I want to model better for students the fact that I'm always on the lookout for creative writing -- writing that draws my attention as a reader, that says things well, that uses meaningful syntax.
[Anasazi cliff dwellings]
Whether or not they meant to do so, the ancients had built here a lasting monument to their fugitive civilization. From a single piece of wood, Barlow was later able to retrieve a radiocarbon date. The stunning double granary, it turns out, was built before Shakespeare lived, before Giotto painted, before church choirs intoned their plainsong. The wood sample gave a date of around 1000 AD.
-David Roberts "Limits of the Known" (101) "suspense" before the reveal; use of carefully-chosen concrete comparisons to bring a thing to life (not just "old things" but "Old art"
Yet a CT scan after three Pembro infusions revealed that the nodules had stopped growing. It was no proof that the Pembro was working, but it gave me hope.
Not hope of curing cancer -- for the rest of my life, however long or short, I must live with the mindless proliferating cells that have made my body their home -- but hope that I might forestall the brutal end.
Hope that someday, with or without a feeding tube or a cap on my liquid intake, I might hike again, and camp out under the changeless stars, and even climb easy routes. Hope that I still have months or years to write, to reassess what the first seventy-three years of my life have meant, and to squeeze new meaning from all that I had and had not done, before it was too late to remember or even know.
-David Roberts "Limits of the Known" (132) repetition & intentional fragment
Monday, September 24, 2018
Friday, September 21, 2018
10 Things I Learned about Style and Voice Minilessons from Mark Maxwell
I attended a Metro English Leaders luncheon today. Mark Maxwell, author and teacher at Rolling Meadows High School, gave a presentation on style and voice minilessons. The title of the presentation was "Writing Backwards: Mini-Lessons on Style & Voice."
Here are 10 key take-aways:
1. First, before anything about the content of his presentation, I want to comment on the form: Mark began with a story about an important student in his life. He began by saying, "Let me start with a story before we get into all of this [gesturing at the Google Slides]." But of course the story ended with a punchline that was important for the presentation (about "opening doors" for students). It was example #2353 in my experience of the importance of story. By the end of the story, the audience was riveted.
OK, now to the content of Mark said...
2. "Too often we 'assign' writing without actually teaching it. I believe the teaching of writing needs to be explicit. And teaching writing should be about more than just dictating formulaic structures and assuming that things like style and voice will eventually (and naturally) follow once the students have written an infinite amount of formulaic essays." This began his presentation. The "Writing Backwards" of the title referred to his idea of teaching style and voice first. "By starting with style and voice," he writes, "students will quickly become engaged and empowered." He then walked the audience through 15 mini-lesson that he uses with his students to develop voice. All of these mini-lessons were playful and humorous. It's easy to see how these 10-minute lessons would be engaging and would build students' interest in playing with language.
Here are a handful of my favorites:
3. Daily Dynamic Language. Create a static sentence that contains abstract nouns and weak verbs (e.g. She is so full of anger.). Elicit student suggestions to improve the sentence by incorporating concrete nouns, active verbs, imagery, comparisons, rhythmic repetitions, and other poetry/rhetorical devices. (One thing I like about this is that it makes revision of "okay" sentences into creative, artful, interesting sentences a daily activity. The title is reminiscent of "Daily Oral Language" which is a daily "fix the grammar" exercise. This is a "make it more interesting" exercise, using a variety of rhetorical tricks.) (Mark's example: "Stephanie stormed into the room and slammed the door so hard that the hinges rattled.")
4. Show, Don't Tell. Create sentences that tell the reader something (It is hot, She was sick). Ask students to rewrite the sentence in a way that will show the reader something by incorporating sensory details. Discuss why showing is more compelling.
5. Metaphorical Mix and Match. Makes a list of abstract nouns and a list of concrete nouns on the board. Ask students to match one concrete noun to one abstract noun and expand the metaphor to show how it makes sense. (Love/Boulder) Discuss how the randomness of the connections create style and voice.
6. Words with Attitude (tone exercise). Tell students to write a description of their day in a specific, emotional tone (e.g. angry, frustrated, gleeful, giddy, sad, bored). Identify diction that conveys the anger. This invites students to become aware of how word choice impacts tone. Mark's example: attitude: boredom; Sentence that reveals attitude: "Monday trudged along like a lumbering freight car wheezing out of the windswept train yard."
7. Vivifying Verbs. Give students a list of verbs: some limp and passive, some vivid and active. Ask students to circle the vivid verbs in the list. Discuss why they are vivid; what they SHOW. Then, ask students to select at least three vivid verbs and write a sentence using all three of those verbs. (It strikes me that you could do this along with words from your current vocabulary lists.
8. Musical Anaphora. Show the students an example of anaphora. Then have them experiment with the device by writing three sentences about a personal or political desire. It seems like this is a good opportunity to talk about mixing concrete and abstract nouns (sunlit path/ racial justice) and antithesis.
Model: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to life our nation from the quick sands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mark's Model: When the world is seething with division, I will seek union. When the world is seething with cruelty, I will seek kindness. When the work is seething with paralysis, I will seek action. When the world is writhing under the weight of its own darkness, I will beckon the light.
