a New Priority

I read this article about girls in Afghanistan who dress as boys to obtain an education.

Emma Watson's speech at the UN is worth watching multiple times.


Teachers
My friend, Sherri, has been participating in a 30 day blogging challenge. This post where she shares her three strengths is one of my favorites.

One of my pre-service teachers wrote this great post about presentation styles as part of her reflection on our readings of Crafting Digital Writing by Troy Hicks. Check it out!  Dancing Around Powerpoint

Like many educators, my husband and I have been discussing the concept of Teacher Time. This Huffington Post article, Teacher Time by Peter Green provides food for thought.

Aritcles I shared with my sons
My soft hearted and thoughtful eleven year old and I have had many thoughtful conversations in the past few weeks because he's concerned about the people in Syria. This article was topic for one of our conversations.Three Million Syrian Children Not in School

My 11 & 13 year old sons were disappointed when they learned Microsoft bought Minecraft, and in this article, My Son Says He Won't Play Minecraft Again , by David Boyle I learned my boys are not alone with their concerns. 


Homework Saga Continues
My ongoing quest to explore homework practices continues, and I was encouraged to see yet another educator and parent also begin to question homework practices. Read Brooke's post here.

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

With Banned Books Week coming to a close, I thought I'd take some time to blog about what I've been reading. This past week I read Escape by Carolyn Jessop, a former member of a cult, who fled the FLDS with her eight children several years ago. While reading the book I was alarmed by several of the cult practices, including censorship of everything and the poor treatment of women and girls.  I'll explore only the censorship aspects of the book here because it would take another whole post or two to comment on the mistreatment of women and girls (another topic about which I care deeply).

One of my former students gave me this Banned Books bracelet

You might remember Warren Jeffs in the news several years back when he was arrested, tried, and imprisoned for sexual assault of minors. Carolyn Jessop, was the fourth wife of Merril Jessop, one of Jeffs' top men in the cult. Carolyn's strength throughout the book is phenomenal, and over and over again, she gives credit for her ability to get out of the cult to her education because it helped her learn to think for herself and to question the cult's practices she experienced her whole life. Carolyn was more fortunate than many of the women and girls because she actually graduated from both high school and college. Many girls in the sect are not permitted to become educated because "education was seen as a threat…making them too involved with the ways of the world (p 666)."

Jeffs' power and brutality elevated in the years Carolyn was married to Merril Jessop, and education became "one of the first areas where his [Jeffs] imprint was punitive and spiteful (p 529)." Very few individuals (women or men) were permitted to attend college. In the end Carolyn was fortunate; many others not. The lack of access to education "created a population that was even more isolated by its lack of exposure to reading, critical thinking, and the arts. It also meant there was a real shortage of trained teachers (p 529)."

Carolyn became a second-grade teacher who taught young children while also collecting a library of children's books she could secretly read to her own children.  At the same time, she says "It was very common to get textbooks with entire chapters missing because they'd been cut out." She was a well-respected teacher because she could teach any child to read.  This, no doubt, made her an even greater potential source of irritation to Jeffs and her husband because she questioned the decisions of the leaders. Carolyn knew her real threat was Jeffs and his self-appointed power and brutality over the people in the sect. "In a cult, you have two identities: your cult identity and your authentic self." Jessop writes about how she operated from her cult identity most of the time because it was the only way she could survive.

As Jeffs' power grew over the years,  people began to fear changes even as they sensed danger. Infuriatingly, husbands were seen as the lord and supreme master who held exclusive power over the lives of wives and their children. Carolyn became more and more involved with her position as a teacher in the school system because she knew "well-educated children might one day think for themselves (p 535)." Unfortunately, Jeffs' power extended even into the public school system, and he crushed Carolyn's dreams to work on a new school plan in the community. "For the fist time, I began to see how religion could suppress something positive and life-giving. Failing to educate our children was unconscionable (536)."  Jeffs also ordered all books be destroyed, so the other wives of Carolyn's husband found her secret stash of children's books and destroyed them. Carolyn was crushed and even more determined to find a way out of the cult. Eventually, she did make it out, and after many court testimonies and struggles later, she also had custody of her eight children and was able to begin building a new life with them. The people who helped her escape told her she was in a better position than many others they had helped escaped because she had a college degree and work experience. Carolyn says "freedom was something I had always been able to imagine. It was the opposite of oppression, slavery, and degradation (p. 932)." She concludes the book with "my children and I now know what it means to be safe. Freedom is extraordinary, and love a miracle (p 979)."

Notes:
1. Page numbers referenced in this post are page numbers from my Kindle version of the book.
2. The Southern Poverty Law Center characterized the FLDS as a hate group in 2005.