I’ve taught high school English for nearly twenty-five years, so I know how well reading fiction builds empathy. I’ve used studies to spark discussion and reflection among my students, and I’ve seen the power of certain texts to move them toward a deeper understanding of what those with whom they don’t have much in common endure. For me, however, poetry has been more powerful than fiction, especially when it comes to understanding what Palestinians have been enduring for decades. Forest of Noise, Mosab Abu Toha’s second collection of poetry, depicts what life is like for the people of Gaza clearly and poetically, drawing readers into the devastation they have been experiencing. While reading these poems, it’s hard not to question many of the narratives readers in the West may have encountered. Moving toward peace requires understanding, empathy, and compassion. These poems powerfully, and at times heartbreakingly, encourage readers to see a more vivid picture of what is happening in the daily lives of those living in Gaza and are a vital contribution to understanding the situation that continues to unfold.
I know better than to assume that because I teach mostly seniors, a book aimed at middle school won’t be helpful to me. While I might not use all of the poems included in this book, I’ll definitely be able to modify and use the activities and writing exercises when I’m teaching poetry. The authors also include resources, including places to find poetry to use in the classroom and places students can publish their work. This book would be perfect if you teach upper elementary or middle school, but high school teachers would find value in it as well.
One of my goals has been to move to a gradeless, process driven approach to assessment. Unfortunately, despite my best intentions and plans, unexpected challenges and barriers have forced me to pull back and return to a more traditional approach, which has been extremely frustrating. Even more disappointing has been that my students were always intrigued by the shift when I explained to them how grades would be determined. There was skepticism, but I framed it as an experiment and a process that we’d be working to refine along the way. I’m hoping that I’m able to make it work this year, since I know what kept me from success last year and those barriers either won’t exist this year or won’t surprise me when they pop up. Looking back, I realize I was doing too much and I should have started small. This year, I’ll be focusing on going gradeless with writing and Reimagining Writing Assessment: From Scales to Stories by Maja Wilson will help me on this journey.
I’ve always been uncomfortable with rubrics because they are so confining and rarely capture a writer’s strengths and areas for growth accurately. Plus, they limit creativity and get in the way of risk taking. Reimagining Writing Assessment builds on Wilson’s earlier work in Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment (which I own, but have not read) and encourages writing teachers to move away from rubrics and other standardized forms of writing assessment and let the story of a writer’s process unfold. Wilson provides research, tools, and narratives of how this has worked in her own practice and it’s clear that so much of the push to make writing assessment faster and easier for teachers, dehumanizes the process and fails to serve student writers. Feedback is important but when feedback consists of boxes checked on a rubric or canned comments from a curated bank, how is that helpful for students? How often do they use that feedback to grow as a writer? Listening to students, allowing time for reflection, and providing meaningful feedback through conferencing builds stronger relationships and leads to “growth in the right direction.” I loved how Wilson framed reading a student’s work as reading for the experience instead of reading to assess: “[W]hen an expert adopts a beginner’s mind and tells the story of her experience, the result is to open up experience rather than close it down. It also makes the process of evaluation more transparent. . . . If we tell the story of our experience of reading, then students are more likely to form useful understandings about how writing and reading work” (pg. 97). I will be thinking about this and revisiting Reimagining Writing Assessment often as I plan my first writing units and how I will approach teaching writing over the next few weeks.
I was a little disappointed in Trapeze. Maybe I should hold off judgment and just read the sequel, since the ending is what I had a problem with, and the reviews for that are better. While I enjoy Mawer’s writing, I thought the main character, Marian, was a little flat and I found myself asking what Mawer was getting at with some of her decisions. Considering that Mawer wrote one of my favorite books ever (The Fall), I may be holding him to a ridiculously high standard.
Moving on to shelf #25!