9. Forceful Fragments. Fragments can create emphasis, transition, or closure. Why not teach students how to use them effectively, rather than write "frag." in the margin? Model a passage that includes effective fragments, then ask students to write a short paragraph about a problem they have encountered recently that includes three transitions -- one towards the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end.
10. Sultry Syntax. This is the big one. Invite students to experiment with each syntactical form about any topic they are familiar with (school, sports, family, work). Discuss how the sentence structure impacts meaning. Then ask students to include these in an essay. Mark lists: cumulative, periodic, polysyndeton, asyndeton, general parallel structure (parallel lists). It'd be easy to add a couple others, like tricolon, balanced pairs, uses of a colon.
11. Silly Satire. Come up with a thesis on which almost everyone can agree. (Smoking is bad for your health). Then write a paragraph claiming the opposite. Make is so ridiculous that that it becomes obvious they really don't mean what they're saying.
Two other topics of the presentation were memorable. Rubrics, he confessed, confused him. He was much more comfortable using checklists when reading and grading papers. He asked students to practice specific techniques in class, then asked them to annotate them in their "formal writing." It makes sense that, in an atmosphere where students are learning and playing with words, that a reasonable expectation is that they're trying out some moves (including, having a topic sentence or a following every example with an explanation or using an anaphora). Often, I think, teachers expect both things at once -- for kids to incorporate a multitude of expectations AND the paper is graded (like an egg is graded) on a variety of rubric columns.
Lastly, Mark suggested that if your examples have a little bit of humor and you ask students to have fun with this, students learn quickly, and papers (some 140 that he says he grades each week!) were far more enjoyable to read.
This presentation inspired me to put some of the style lessons that I've used in class together as a group of minilessons to share. Recently, I took a sentence written by NY Times writer Farhad Manjoo as a model, talked about it with class, then provided a "Madlib" version of the same sentence for students to create their own sentence with. Here's a link to the article. Real world sentences often do more than just a single technique at once. Here's the sentences I used as a model:
Here are 10 key take-aways:
1. First, before anything about the content of his presentation, I want to comment on the form: Mark began with a story about an important student in his life. He began by saying, "Let me start with a story before we get into all of this [gesturing at the Google Slides]." But of course the story ended with a punchline that was important for the presentation (about "opening doors" for students). It was example #2353 in my experience of the importance of story. By the end of the story, the audience was riveted.
OK, now to the content of Mark said...
2. "Too often we 'assign' writing without actually teaching it. I believe the teaching of writing needs to be explicit. And teaching writing should be about more than just dictating formulaic structures and assuming that things like style and voice will eventually (and naturally) follow once the students have written an infinite amount of formulaic essays." This began his presentation. The "Writing Backwards" of the title referred to his idea of teaching style and voice first. "By starting with style and voice," he writes, "students will quickly become engaged and empowered." He then walked the audience through 15 mini-lesson that he uses with his students to develop voice. All of these mini-lessons were playful and humorous. It's easy to see how these 10-minute lessons would be engaging and would build students' interest in playing with language.
Here are a handful of my favorites:
3. Daily Dynamic Language. Create a static sentence that contains abstract nouns and weak verbs (e.g. She is so full of anger.). Elicit student suggestions to improve the sentence by incorporating concrete nouns, active verbs, imagery, comparisons, rhythmic repetitions, and other poetry/rhetorical devices. (One thing I like about this is that it makes revision of "okay" sentences into creative, artful, interesting sentences a daily activity. The title is reminiscent of "Daily Oral Language" which is a daily "fix the grammar" exercise. This is a "make it more interesting" exercise, using a variety of rhetorical tricks.) (Mark's example: "Stephanie stormed into the room and slammed the door so hard that the hinges rattled.")
4. Show, Don't Tell. Create sentences that tell the reader something (It is hot, She was sick). Ask students to rewrite the sentence in a way that will show the reader something by incorporating sensory details. Discuss why showing is more compelling.
5. Metaphorical Mix and Match. Makes a list of abstract nouns and a list of concrete nouns on the board. Ask students to match one concrete noun to one abstract noun and expand the metaphor to show how it makes sense. (Love/Boulder) Discuss how the randomness of the connections create style and voice.
6. Words with Attitude (tone exercise). Tell students to write a description of their day in a specific, emotional tone (e.g. angry, frustrated, gleeful, giddy, sad, bored). Identify diction that conveys the anger. This invites students to become aware of how word choice impacts tone. Mark's example: attitude: boredom; Sentence that reveals attitude: "Monday trudged along like a lumbering freight car wheezing out of the windswept train yard."
7. Vivifying Verbs. Give students a list of verbs: some limp and passive, some vivid and active. Ask students to circle the vivid verbs in the list. Discuss why they are vivid; what they SHOW. Then, ask students to select at least three vivid verbs and write a sentence using all three of those verbs. (It strikes me that you could do this along with words from your current vocabulary lists.
8. Musical Anaphora. Show the students an example of anaphora. Then have them experiment with the device by writing three sentences about a personal or political desire. It seems like this is a good opportunity to talk about mixing concrete and abstract nouns (sunlit path/ racial justice) and antithesis.
