Posted in Diversity, Equity, Hour of Code, Scholastic Book Fair

Welcome back to my blog* and Thank You for supporting the Book Fair!

*blogging has been rebranded as “content marketing.” I had to look it up.

We are adjusting back to normal after our temporary shiny cute vibrantly-colored pop-up store that is the Scholastic Book Fair. It was a tremendous undertaking that only the joy of book-focused students and their generous, accomodating grandparents makes worthwhile.

My last blog entry was exactly a year ago. There are plenty of reasons why..however I think I’m still asking for Covid-related grace. A parent told me the other day she missed my blog and I was so pleased to know I had a bonified reader, I hastily promised to remake the committment to create new content. (See note above, no one blogs anymore!)

So here’s what we have been doing since September: 1. Digital Citizenship check in: what do students remember, what habits have they adopted, how many are on devices daily, etc. signed a digital citizenship pledge.

2. 9/11 with light focus on the terrorist event, and heavy focus on national unity and community helpers.

3. Hispanic American History, with this guiding thought as we watched a collection of videos about different countries: “Hispanic language and culture is evident in most areas of the Americas today, and it’s important to understand how different Hispanic cultures have greatly influenced our American culture and way of life. In the United States alone, it is estimated that over 50 million Hispanics or Latinos live in the U.S” (vistahigherlearning.com)

4. Washington State’s “Disability History Month:” Learning from kids and young adults about how they deal with and overcome ADHD, dyslexia and autism was illuminating for all the students; especially those who share the disgnosis, (or have brothers and sisters who do).

WHAT!? Tom Cruise has dyslexia?!”

(5 different 3rd/4th grade boys)

5. Why people love scary stories, and an attempt at writing two-sentence spooky stories of their own. Halloween history and traditions. The Fall Ball was an absolute joyous event that I was fairly involved in and delighted to be a part of. Even though I can’t really explain my last-minute costume here.?

6. We learned about the history importance of Veteran’s Day as well as participate in a veterans assembly that my collleagues Mrs. Bofenkamo and Ms Brasch organized because I was overwhelmed with the Book Fair.

7. THE BOOK FAIR. I love hearing parents talking with their kids about what their just right books might be–sometime barging in on conversations with data such as what other books their children have checked out this year and thus what they might most enjoy. 🙂 I know I have posted elsewhere but I appreciate so much sharing my library space with grandparents!

As far as core curriculum goes, November is the best! We did historic photo analysis to infer what a young Native girl’s her life might have been like, learned about the contributions of hisporic and contemporary Native Americans. Along with 5th grade teachers we touch on the different perspectives of Thanksgiving and perform Dav Pilkey’s “Twas The Night Beffore Thanksgiving” via Reader’s Theater.

After Thanksgiving Break, we will celebrate The International Hour of Code to coincide with Computer Science Week on December 5-11. http://www.code.org always comes up with a fantastic variety of new coding games all of which tie in beautifully with our Washington library technology standards: “Students break down problems into smaller parts, identify key information and propose solutions.”

🎄 We also do a study of how people celebrate Christmas all over the world and I love the “find the weirdest tradtion” game.

If you are still with me then congratulations because man this has been a long post. I think I remember why people have the best of intentions with blogs and journals and diaries, and then….

Posted in Back to School, Covid 19 Teach-from-home!, Empathy, Equity, perserverance, traditional topics, non-traditional teaching

Distance Learning: 16 Practical Tips for Parents and Caregivers 💻

I was going to copy and paste a bunch of excerpts from this blog entry, but it is great just the way it is: Thoughtfully written with a goal of school to home partnerships in mind.

In this wonderful post, taken from the “Teachers Pay Teachers” website, homeschoolers and teacher-parents share their tips for parents and caregivers who are supporting distance learning. ⬇️

Source: Distance Learning: 16 Practical Tips for Parents and Caregivers Supporting At-Home Learning | The TpT Blog

Posted in Award Winning Books, Diversity, Empathy, Equity, Freedom to read, Reading and Library Advocacy

Thoughtful Conversations About Race

I was in my library checking in books, gloved and masked, and it occurred to me that I should take some action to help create conversations about why the current protests are happening. I am not qualified to lead any conversations about how to rectify hundreds of years of oppression. But I am qualified to recommend books written by those more qualified to do so. I believe, like most librarians, that the most powerful way to connect is through reading the stories and insights of those who we seek to understand.

Here are a few lines from the American Library Association’s “Freedom to Read” Statement:

“Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth.”

“It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.”

Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. “

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 12.13.20 PMI hope that reading some of these recommended books will help you to have conversations with your own children. Reading is exploring another person’s experiences and the most natural path to empathy and understanding that there is.

This New York Times article and the list is awesome. We only have two of these books in the Midway library (I am Enough and Brown Girl Dreaming) , as most of them are written for middle and high school audiences.

And here’s some more I compiled from different resources.

  • “Let’s Talk About Race” by Julius Lester
  • The Colors of Us” by Karen Katz
  • “The Skin I’m In: A First Look at Racism” by Pat Thomas
  • Sesame Street’s “We’re Different, We’re the Same” by Bobbi Jane Kates
  • “Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice” by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
  • “I Am Enough” by Grace Byers
  • “Happy in Our Skin” by Fran Manushkin and Lauren Tobia
  • “Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement” by Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes
  • “Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America” by Jennifer Harvey
  • “Daddy Why Am I Brown?: A healthy conversation about skin color and family” by Bedford F. Palmer
  • “A Terrible Thing Happened” by Margaret Holmes
  • “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi

List of books for adults: (teen +)

  • The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
  • “All-American Boys” By
  • “Harbor Me” by Jacqueline Woodson
  • “This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work” by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand
  • “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson
  • “Dear White People” by Justin Simien
  • “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism” by Robin DiAngelo
  • “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi Jason Reynolds is a very important voice in children’s literature right now. 
  • “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi
  • “Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
  • “Raising White Kids” by Jennifer Harvey
  • “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo
  • “The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement” by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris
  • “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson This movie (based on the book) is offered FREE on all platforms through the month of June. It’s very well done and stars Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx. 
  • The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson (this one is LONG. I haven’t finished it but I’m not giving up! )
  • “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge
  • “They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement” by Wesley Lowery
  • “Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That The Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall
  • “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” by bell hooks
  • “Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People” by Ben Crump
  • “From Slavery To Freedom: A History of African Americans” by John Hope Franklin
  • “The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and William Barber II
  • “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander