#SOL18: Being the Change
Me.
I’m a product of my background.
I grew up on a farm in southeast Iowa. I went to school in a small town of approximately 6,000 citizens. We were a homogeneous community. Our biggest disagreements were between Democrats and Republicans or Catholics and Methodists. Words. Not anger. Not distrust. Words. There was one African American family. One family. Although I graduated as one of 171 students in my class, there was no diversity at my grade level. None.
When I attended junior college, I was in a town of 20,000+. Diversity, some. And yet, our school was small enough that I knew people as individuals and not as a “racial group”. So it was a culture shock when at 19, I moved on to a university dorm in a town of 30,000+ with girls who didn’t look like me, didn’t talk like me, and who didn’t want to talk to me. I was totally unprepared.
What could have prepared me?
Relationships matter. People matter. When we understand our own relationships, we are better able to support the students in our classrooms. What happens when students want to talk about topics like race, gender, politics, religion and sexuality? Are you comfortable with those topics? What if their need to discuss those issues is so powerful that they can’t focus on learning until their conversation takes place. What are your options? One beginning point is to pick up Sara K Ahmed’s book, Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension. It’s an EASY read. What’s tough is actually “doing the work” yourself in order to become “comfortable with the discomfort” that comes with learning and growing.
Here are just a few quotes from Sara for you to think about:
If you read and loved Upstanders, Sara K. Ahmed, will be no surprise to you. She’s bright, articulate and so ready to challenge the complexities of the world. Heinemann has a podcast here where you can hear directly from Sara about this book.
What are you learning?
What do you know about “social comprehension”?
Join the #G2Great chat Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 8:30 EST to learn from Sara!
Wakelet archive from #G2Great chat here.
Thank you, Betsy, Beth, Deb, Kathleen, Kelsey, Lanny, Melanie, and Stacey for this weekly forum. Check out the writers, readers and teachers here. 
Focus: #TCRWP, Books, and Professional Reading
It’s real!
I’m in NYC!
So excited to be back, with friends, literally from around the country, to learn, live and celebrate writing this week! (Can you guess my favorite punctuation?)
The Saturday before #TCRWP Writing Institute found several “slicers” meeting up at Bank Street Bookstore. Our goal, Julieanne Harmatz (@jarhartz) and I, was to meet Sally Donnelly (@SallyDonnelly1), a fellow slicer up from the Washington, DC area. We had met Sally, oh so briefly at the March Saturday reunion, and were interested in longer conversations. We all found ourselves purchasing Cynthia Lord’s A Handful of Stars that had been highly recommended by fellow traveler Allison Jackson (@azajacks). (sidenote: What’s up with the @? Those are twitter names to follow. If you aren’t following these three, why not? Oh, not on Twitter; well, why not? You should be!)
Amazing book. A dog balancing a blueberry on his nose should “hook” you right into this book! Bank Street Bookstore was also the site of an amazng toddler read aloud with parents, toddlers and accompanying strollers filling the aisles. And that’s all I have to say about that topic because of another book that I purchased that I will be gifting soon. (Hint – book is by Jimmy Fallon; yes topic connected to the new addition to my family.)
We adjourned to the Silver Moon Bakery and cafe for some coffee and much, much, much conversation. Sally is returning to a third grade classroom after years as a reading specialist. We had advice about techonolgy, blogging, professional books (Good to Great: Focusing on the Literacy Work that Matters by Mary Howard) and fellow bloggers for additional advice.
My one little word is “Focus” so I am thinking about my own professional reading for this summer. This book and my all time favorite What Readers Really Do are my re-reads for this summer along with Colleen Cruz’s, The Unstoppable Writing Teacher, and Jennifer Serravello’s, The Reading Strategies Book, as my two new books. Only four – but rich, savory texts that will feed my soul and brain for the year to come.
Resource - Full 