Model: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to life our nation from the quick sands of injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mark's Model: When the world is seething with division, I will seek union. When the world is seething with cruelty, I will seek kindness. When the work is seething with paralysis, I will seek action. When the world is writhing under the weight of its own darkness, I will beckon the light.
9. Forceful Fragments. Fragments can create emphasis, transition, or closure. Why not teach students how to use them effectively, rather than write "frag." in the margin? Model a passage that includes effective fragments, then ask students to write a short paragraph about a problem they have encountered recently that includes three transitions -- one towards the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end.
10. Sultry Syntax. This is the big one. Invite students to experiment with each syntactical form about any topic they are familiar with (school, sports, family, work). Discuss how the sentence structure impacts meaning. Then ask students to include these in an essay. Mark lists: cumulative, periodic, polysyndeton, asyndeton, general parallel structure (parallel lists). It'd be easy to add a couple others, like tricolon, balanced pairs, uses of a colon.
11. Silly Satire. Come up with a thesis on which almost everyone can agree. (Smoking is bad for your health). Then write a paragraph claiming the opposite. Make is so ridiculous that that it becomes obvious they really don't mean what they're saying.
Two other topics of the presentation were memorable. Rubrics, he confessed, confused him. He was much more comfortable using checklists when reading and grading papers. He asked students to practice specific techniques in class, then asked them to annotate them in their "formal writing." It makes sense that, in an atmosphere where students are learning and playing with words, that a reasonable expectation is that they're trying out some moves (including, having a topic sentence or a following every example with an explanation or using an anaphora). Often, I think, teachers expect both things at once -- for kids to incorporate a multitude of expectations AND the paper is graded (like an egg is graded) on a variety of rubric columns.
Lastly, Mark suggested that if your examples have a little bit of humor and you ask students to have fun with this, students learn quickly, and papers (some 140 that he says he grades each week!) were far more enjoyable to read.
This presentation inspired me to put some of the style lessons that I've used in class together as a group of minilessons to share. Recently, I took a sentence written by NY Times writer Farhad Manjoo as a model, talked about it with class, then provided a "Madlib" version of the same sentence for students to create their own sentence with. Here's a link to the article. Real world sentences often do more than just a single technique at once. Here's the sentences I used as a model:
When Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas, greeted Jack Dorsey at a congressional hearing last week, he sounded flummoxed.
“I don’t know what a Twitter C.E.O. should look like,” Mr. Barton said. “But you don’t look like what a C.E.O. of Twitter should look like.”
You can reach Mark Maxwell -- perhaps to do a similar talk at your school? -- at mark.maxell@d124.orgThe congressman had a point. Mr. Dorsey — who sported a nose ring, a popped-collar shirt and a craggy Moses beard — looked more like a hipster version of a Civil War officer than a tech icon. Yet more striking than his look was his manner before skeptical lawmakers.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
My Year of Reading 2008
January
A Whole New Mind - Pink
The Federalist Papers
The World According to Garp - Irving
Special Topics in Calamity Physics -
High Profile - Parker
Shadow Train - Ashbery
The Wealth of Nationas - Adam Smith
Lucy - Kincaid
Oracle Night - Auster
Communist Manifesto - Marx & Engles
Simulations - Baudrillard
Mr Vertigo - Auster
Dangerous Laughter - Milhauser
What are People For - Berry
Uncertainty - Lindley
Stopping - Kundtz
June
Special Orders - Hirsch
The Joy of laziness - Axt
The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black
July
Lord of the Flies -
Elsewhere - Zevin
Blue Arabesque - Patricia Hempl
Nowhere Man - Hemon
American Born Chinese
November
They Say/ I Say - Graff
Reading the OED - Shea
Shattering Glass - Giles
Audacity of Hope - Obama
Decmber
Black Swan Green - Mitchell
Nothing to be Frightened of - Barnes
Kingdom on the Waves - MT Anderson
Ballistics - Billy Collins
How I Live Now - Rosoff
The World is Flat - Friedman
A Whole New Mind - Pink
The Federalist Papers
The World According to Garp - Irving
Special Topics in Calamity Physics -
High Profile - Parker
Shadow Train - Ashbery
The Wealth of Nationas - Adam Smith
Lucy - Kincaid
Oracle Night - Auster
Communist Manifesto - Marx & Engles
Simulations - Baudrillard
Mr Vertigo - Auster
Dangerous Laughter - Milhauser
What are People For - Berry
Uncertainty - Lindley
Stopping - Kundtz
June
