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.

Only a Day and Two Nights in San Francisco

When we were informed our Common Assignment Research Study would be having a meeting for all the partners in San Francisco, I was immediately excited at the possibility of finally seeing City Lights Bookellers in person. I, like many other twenty-one year old students, was inspired by the Beat Generation while I was in college.  Specifically, I remember writing a paper on the San Francisco Renaissance poets (and I had never been to San Francisco).  Jack Kerouac's traveling experiences were alive in my head as I made my travel reservations.

It was a relatively short work meeting, with just one evening dinner meeting (II Fornaio) and then a full day meeting on Friday. I purposefully scheduled the earliest flight I could get out of snowy Lexington on Thursday, even though our dinner wasn't until 6pm PST.  With the time change heading west, I landed in SFO by 10:30 am, and after a short stop at a popular food truck Bacon Bacon on the San Francisco State campus, my colleague (who just moved to Kentucky  from San Francisco) drove me to City Lights and left me to explore while she lunched with friends.  Two glorious hours in this historical bookstore were an English teacher's dream.  I sat upstairs in the poetry room and read for about 30 minutes, and I browsed the vast assortment of poetry collections from every generation, and naturally with a special section dedicated to the Beat Generation.

I also browsed fiction and nonfiction on the other floors of the bookstore, and each time I moved from section to section, I thought about the great authors of an earlier generation who shook up the city and the country with their counterculture movement.  The history of this generation was well represented, not only with their great works of literature, but also with the posters, pictures, and postcards that adorned the walls.

Leaving the bookstore, I walked again by Jack Kerouac Alley before making my way across the Broadway/Columbia inersection to The Beat Museum.  Here I found artifacts and memorabilia like a shirt Kerouac wore, Ginsberg's typewriter and organ and loads of photographs and books from the era.

Since I live on the eastern side of the USA, traveling home Friday night would have required me to take the red eye, and I just wasn't up for that experience.  With only a few free hours on this work trip, my only big goal personally was so see City Lights,  so when I also was able to hear live jazz on Friday night, I felt my San Francisco trip was complete. It was serendipitous because I was stuck at the hotel on my own since others in the group had planned better than I did for a Friday evening out and about  (or they lived locally--our Stanford partners) and went home to their families.  

Determined to make the best of the situation, I went to the hotel restaurant for dinner (Brussels sprouts with bacon crumbles & an Ahi burger). While I was dining, several musicians came in to setup equipment.  I didn't have high hopes for what I would hear, given that I was at a hotel restaurant near the airport.  However, when I asked my waiter what he knew about the music to come, I wasn't disappointed when he told me old school jazz.  Indeed it was old school jazz with three local musicians and all improvisation since they did even know one another before they played together. Three hours of lively jazz music and conversations with locals.  On their break, the musicians talked to me and asked if I had any requests, but they laughed when I asked for Coltrane's Giant Steps or Gillespie's Salt Peanuts. Bebop was clearly not high on their list of usual requests.  Not long later, though, they looked at me and said..."you asked for bebop, so we're going to play some for you," and they played KoKo.

A woman from the San Francisco Bay Area came over to talk to me and to share that she was there at the airport hotel to hear jazz and celebrate her 89th (!) birthday. What a joy she was! The band even played a jazzed up happy birthday in her honor, and she stood up to dance in her sparkly pants and leopard print top.  She was there with her daughters who looked to be my mom's age, and I loved that they brought their mom to hear jazz on her birthday.

All told my day and two nights in San Francisco was the perfect work trip with a splash of personal fun thrown into the mix.  We accomplished our work goals, and I saw City Lights and heard live jazz. Can't get much better than that.

10 for 10: Picture Books an English Teacher Enjoys with Her Sons

This morning while browsing twitter within minutes of waking (according to #twitterrevolution I am not alone in this behavior), I noticed in my feed #pb10for10 and decided to take a look.  Here's what I learned:  Mandy @ Enjoy-EmbraceLearning and Cathy @ Reflect & Refine sponsor a Picture Book 10 for 10 book jog each August.

I couldn't resist.  So here I am on Saturday morning posting my own 10for10 post.  Theme:  10 pictures books an English/Arts & Humanities Teacher enjoys sharing with her sons.  I like these books for a myriad of reasons—for the exposure to authors, music, artists, beautiful words and language, and most importantly because they became not only my favorites, but between my two sons (now ages 10 & 12) these became their favorites as well.

1.   Henry Builds a Cabin  by D. B. Johnson

My English teacher self couldn’t resist sharing this book with my sons.  Thanks to D.B. Johnson, my sons have a full awareness of who Henry David Thoreau is and why I think his work is important.  There is also available--Henry Climbs a Mountain and Henry Hikes to Fitchburg.  We've read them all, but the boys like the dimensions of Thoreau's cabin in this one.

2.  Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk

As library mouse hides away in a school library writing his own books for each genre, this is an excellent tale reminding us that we are all writers.  This is another message I wanted my sons to hear to encourage them to enjoy writing and know that they are capable.  (Right now neither of them prefer writing because most of their writing experiences at school have been spent practicing for the state writing test)

3.  John Coltrane’s Giant Steps remixed by Chris Raschka

Illustrations, words, and style all portray improv—this book is a great way to learn about jazz improvisation.

4.  Slowly, Slowly, Slowly said the Sloth by Eric Carle

From an early age, my oldest child has enjoyed science and nature, and since we enjoyed other Eric Carle books, this one became a delight to us because of the beautiful language and vocabulary.  At the end of the book, the sloth finally replies to the onslaught of attacks from other animals who accuse him of being lazy.  “It is true that I am slow, quiet, and boring.  I am lackadaisical, I dawdle, and I dillydally.  I am also unflappable, languid, stoic, impassive, sluggish, lethargic, placid, calm, mellow…”

5.  Old Cricket by Lisa Wheeler

"Old Cricket woke up feeling, cranky, crotchety, and cantankerous, so when his missus asked him to ready the roof for winter, he came up with a clever plan."  We loved the opening lines as well words the old cricket uses instead of curse words of today.  Plus, it’s a great tale about how the cricket tried many excuses to get out of work but really just needed to dig-in and prepare the roof for winter.

6.  Lego Star Wars The Visual Dictionary

This one became a favorite for my youngest son because of his interest in building and creating with Legos, and his love of all things Star Wars.  I have to admit, it took a while for me to enjoy this book, but after reading it again and again with my son, I couldn’t help myself.  Plus, this book became a great example to me of why we can’t base all our reading decisions for students on Lexile level.  This Lexile level for this book is much higher than my son’s Level, yet he can read the book because it’s a perfect match for him as a reader.

7.  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss

We definitely have this one memorized and can recite it in its entirety.  Who doesn’t love this one?

8.  Masterpieces Up Close:  Western Painting from the 14th to 20th Centuries

With flip open tabs and close-up shots of sections of each painting, this book became a great one for teaching my boys about masterpieces of Western visual art.

9.  The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

What I love about this one?  My ten and twelve year old will still let me read it to them periodically and they love the story.

10.  Hush Little Baby by Sylvia Long

I end with this one because my ten year old still asks me to sing this version of the song to him at night when he goes to sleep.  This natural and beautiful adaptation of the old lullaby has been part of our nighttime routine for twelve years (My oldest is twelve).  Once the boys heard the original version of the song and commented that it was incorrect.  Though my twelve year old no longer asks me to sing him to sleep on a nightly basis, my ten year old is still cool with it and asks me to sing this song to him right before he nods off.  (Sshh:  He would be embarrassed if he knew I’m telling you—if I’ve been out of town for work or if he’s sick—the twelve year old has asked for the song within the last year).