Arthur Miller. I had him up on a pedestal until I learned more about his personal life and how he treated his son Daniel. I used to teach The Crucible, and I used Miller as an example to discuss the idea of separating the art from the artist, which I have a hard time doing. When I find out an author has done reprehensible things or made dehumanizing comments, I’m unable to put that out of mind as I’m reading, and I’ll often remove the books from my shelves so I’m not forced to think about how disappointed and/or angry I am. I’m faced with this again since one of my favorite authors has been accused of sexual assault. I take comfort in that there are so many other authors out there, and if I have to move on, I have options. It’s a lot to process.
That said, I’ll probably read The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe or something by Toni Morrison, even though that will put me closer to reading everything she’s written.
My second summer PD book was Identity Affirming Classrooms: Spaces that Center Humanity by Dr. Erica Buchanan-Rivera, which made me think critically about my classroom space. While I generally receive positive feedback from students about my classroom environment and teaching, I know there are areas where I can improve and challenges I need to overcome that may not be obvious to my students. What I learned while reading this book will help me in many ways. Dr. Buchanan-Rivera provides extensive background information on why identity affirming spaces are important and she includes concrete methods for developing them. I was especially grateful for more resources to refine and improve the materials I use when discussing identity with my students and elements to take into account when organizing my classroom’s physical space.
I wonder if some of the issues I had with classroom discussion and student engagement could stem from the physical arrangement of my room. I need to figure out creative ways to incorporate conferencing with students and carve out time for community building. This book reminded me how important those things are. My biggest barrier is the combination of large classes and forty minute class periods. When I had smaller classes, conferences and community building were much easier, but I can’t allow them to fall by the wayside just because I sometimes have almost thirty students in my room.
This is another text I would highly recommend to any teacher regardless of the subject or grade level. We all need to design spaces where students feel valued and safe, and Dr. Buchanan-Rivera addresses every element we need to consider including physical space, classroom materials, and ensuring students feel safe, valued, and supported.
I read the majority of the stories in Sinking Bell in one night. They were excellent, but I probably should have taken more time to think and process them, especially since the endings of the stories were ambiguous. I was too immersed in Bojan Louis’s writing, and I didn’t feel like slowing down. What stood out to me was how distinct each story and character was. Yes, the style of writing in each story was similarly captivating, and there were common threads running through the collection, but each character had a clear persona and voice. I’ve read a couple books recently where the authors didn’t do the best job of making characters not seem like nearly the same person, which is why this stood out to me the most. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Louis teaches creative writing.
Now for shelf #20!
Ah, Cormac McCarthy. A student just finished reading Blood Meridian, and I told her to read No Country for Old Men so we can discuss The Judge, Anton Chigurh, and what it means to be evil. She thought that was a great idea. Yes, you should probably worry about us. That said, the only book by McCarthy I have not read is Cities of the Plain, the third book in the Border Trilogy, and since I didn’t love the first two, I will not be reading that now. Instead, I have decided to read The Tattooist of Auschwitz. I’m halfway through, and it’s good, so far. I’ll save my thoughts for when I finish the book, because I’m sure I’ll have plenty.
I read more books in March than I did in February, but these are the ones worth sharing. I read a bunch of picture books and Little Golden Books while shopping for my nephew’s 6th birthday present, but I’m only sharing the two picture books I bought him. I also read some problematic romance novels, that I refuse to share because they have over four stars on both Goodreads and Amazon, and I don’t want to have to argue with people.
I can’t really pick a favorite for the month because I loved all of the books I read for different reasons, and I won’t be surprised if all of them make my list of year-end favorites.
I predict that my reading will pick up in April once I get the end of the school year mapped out and the dust settles from the end of the third marking period!
This was a slow month for me, reading wise. I know eight books is a lot for the average person, but it’s pretty low for me. February was a hectic month and some of these weren’t exactly page turners. That said, I did enjoy all of them.
The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine edited by Kaveh Akbar: I was fixated on Kaveh Akbar at the end of January, so I started February with this collection of poetry. There was so much to love about this, especially Akbar’s introduction to each poem and the chronological organization. I found this to be extremely soothing.
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson: I don’t normally need content warnings, but I wish I would have had one for this. It took a dark turn very quickly and I wasn’t in the right headspace for it. I kept reading because I was so invested in the main character, Tan-Tan, and I had to see her through to the end. I was not disappointed!
Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson: I’ve been following Andrea Gibson for a while and have greatly appreciated the wisdom they share. After a post about mental health that had me reflecting and journaling for hours, I decided to read some of their poetry. It was exactly what I needed.
A Certain Justice by P. D. James: This was good, but I swear I’ve read it before. It isn’t marked as read on any of my logs, but the whole time I was reading it, I felt like I was having deja vu.
Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation by Dr. Jen Gunter: The Menopause Manifesto changed my life, so I was pretty excited to read this. Granted, this would have been much more valuable to me twenty or so years ago, but a lot of it was still relevant. Highly recommend!
Promises of Gold by José Olivarez: The end of the month was extremely chaotic and I could not focus on reading. I turned to poetry (again) to help me get back on track. José Olivarez is among my favorite poets and I absolutely adored this collection.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen: More poetry to calm my brain. I’ve always loved the title of this collection. It’s on my list for The Sealey Challenge every year, but for some reason I haven’t read it yet. It was excellent.
A Wager with a Duke by Tamara Gill: Regency romance is normally not my genre, but I was getting frustrated with being unable to focus on the N. K. Jemisin book I started three times, and I needed something fun and kind of predictable. This worked. Now I should be able to wrap my head around complex world building.
I’m hoping for better reading adventures in March!
A Certain Justice was good, but I feel like I read it before even though my reading logs have it marked as unread. I even checked the last printed version and it’s not highlighted, so I either missed it or have read something extremely similar. I’m pretty sure I missed it somehow because the events and the ending seemed too familiar. Oh well! I liked it, and it satisfied a bunch of challenge categories, so I have no regrets.
Now for shelf #17!
No one will be surprised that I plan to read The City We Became and The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin. I may also read The Love Songs of W. E. B DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers because I really want to read it, and while it’s nice to read a ton of books every month, I’ve noticed that focusing on that goal has caused me to avoid longer texts. The years I read fewer books overall are the years I read the most pages. It all evens out in the end.
These took longer than usual to finish. When I started Smilla’s Sense of Snow, I couldn’t put it down, but the second half of the novel got really messy. It could have been because school was extremely stressful while I was trying to finish it (internet outages, end of the marking period, etc.) and I didn’t have a lot of time or energy to read every day, but a lot of the second half didn’t really make sense to me. Not in the “I didn’t understand what was going on” way, but in the plot hole/continuity/character arc way. I did spend a lot of time researching Denmark, Greenland, and all the social issues addressed in the book, so even though I didn’t love it, I’m better for having read it. Plus, it satisfied a lot of challenge prompts. (Beat the Backlist: 4-word title, travel by ship, and these woods hold secrets; The StoryGraph’s Genre Challenge 2024: A thriller or crime novel in translation)
Midnight Robber was tough to get through because I was unaware that it was going to take an extremely dark turn. The novel starts off pretty light, but then the main character experiences something devastatingly traumatic and it was a lot for me to process. I was tempted to DNF it and come back to it later, but because of how much I liked the main character, I needed to see her through to the end. I’m glad I did! Another reason I wanted to see it through was that it satisfied so many reading challenge categories. (Beat the Backlist: these woods hold secrets, between 300 and 400 pages, and second chances; The StoryGraph Reads the World 2024: Jamaica; The StoryGraph’s Genre Challenge 2024:A science fiction or dystopian book by a woman or nonbinary author)
Another reason it took longer than usual to get through Smilla’s Sense of Snow and Midnight Robber was that I HAD to read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar before the book signing at The Midtown Scholar. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and it will probably have its own post (once I read it again).
Now for shelf #16!
I’m going to stick to P. D. James for this shelf because I need something lighter, and I want to start reading some of the books I got for my birthday! I usually double (or triple) up on books, but they can’t be similar at all. Plus, I don’t want any content surprises. I’ve read most of the Adam Dalgliesh novels and I’ve loved them all.
Books I’ve read:
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
