View this email in your browser
Begin Again
Hello, friends!
If you’re in the northern hemisphere then you are likely preparing for a new school year about now. Many of us are putting the finishing touches on our final days and weeks of summer break, myself included. A mere week stands between me and the first day of faculty orientation. Looking back over the break I feel grateful for quality family time as well as plenty of much needed rest. How did you take care of yourself during the break? What are you looking forward to as we open up a new school year together? (For the southern hemisphere folks, we see you, too, right in the thick of the year. Salute!)
Hot Girl Summer Reading*
If I managed to give myself one gift this summer, surely it was lots of time for reading. Whether at home, traveling, or in between, I always managed to dig into whatever book or other text I had available. Perhaps this was a bit of a reset following the Covid months when I did not find the same energy for books that I imagined I would have. Also, I think age is a factor. As I noticed at our family reunion in DC, I have moved up a generation. I’m now in the intermediate elder category. I have more discretionary time since my youngest is mostly independent. I keep discovering that while not all of aging is beautiful, having more me-time is a significant pay-off.
That stack pictured above is missing the titles I read on my Kindle. I won’t try to describe everything I read. I do, however, want to draw your attention to a couple of titles I hope you’ll find interesting as we convene a new school year. I’ll also invite us to consider how we employ reading in service of our social justice objectives. Let’s start with the reading highlights, though.
We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How To Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom by Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer Orr (2023). Responding to so many questions about the how of race talk at the elementary level, we could not ask for a better team of educator authors. Matt Kay is the author of Not Light, But Fire (2018) which offers approaches to talking about race at the high school level and Jen Orr is a classroom teacher with over 20 years K-5 experience. Their combined suggestions are thoughtful, practical and urgently aware of the challenges that many teachers are facing. And while geared to elementary teachers with a focus on race, their insights from interactions with students, administrators, parents and colleagues provide a wealth of examples to learn from at any level of school operations that will also be helpful in considering approaches to other, at times overlapping, biases we encounter in the world. Don’t sleep on this resource. It will serve you well for school years to come.
Viral Justice: How We Grow The World We Want by Ruha Benjamin (2022)(unfortunately not pictured in the stack). It’s no accident that we as a society are steeped in the tradition of admiring the problems that plague us rather than applying ourselves to solving them. Dr. Ruha Benjamin, professor of African- American Studies at Princeton University, counters this tendency and points our attention towards people and organizations that are taking action to alleviate suffering and mitigate social decay. She also weaves in elements of memoir which illustrate the realities of racism in medicine, the criminal (in)justice system, and the workplace with a lingering immediacy. Striking throughout is Dr. Benjamin’s steadfast commitment to the application of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab motto: “Be careful with each other, so we can be dangerous together…” Yes! More of this energy in our pursuit of justice wherever we are!
The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War and Survival by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess with Laura L. Sullivan (2020). Even when we live through history, there’s so much that eludes us. Reading The Cat I Never Named which describes the war in Bosnia from a Muslim teen’s perspective showed me how much I did not know (or did not investigate) about the war in the former Yugoslavia and the attempted genocide of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) although I lived in Austria at the time. In November, Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, who is a professor of practice at Teachers College, Columbia University will be a featured speaker in the CEESA DEIJ Series. She will address the impact of faith-based hate and discrimination and how we can counteract those influences in our schools.
Die Wütenden: Warum wir im Umgang mit dschihadistischem Terror radikal umdenken müssen von Fabian Reicher und Anja Melzer (2022).