Special Orders - Hirsch
The Joy of laziness - Axt
The Silver Swan - Benjamin Black
July
Lord of the Flies -
Elsewhere - Zevin
Blue Arabesque - Patricia Hempl
Nowhere Man - Hemon
American Born Chinese
November
They Say/ I Say - Graff
Reading the OED - Shea
Shattering Glass - Giles
Audacity of Hope - Obama
Decmber
Black Swan Green - Mitchell
Nothing to be Frightened of - Barnes
Kingdom on the Waves - MT Anderson
Ballistics - Billy Collins
How I Live Now - Rosoff
The World is Flat - Friedman
My Year in Books 2009
January
Boys Life - McCammon
Music Quickens Time - Barenboim
Voices on the Landscape - Iowa Poetry
February
The Corrections - Franzen
The Daily Disciplines of Leadership - Reeves
Tim and Materials - Hass
Mahler - Carr
March
Jim the Boy - Eaarley
Spare Change - Parker
Onitsha - LeClezio
Selected Poems - Bly
Deeper Reading - Gallagher
Better - Gawande
April
Talent is Overrated - Colum
Story of a Girl - Zarr
The Lord and the General Din of the World - Mead
May
Deaaf Sentence -Lodge
The Franklin Affair - Lehrer
June
Less - Marc Lesser
The Philosopher and the Wolf - Rowlands
The Spectator Bird - Stegner
July
Lost in my Own Backyard
Making it all work - Allen
True Enough - Manjoo
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
August
Clueless in Academe
The Great Depression - McElvaine
Acceleration - McNamee
Looking for Alaska - Green
Sources of the Self - Taylor
September
An Abundence of Catherines - Green
The Manticore - Davies
Collected Poems - Levi
October
Gift of Peace - Bernadin
Finding Flow - Csikscentmihalyi
Asterios Polyp
November
Inferno - Dante/Pinsky
The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Pearson)
The Stone Diaries - Shields
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
December
Road Dogs - Elmore Leonard
The Boxer and the Spy - Robert parker
Notes fro teh Underground - Dostoevsky
Boys Life - McCammon
Music Quickens Time - Barenboim
Voices on the Landscape - Iowa Poetry
February
The Corrections - Franzen
The Daily Disciplines of Leadership - Reeves
Tim and Materials - Hass
Mahler - Carr
March
Jim the Boy - Eaarley
Spare Change - Parker
Onitsha - LeClezio
Selected Poems - Bly
Deeper Reading - Gallagher
Better - Gawande
April
Talent is Overrated - Colum
Story of a Girl - Zarr
The Lord and the General Din of the World - Mead
May
Deaaf Sentence -Lodge
The Franklin Affair - Lehrer
June
Less - Marc Lesser
The Philosopher and the Wolf - Rowlands
The Spectator Bird - Stegner
July
Lost in my Own Backyard
Making it all work - Allen
True Enough - Manjoo
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
August
Clueless in Academe
The Great Depression - McElvaine
Acceleration - McNamee
Looking for Alaska - Green
Sources of the Self - Taylor
September
An Abundence of Catherines - Green
The Manticore - Davies
Collected Poems - Levi
October
Gift of Peace - Bernadin
Finding Flow - Csikscentmihalyi
Asterios Polyp
November
Inferno - Dante/Pinsky
The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Pearson)
The Stone Diaries - Shields
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
December
Road Dogs - Elmore Leonard
The Boxer and the Spy - Robert parker
Notes fro teh Underground - Dostoevsky
My Year in Books 2010
January
Odyssey - Homer (Fitzgerald)
Arcadia - Stoppard
February
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
The Lightening Thief - Riordan
The Women - T.C. Boyle
Rock and Roll - Stoppard
March
The Checklist Manifesto - Gawande
The Bog Child - Dowd
Reckless - Lucas
Fair is Not Equal - Wormeli
April
The Book Thief - Zusaaack
The Best Esays of ___ - Oliver
May
June
July
Stranger from Abroad -
Out Stealing Horses - Pers Petterson
The Little BIG book of Excellence - Tom Peters
The Overachievers - Robbins
August
In Cold Blood - Capote
New and Selected Poems - Anthony Abbot
Lincoln's Sanctuary
Envisioning Information
Smile
September
Outliers - Gladwell
Cover Her Face - PD James
October
Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko
The Suburbas Beyond the Stars - M.C. Anderson
November
Happiness Project - Rubin
Practical Music Thoery
Purple Heart - McCormick
December
The Craftsman - Richard Sennet
Faceless Killer - henning Mankell
Odyssey - Homer (Fitzgerald)
Arcadia - Stoppard
February
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
The Lightening Thief - Riordan
The Women - T.C. Boyle
Rock and Roll - Stoppard
March
The Checklist Manifesto - Gawande
The Bog Child - Dowd
Reckless - Lucas
Fair is Not Equal - Wormeli
April
The Book Thief - Zusaaack
The Best Esays of ___ - Oliver
May
June
July
Stranger from Abroad -
Out Stealing Horses - Pers Petterson
The Little BIG book of Excellence - Tom Peters
The Overachievers - Robbins
August
In Cold Blood - Capote
New and Selected Poems - Anthony Abbot
Lincoln's Sanctuary
Envisioning Information
Smile
September
Outliers - Gladwell
Cover Her Face - PD James
October
Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko
The Suburbas Beyond the Stars - M.C. Anderson
November
Happiness Project - Rubin
Practical Music Thoery
Purple Heart - McCormick
December
The Craftsman - Richard Sennet
Faceless Killer - henning Mankell
My Year in Books 2011
January
