One of the things I love about summer is the chance to do some serious professional reading—the kind that it’s just hard to find time for during the press of the school year. The books that I hear about during the year and think, “I really need to read that.” It’s not summer for me, on the Japanese academic calendar, until July 19, but it’s also true that anything I need to get shipped internationally in a pandemic really needs to be ordered. So this afternoon I luxuriated in the opportunity to comb through my Kindle, my physical bookshelf, and my wishlist to gather the list of professional books I want to read this summer. (I also just ordered the last one, and it’s promised to arrive by July 4, so—phew!—good thing I got the ball rolling on that one!)
What do I want to learn about this summer? It's a long list: bilingual education, new strategies for teaching nonfiction reading, book clubs, social justice and community involvement, and how to fail forward and live with courageous faith. In the fall, I want to know more about who my students are, how I can teach them even better, and how I can be the living curriculum of a healthy, compassionate, just, faithful life. Here’s the list for summer 2021!
Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside Out: Elevating Expertise in Classrooms and Beyond by Alison Schofield and Francesca McGeary. I’ll be a third of the way through my second year at a bilingual school, and I’ve been looking for professional reading on just this topic. I’m really excited to learn more!
Reading Nonfiction: Notice and Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst. Reading Cris Tovani 15 years ago began the transformation of my literature teaching. From what I read on my English teacher social media groups, Notice and Note for both fiction and nonfiction are the new Tovani reading strategies. And I’m much more experienced teaching fiction than nonfiction, so I picked that one to start.
Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum by Lesley Roessing. Also big in online English teacher discussions: book clubs. I’m up for the experiment.
How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby. A good friend is also reading this book this summer, and I look forward to discussing it with her. As any form of racism is abhorrent to Jesus, as long as there are beloved image bearers of God suffering from it, I want to be aware of their experiences and of how I can be part of restoration.
Teaching to Justice, Citizenship, and Civic Virtue: The Character of High School Through the Eyes of Faith by Julia K. Stronks and Gloria Goris Stronks. Saw this on a blog recently, and it correlates with my school’s new student objectives, and my belief that what kids learn in the classroom is about so much more than collecting credits and a diploma at the end. It goes along with the next book on the list, and I don’t know that I’ll get to both of them, but they’re both on my Kindle, so I have the option.
Difference Making at the Heart of Learning: Students, Schools, and Communities Alive with Possibility by Tom Vander Ark.
The Mindful Christian: Cultivating a Life of Intentionality, Openness, and Faith by Irene Kraegel. In social-emotional learning (SEL) “mindfulness” is a prominent thread. While it can be implemented in ways that can leave Christians uncomfortable, it also seems to me that being mindful of who we are and Whose we are, of what we have been given that is sufficient grace in this present moment, are all deeply Christian practices. So when a friend recommended this, I got it. I enjoyed the first several chapters, and then life happened. Now I’m promising myself “this summer.”
Risk. Fail. Rise. A Teacher’s Guide to Learning from Mistakes by M. Colleen Cruz. Another one I started earlier this year—this one as part of an online book discussion, and I didn’t keep up with it. I’m really looking forward to getting back into it. I want my students to learn from failure—to say that with any possibility of acceptance, I have to be able to model it myself.
What are you hoping to learn this summer?
No comments:
Post a Comment