Für die, die auf deutsch lesen, muss ich auch diesen Titel sehr empfehlen. Reicher berichtet aus seinen Erfahrungen als Jugendsozialarbeiter in Wien. Spezifisch erzählt er von fünf Jungs, die sich in dschihadistischen Extremismus verfangen haben, wie es dazu gekommen ist, und wie sie sich wieder davon distanziert haben. Vor allem konfrontieren uns die Autoren mit den gesellschaftlichen Faktoren, die es Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergründen oft schwer machen, Akzeptanz und Zugehörigkeitsgefühle im Alltag zu spüren. Fabian Reicher führt seinen Lesern vor Auge wie sehr die jungen Menschen, die er betreut hat, nach Sinn, Respekt und Anerkennung sehnen. Reicher erklärt weiter wie diese Sehnsüchte durch Musik, Videos und andere Medien von radikalen Gruppierungen direkt angesprochen werden und somit junge Leute für ihre Causa zu gewinnen. Ich war gar nicht darauf vorbereitet wie sehr mich dieses Buch gepackt und berührt hat. Es wäre auch für Schüler der Oberstufe geeignet.
Each of these titles challenged my assumptions about what I thought I knew. They stretched me in different ways: to reconsider how I respond to whole class pop-up discussions, or wonder about which steps I can take to orient myself more fully towards the things I hope to see in society. I also had to acknowledge how much I have to learn about the history of cultures that feel distant from my own, particularly when it comes to faith-based ethnic conflict and political extremism. Food for thought that also boosted my appetite for deeper learning.
Reading - whatever for?
Now that I’ve revealed some of the books that moved me this summer, what about you? What kind of reading did you do and how did it influence you?
Something I thought about while preparing for another year with students, families and colleagues: What good is all this reading I’m doing?
I wondered because as much as I love reading, I also believe it can be a way to avoid doing much else in the way of advancing our purported equity and inclusion goals. It may enable us to stay comfortably in the awareness-building stage. With that in mind I formulated some reflection questions which I hope will help us probe our reading objectives and outcomes a bit.
First of all I think we need to understand how reading works for us in our lives:
Where does reading figure in your life? What role does it play in your understanding of self?
How do your source your reading materials? Whose recommendations light up your brain?
When has something you read … made you more curious? …motivated you to take action? … changed your mind about a topic? …angered or delighted you?
How and when do you process what you’ve read? With whom can you do that?
Another aspect of this line of questioning is to consider the ways in which we model the benefit of reading - for students, yes, but also for family members, friends and colleagues. The value we place on reading both in schools and beyond needs to be visible and genuine in order to sustain cultures of curiosity and discovery.
And, let’s not forget that books, reading, and choice are under attack in several parts of the United States. We must stand strong in support of libraries, librarians, as well as student voice and choice in the process of accessing and sharing reading materials. Never underestimate the role that libraries play - public, private, school-based - in oiling the wheels of democratic societies. (The Library Book by Susan Orlean illustrates this with remarkable aplomb.)
Of course I have more to say on the topic of reading. One hope I carry for us as educators in particular is that we maintain a broad understanding of what reading is and can be. So many things can be read that are not in the form of print on the page or screen. We can and do learn to read bodies, faces, music, artwork, dance; situations, contexts, geographies, experiences. Teaching and learning involve building multiple literacies, often simultaneously.
For this reason, I want to leave you with this video of poet and author, Clint Smith who suggests that “poetry is the act of paying attention.” Listen to him read the opening poem, “All at Once” from his latest collection, Above Ground. Hearing him reminds me that poetry is designed to ring in our ears as much as it is to speak to our hearts and minds.
Welcome to a brand new school year! And thanks for supporting this project in progress!
Let’s go!
Sherri
*Thanks, too, for allowing me this one silly play on words. ;-)
Thank you so much for sharing these. I'm trying to keep the negative possibilities at bay, but I'm going to try to find at least some of these. These days, I'm getting much of my inspiration from "No Death, No Fear," by the late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Like all of his work, it's about how to ground ourselves in the present and ultimate reality, not the momentary buzz and grind that keeps us anxious and frightened. When we lose our sense of balance, it's easy to sink into fear and despair, which only emboldens those who would make the world worse. This book is helping me find sanity and energy to keep going. Peace.