Drood - Dan Simmons
Tinkers - Paul Harding
All Things Shining - Dreyfus/Kelly
February
Not for Profit - Nussbaum
Let the Great World Spin - McCan
March
Painted Ladies - Robert Parker
Focus - Mike Schmoker
Swamplandia - Karen Russell
April
Freedom - Franzen
Go Put Your Strengths to Work - Buckingham
Anxious Souls Will Asks (Bonhoffer) - Matthews
Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
May
Curious
Total Recall -
Marshall McLuhan - Coupland
June
The Shallows - Carr
Brightside - Barbara Ehrenreich
July
The Lemur - Benjamin Black
The Exorcist
August
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Portrait of the Lady - Henry James
September
Columbine -
L-VIS Lives - Kevin Coval
October
Touch - Francine Prose
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
How to Write a Sentence - Fish
The Secret Agent - Conrad
November
The Wild Places - Macfarlane
Lord Jim - Conrad
Total Participation Techniques - Himmele
Breadwinner - Ellis
Wildwood - Roger Deakin
Mountains of the Mind - Macfarlane
December
Black Sunday - Harris
Born to Run
Red Draagon - Harris
Parallels and Paradoxes - Barenboim
Drood - Dan Simmons
Tinkers - Paul Harding
All Things Shining - Dreyfus/Kelly
February
Not for Profit - Nussbaum
Let the Great World Spin - McCan
March
Painted Ladies - Robert Parker
Focus - Mike Schmoker
Swamplandia - Karen Russell
April
Freedom - Franzen
Go Put Your Strengths to Work - Buckingham
Anxious Souls Will Asks (Bonhoffer) - Matthews
Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
May
Curious
Total Recall -
Marshall McLuhan - Coupland
June
The Shallows - Carr
Brightside - Barbara Ehrenreich
July
The Lemur - Benjamin Black
The Exorcist
August
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Portrait of the Lady - Henry James
September
Columbine -
L-VIS Lives - Kevin Coval
October
Touch - Francine Prose
The Rest is Noise - Alex Ross
How to Write a Sentence - Fish
The Secret Agent - Conrad
November
The Wild Places - Macfarlane
Lord Jim - Conrad
Total Participation Techniques - Himmele
Breadwinner - Ellis
Wildwood - Roger Deakin
Mountains of the Mind - Macfarlane
December
Black Sunday - Harris
Born to Run
Red Draagon - Harris
Parallels and Paradoxes - Barenboim
My Year of Reading 2012
January
Seasons on Henry's Farm - Brockman
Huner Games - Collins
Rosa-
Beyond Standards - Jago
Choice Words - Peter Johnston
Brian's Return - Paulsen
SixkillThe Third - Parker
February
For the Win - Doctorow
With Rigor For All - Jago
Bad Business - Parker
Context - Doctorow
March
Last Child - Hart
April
The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Murakami
What I talk about when I talk about Running - Murakami
The Day of the Jackyl - Forsythe
May
Examined Lives - Miller
June
Believing is Seeing - Errol Morris
Teaching Argument Writing - Hillocks
The Buddha Walked Into the Bar -
The Not So Big Life - Susanka
July
The Third Reich at War - Evans
Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Friere
Words Like a Bullet - Leith
August
The New Republic - Lionel Shriver
Teaching with Your Mouth Shut - Finkel
Catching Fire - Collins
September
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Trinity - Janathan Fetter Vorm
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
The Poetics of Space - Bachelard
October
The Forest Unseen - David George Haskell
August: Osage County - Letts
Book of Days - Emily Fox Gordon
The Best of It - Kay Ryan
November
Teach Like a Champion -
How Children Succeed - Paul Tough
Who I Am - Townshend
December
Brothers K - Dostoevksy
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
Seasons on Henry's Farm - Brockman
Huner Games - Collins
Rosa-
Beyond Standards - Jago
Choice Words - Peter Johnston
Brian's Return - Paulsen
SixkillThe Third - Parker
February
For the Win - Doctorow
With Rigor For All - Jago
Bad Business - Parker
Context - Doctorow
March
Last Child - Hart
April
The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Murakami
What I talk about when I talk about Running - Murakami
The Day of the Jackyl - Forsythe
May
Examined Lives - Miller
June
Believing is Seeing - Errol Morris
Teaching Argument Writing - Hillocks
The Buddha Walked Into the Bar -
The Not So Big Life - Susanka
July
The Third Reich at War - Evans
Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Friere
Words Like a Bullet - Leith
August
The New Republic - Lionel Shriver
Teaching with Your Mouth Shut - Finkel
Catching Fire - Collins
September
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Trinity - Janathan Fetter Vorm
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
The Poetics of Space - Bachelard
October
The Forest Unseen - David George Haskell
August: Osage County - Letts
Book of Days - Emily Fox Gordon
The Best of It - Kay Ryan
November
Teach Like a Champion -
How Children Succeed - Paul Tough
Who I Am - Townshend
December
Brothers K - Dostoevksy
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming
What I Learned from "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"
I'm not a movie re-watcher, but I watched the Fred Rogers documentary "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" twice this weekend.
