It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/28/13

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

Tupelo Hassman's honeyed language is haunting me this week. I first fell in love with  the cover of Girlchild. The library card, the green-gold minimizes the trailer-desert. The cover exudes the glow of a gold wash, the  patina of the gloaming time, the rubbed-richness of a polaroid emulsion transfer: art.   Poverty, neglect, hardship become poetry in the novel, Girlchild. Listen to the rhythm in this excerpt from "stucco" :

"Single-wide, double-wide, a house with a hitch. Single mom, gravel drive. Propane by the gallon, generic cigs by the carton, and solitaire round the clock. Cousins and animals multiply like cars in the front yard. Nothing around here gets fixed...Fifty-two pick up. Suicide kings and one-eyed jacks face off on orange shag. Calle girls cry uncle through clenched teeth and past his shoulder the sirens flash redneck blues across the white-stucco, nicotine-yellow ceiling" (75).

This is writing we could write toward. Color saturated. Girlchild is set on the Calle where most residents cover broken smiles and live in trailer homes, but the homes aren't nearly as important as the people, as the women. Plumbing on the Calle  is as unreliable as the men. Children aren't neglected, but the kind of attention some give them is criminal.

The Miseducation of Cameron Postby Emily Danforth

I was struck by Hassman's juxtaposition of desperation and beauty as she catalogues moments in Rory Dawn Hendrix's life.  Rory's a Girl Scout at heart. A troop of one, she's nearly memorized an old copy of the handbook a librarian gave her. More than once I was reminded that books save lives. The Girl Scout Handbook sees Rory through her darkest moments--moments that are literally blacked out as if censors blotted out Rory's memories with Sharpie marker. Simply eloquent, lyrical and image-rich, Girlchild lingers and haunts.

This week I'm reading Emily Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Entirely different in terms of style, character and premise. Cameron's parents are killed in a car accident on the very day she kisses her best friend Irene. She sees their deaths as her fault. She retreats into rented VHS films, terms it research and approaches those captured lives to learn how to think and how to feel. A swimmer, Cameron must negotiate the waters of a changing family and her own sexual identity in this coming-of-age novel. It is going to be a great addition to my classroom library.

Most of my reading this week had to do with full-thickness tears of the rotator cuff. I've read about shoulder anatomy, radiology reports, research abstracts on repair techniques and even how to deal with daily living after shoulder surgery.

This medical reading reminds me of how I am often purpose-driven as a reader. My students are too. Sometimes their schedule determines their reading for the week.Tests, projects, assignments threaten a coupe. I just have to remind them that even with several Advance Placement classes or surgery looming, there's still at least two hours in the week to read for fun.

Happy reading!

Again and Again

I give a reflective semester exam. I love reading students' exams. Maybe it's an ego thing. You know, students tell me what they've learned or how they've changed. I write those things on my heart. I take a little credit for their lessons learned.

Students are so smart, wise really.  I save the gems. I mark them with a star in the margin and then star the front of the exam so that students know to give it back to me to photocopy. I drop starred papers in a file folder all year. That way I have them when I'm ready to write.

I tweet the gems too.  Then I can find them later online when I need reminding. Those gems remind me to listen. They remind me to stay the course and to do what's right in the classroom. it's easy to cave to the pressure-- teach to a test, teach how your colleagues teach, teach the same novel--you know what sort of pressures I'm talking about. When students reflect authentically they amaze me.

Take Wilmer for instance. In response to a question asking him about a lesson he learned from a text the class had studied together, he wrote: "Well, I learned from Touching Spirit Bear that everybody can change. I've also learned that if somebody is getting bullied then stand up for them."

Wow. When did you learn that everyone can change? Have you accepted that even "bad" people can change? Have you opened your heart to the idea that even the students in your room who have seemingly shut you out and shut down can change? There's a lot in Wilmer's two sentences. He sees that even bullies can change. He is part of a community. He will stand up for others.

As a parent, as a citizen of your community, what would you pay for that lesson? Students need to learn these lessons or see them in literature and in the world over and over again in order for the very ideas to become part and parcel of who they are as teachers.

Go, breathe that sort of life into your teaching today. Inspire your students with good stories. You can be the change you want to see in their lives.

Semester Reflection 2013
Year End Self Evaluation

PS: I just had to include Wilmer's comments on his reading life. He started ninth grade as a non-reader. Now? He knows what he likes. It made me grin (and think about what series books I can put in front of him next).

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1-21-13

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Reading? Meme

Last week was the last week of the semester for my students. We did not end our semester before the winter holidays. I wish we did. We used to, but the school year calendar is not as student friendly as it once was.

So, we had a week of review after vacation and then last week,  a short week,exams.

My consumption of text falls under many influences: school, family, health, life, even the dog. Busy weeks remind me that my students' reading lives are also determined in large part by their schedules. While I brook no time excuses, I do know that I myself read less when I have a lot on my plate. I cannot grade reflective essay exams and read a book for pleasure at the same time. I cannot cook meals and read (though I've heard rumors that others can do that). I cannot read while listening to my son and talking to him about his day or his science project. I do read every day. Morning and night and some afternoons, but I also exercise and grocery shop and lesson plan. Some weeks I'll read one book, some I'll read five. It's not a competition--not in my heart nor in my classroom. I have to make that clear to students because we're different. We are different when we run (I'm the slowest) and when we read (I might be the fastest in my room).

So this week, I only read one book. While I did go to the library to watch An Evening of Awesome, I did not manage to squeeze in picture book reading time which is high on my to-do list.

This week's book,  Just One Day by Gayle Forman, was the perfect book to follow Why We Broke Up. Whimsy and heartbreak, devotion and rebellion, Allyson "Lulu" Healey personifies the contrasts and extremes teens live. She has a magical day in Paris at the end of an almost obligatory European tour. That day re-defines her very self and she embarks on a transformative process wrought with difficulty, depression and hard conversations. A breezy read, it would be perfect for a beach day or afternoon by the pool sort of read. I'm bringing it to school tomorrow to book talk. I know just the girls who need to read it.

Up Next

I'm finishing up the sequel to Monument 14 (an ARC I brought home from NCTE and ALAN). Then I've got two professional books in the pile Poetry Mentor Texts by Lynne Dorman and Rose Cappelli and the second edition of Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning.  I think my son's kindergarden teacher will love Miller's book, so I'm being careful not to write in it.  For fun I'm going to read Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild and Emily Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post. The latter of which reminds me (from the book blurb) of Harmon's Last Exit to Normal. I'll see how it compares.