I'm one of the people who completely missed the importance of the show and cynically disregarded Fred Rogers as a wholesome and uninteresting Sunday School square. I had no idea that it was a revolutionary show designed for children. In the film, Rogers says that he came to media when he reailzed during a vacation from the seminary that there was great power in TV. He felt there was great responsibility in being in the media, especially for children.
From the beginning the show had some of it's key characteristics in place, for instance, there was always a respect for the deep feelings and inner lives of children. The message of "You’re ok just the way you are" was the key theme throughout. In a commencement speech towards the end of his career, Rogers strikes the same tone: "you don’t need to do anything special for someone to love you." In one interview, Rogers reflects on what "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" means. He says it's an invitation for kids. It means that they are loved and capable of loving.
Rogers developed his ideas about children's emotional needs -- which were new at the time -- while he studied at the University of Pittsburgh alongside Dr. Benjamin Spock, Erik Erikson, and his advisor. Suddenly, this seemed to me less Sunday school amateur hour.
Inside and outside the show, Rogers was guided by his constant striving to understand the emotions of children. Practically speaking, this involved taking the interior lives of kids seriously (not as 'unformed' or 'precursors'). How do you take the lives of kids seriously? Primarily, it involved listening. The film is filled with shots of Rogers having deep -- unironic, serious conversations with kids. There was never the sing-songy, high pitched voice that is the cultural norm for teachers and parents talking to young people. The puppets had a big role in this. At the beginning, the puppets were a necessity because of fragile film clips. But throughout the film we see Rogers interacting with kids, especially those who are going through some troubled times, with puppets. It's far easier, he says at one point, to say I feel lonely and I love you to a puppet.
The show very quickly took up social issues because Rogers knew that kids were hearing about these issues on TV and feared that they weren't dealt with at home. These issues included the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and the war in Vietnam. After a story about a racist hotel owner chasing a black family out of a swimming pool with cleaning chemical, Rogers shared a baby swimming pool with a black character on the show Later in the series, there were week themes on issues like death divorce.
The documentary helps the viewer recast what can seem to be the cheesiest parts -- the 50s set, the low production value, the unhip songs, the puppetry. Instead of the fast cuts and speedy and bombast of "normal" kids' shows, Rogers used time and silence differently. There was silence and space. The songs, written by Rogers, summed up the message of the show. They're often about helping young people, honoring young people, as they work through doubts. I remember the song "everything grows together" that dealt with the worries of their bodies changing. "It's such a good feeling to know you're alive" is the daily finale of the show, reminding kids that being alive is pretty cool.
As a whole, the show seems to be an incredibly long-running high-wire creative act. Rogers write the scripts, gives voice to the puppets, writes the songs. He works through his own doubts of his abilities and mission, fighting back artistic demons, and keeps on his mission through it all.
His advocacy of young people extends outside the show. One key scene in the documentary has Rogers giving an earnest and passionate speech to save public television funding when President Nixon was threatening to slash it. Silence, and reflection, play an important role in the Rogers philosophy, as can be seen in this short video where he asks President Clinton, Al Gore (and a roomful of people) to think of influential people in their lives, anybody who has peopled you become who you are, "anybody who wanted you to know that you have value."
The very best part of the whole documentary is this duet between Lady Aberlin and Daniel Tiger talking and singing about mistakes. Daniel feels that he's a mistake because he's so different than any other tiger. Lady Aberlin takes a verse, saying that he likes him as he is. Then they sing a duet, repeating the previous verses - doubts and reasurances of love now making chords in the duet. The doubts don't go away, but they are altered. The reassurances don't make the doubts go away, but they transform them. It's not easy to shut off the internal voice.
See also this CSPAN clip from 1999... I think he says "What is essential in life is invisible
Saturday, September 15, 2018
My Year of Reading 2013
January
Team of Rivals - Goodwin
February
The Element - Ken Robinson
So Much for All That - Lionel Shriver
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom - Amy Chua
March
Two Years in the bubble - Jones
The Diviners - (play) -
12 x 12 - Powers (?)
The End of Nature - McKibben
April
In the Garden of the Beast - Erik Larson
Long Distance - McKibben
Carl Sandburg bio
What the Robin Knows - Yon Young
May
Zone One - Colson Whitehead
Staying Put - Scott Russel Sanders
Lincoln Lawyer - Connoly
June
Elegy for April - Benjamin Black
Lit - Mary Karr
Pathways to the Common Core - Calkins
The Old Ways - MacFarlane
July
K2 - Viesters
Great Plains - Frazier
Using Data…
August
After the Quake - Murakami
-Gallagher
Desert Solitaire-Edward Abbey
September
Paris Trout - Pete Dexter
On Settling - Goodin
October
What to Listen for in Mozart - Robert Harris
Holding onto Good Ideas in Times of Bad Ones - Tom Newkirk
November
Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
A Visit from the Good Squad - Jennifer Egan
Art of Choosing - Sheena Iyengar
December
Big - Lionel Shriver
My Year of Reading 2014
January
The Power of Now - Echart Tolle - 236
David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell. 275
Raylan-Elmore Leonarda- 263
Zealot. Resa Aslan. 216.
Beyond the beautiful Forevers. Boo. 256
February.
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - 1000
Autobiography - Miles Davis - 412
Silent House - Orham Pamuk - 352
Using Common Core Standards for - Marzano -150
Becoming a Reflective Teacher - Marzano - 150
March
The Worst Hard Time - Timothy Egan - 340
Brunelleschi’s Dome - Ross King - 167
The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri - 432
My First summer in the Sierras - John Muir - 174
April
Mindfulness for Beginners - Jon Kabat-Zinn -
The Circle - Dave Eggers - 491
A feathered river across the sky-Joel Greenberg-220
Inferno - Dan Brown - 624
Orfeo - Richard Powers - 369
May
Make Just One Change - Rothstein and Santana - 166
Oridinary People - Judith Guest - 263
June
The Church of Dead Girls- Stephen Dobyns - 388
Purity of heart is to will one thing - Kierkegaard
Gone girl - Gillian Flynn - 422
July 2014
Morris - EP Thompson - 800
August 2014
Night Film - Marisha Pessl - 590
- Charlotte Danielson
The wild life if the body- Dunn
Cheap shot (Robert Parker) - Ace Atkins - 308
September 2014
Woodburner - John Pipkin -370
Wonderland (Robert Parker) - Ace Atkins
Visible Learning for Teachers - John Hattie - 170
My misspent youth - Meghan Daum - 173
October 2014
A wrinkle in time - Madeleine L'Engle - 221
Digital Writing Workshop - Troy Hicks -
- Troy Hicks -
November 2014
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki - Murakami - 400
December 2014
The Snow Leopard - Matthiessen -- 330
Devices and desires. -- PD James -- 433
The Goldfinch -- Donna Tartt -- 775
My Year of Reading 2015
January 5
The goldfinch Donna Tarrt
A time of gifts. Patrick Leigh fermor. 316
St lucys school for girls raised by wolves - karen Russell.
The invention of air - Steven Johnson.
Notice and Note - beers and Probst
February 4
The Snowman - Jo Nesbo
Better Learning - Fisher and Frey. 146
The unspeakable - Meghan Daum. 242
The god Delusion - Richard Dawkins.
March 4
Being Mortal - Atul Gawande. 263
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius.
All the Light We Cannot See - Doerr - 531
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy -
April 2
Thomas Jefferson: the art of power. Jon Meachem. 505
The Professional - Robert Parker.
May 6
Dead Wake the last crossing of the Lusitania - Erik Larson-- 355
The catcher in the rye - JD Salinger -243
The Living Mountain- Nan Shepherd- 109
The house of tomorrow - Peter Bognanni --
Think Like a Freak - Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner.
The Wright Brothers - David McCullough - 262
June. 4
Clean gut. Alejandro junger
Thank you for your service. David finkel.
Theodore Rex. 550
Authentic learning in the digital age. Larissa pahomov. 189.
July 3
The eagle has landed. Jack Higgins.
The wabi sabi house. Robyn Griggs Lawrence. 179.
Churchill s war lab. Taylor downing. 365
August 1
When will there be good news? Kate Atkinson. 388
September 2
Life after Life - Kate Atkinson
The Champions Brain --
October 3
Formal Assessment in Secondary Classroom - Clarke
Moving On - Oliver Sacks
Lincoln at Gettysburg -- Garry Wills
November 6
One thousand splendid suns. Hosseni.
Darkness at noon. - Arthur Koestler. 272
One good turn. Kate Atkinson.
Between the World and me. Ta-Nehisi Coates. 151
Book Love -- Penny Kittle. 172
Missoula -- Jon Krakaur.
December 7
Undaunted Courage -- Stephen E Ambrose. 490
Lullaby -- Robert Parker. Ace Atkins.
When I was the greatest. Jason Reynolds. 230
Station Eleven -
One Summer - Bill Bryson.
Consider the lobster -- DFW. 343
Girl in a band - Kim Gordon.
My Year of Reading 2016
January
Joseph Ellis. The quartet.
MT Anderson. Symphony for the city of the Dead. 380
Paula Hawkins. Girl on the Train
Laura Vanderkam. What most successful people do before breakfast.
Das Reboot - raphael honigstein. 275
Rob Lowe - stories I only tell myself
The invention of nature. Andrea wulf
H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald. 283
Redeployment-- Phil Klay.
Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters -- David Hockney
Paper dolls - Robert Parker--
50 shades of the beach boys- Dillon
Purity - Jonathan franZen
The reluctant mr Darwin - David quamman
Notes from a little island - Bryson
A good marriage - Stephen King
Revival- Stephen King
*Fourth of July Creek - smith Henderson
Road to Little Dribbling - Bill Bryson
Operation Paperclip - annie Jacobsen
Focus - Daniel Goleman
Killshot - Elmore Leonard
Zero K - Don DeLillo
An event in autumn - Henningfield Mankel
The social Neuroscience of Education - Lawrence cozolino
A walk in the woods - Bill Bryson
Slow burn- Robert Parker ace Atkins
Night and Day- Robert Parker
Republic of Spin - David Greenberg
The Giver - Lois Lowrey
Moneyball - Michael Lewis
* The Narrow road to the deep North. Richard Flanagan
The dinner - Herman Koch
Run - Blake crouch
The unseen world- Liz Moore
Dark money.
Gladwell. Revisionist History
Portable Veblen. Elizabeth mcKenzie
Seth Godin. The Icarus principle.
October - 3
Fever. Megan abbot
Tribe. Sebastian Junger
The Martian. Andy weir
November - 5
Peace is every step. Thich Nhat Hahn
The ghost. Robert Harris
The Mandibles: a history. Lionel shriver
One summer. Bill Bryson
The Art of Travel. Alain de Botton
December
Michael Lewis. The big short
Blake Crouch. Dark Matter
Reclaiming Conversations. Sherry Turkle
What is the what. Dave Eggers
American Philosophy: A Love Story. John Kaag
You Will Know Me(?). Megan Abbot
My Year of Reading 2017
January
Here I am. Jonathan safran foer
A most wanted man. Le carre
10% happier. Dan Harris
February
Evicted. Matthew Desmond
Steal like an artist. Austin kleon
The pines. Blake Crouch.
Dare Me. Megan abbot
Grading Smarter Not Harder. Myron Dueck
Tinker tailor spy. Le carre
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
The Life-changing magic of tidying up. Marie Kondo
March
Title? - Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey
Mindfulness and the art of drawing. Wendy Ann greenhalgh
How to change minds. Rob Jolles
A sense of an ending - Julian Barnes
The Sixth extinction. Elizabeth Kolbert.
April
The Case Against Sugar. Gary Taubes
My Struggle - book 1- Knausgaard
- Susan Brookhart
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders
But what if we're wrong? Chuck Klosterman
May
Locked doors. Blake Crouch
Runaway - Alice Munro
The songs of trees - David Haskell
Snow country - Kawabata
Understanding rhetoric- Elizabeth Losh
June
Underground Railroad. Coltson whitehead
The Tsar of Love and Techno. Anthony Marra
Boys in the Boat. Daniel James Brown
Learning Targeta - Moss and Brookhart
Angels and Ages. Adam Gopnik
Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
Pre-suasion - cialdini
July
Exit West. Moshin Hamid
Stranger in the woods. Michael Finkel
Tree of Smoke - Denis Johnson.
The First Commandment -- brad Thor
Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad
August
The devil wins. Robert Parker. Reed Farrel Coleman
The mistletoe murders - pd James
Sept.
The subtle art of not giving a F@ck.
Smarter faster better. Duhhig
Ee Cummings. A poets life. Catherine Reef
The orphan masters son. Adam Johnson
Small great things. Jodi picoult
Tell the wolves I'm home. Carol Rifka Brunt
October
The Spell of the Sensuous - David Abram
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
Autumn. Knausgaard
Game. Strauss
Mrs fletcher. Tom Perrotta
Hillbilly Eligy -
November
The upcycle. McDonough
I contain multitudes. Ed yong
Bacteria to Bach and back —. Daniel Dennet
The Gunslinger. Stephen King
Eleanor and Park. Rainbow Rowell
Guinea pig diaries. AJ Jacobs
December
Today will be different. Maria Semple
Grit- Angela duckworth
Constellation of Vital Phenomena . Anthony Marra
Code of Conduct-Brad Thor
Dark is rising. - Susan cooper
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
My Year of Reading 2018
January
The Quartet - Joseph Ellis
American wolf. Nate Blakeslee
Salt to the Sea - Ruta Sepetys
Bear Town. Fredrik Backman
February
SPQR - Mary Beard
Little Fires Everywhere- Celeste Ng
Make Me — Lee Child. A jack reacher novel
Origin — Dan Brown
Writing My Wrongs - Shaka Senghor
Camino Island - John Grisham
March
Seventh function of language - Laurent Binet
Leonardo DaVinci - Walter Isaacson
A Sideways Look at Time - Jay Griffiths
Night School - Jack Reacher
Present over Perfect - Shauna Niequist
Meditation for fidgety skeptics — Dan Harris
How to Think - Alan Jacobs
April
A legacy of spies - John Le Carre
Dark Money - Jane Mayer
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
The Rooster Bar - John Grisham
Home Fire - Kamila shamsie
The Other Wes Moore - Wes Moore
The wild Places - Robert Macfarlane
May
Sing, unburied, sing - Jesamyn Ward
Manhattan Beach - Jennifer Egan
The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt
Blackbird - Richard Stark
Island of Dr Moreau- HG Wells
The Hate U Give -
June
The Wicked Girls
The Myths We Live By - Midgley
The Midnight Line - Lee Child
Generosity- Richard Powers
School Days - Robert Parker
July
The Nightingale - Kristen Hannah
Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
Rough weather - Robert Parker
The Know it all - AJ Jacobs
August
The Black Widow - Daniel Silva
A tale of two cities - Charles Dickens
Chasing the Bear - Robert Parker
A Man Called Ove - Backman
The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers
Dance of the Possible - Scott Berkun
Natural Causes - Barbara Ehrenreich
September
Side Effects May Vary - Kelly?
Brimstone- Robert Parker
Nineteen Minutes - Picoult
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