An announcement of sorts

For the past seven years I have had the privilege of working at the most wonderful school with an amazing staff and administration. I made many mistakes in my first few years of teaching, but I had people who believed in me and knew that I was learning and growing. It has been a place that made me the teacher I am and as a result, have always been happy to go into work everyday.

But with that happiness also comes some discontent. In order to have such a wonderful, supportive, autonomous work environment, I have spent two hours of my day, five days a week, in the car. I justified the long drive because I was working in an environment that allowed me to flourish as a teacher. I looked forward to walking through the door of my classroom everyday and learning with my students. But lately I've just been overwhelmed by it all. I think the gravitas of realizing how much of my life has been taken up by driving, in addition to all the extra work that's involved with being a teacher, has left me feeling that while I love my school, I can't continue to live like this.

So in January I tearfully met with my principal to tell her I would not be returning next year. It was a hard decision, but one I knew I had to make for my own health and sanity.

So what's next for me? I have no idea. And you know what? In a way, I'm okay with that. Part of me is excited at the prospect of the unknown, of what the future holds for me, but the other half is anxious and disconsolate because I don't know if that future will include being in the classroom.

You see, part of my discontent as of late has been not only how much of my life I've spent in the car driving to and from work everyday, but also how much life I am missing out on from the obligations of this job. It might be a job I love, but you can also resent and be tied down by what you love. That's how I've been feeling lately. And while spending time with my students in the classroom watching them learn and grow gives me great joy, it's really the minutia of this job that gets to me: the extra work that most people, unless they are a teacher or live with a teacher, have no idea about.

And it's the assumption most people have outside of the teaching profession that we only have an 8-3 work day that continues to frustrate and make me give Taylor Mali poetry recitations at dinner parties. Politicians and educational "leaders" who have never taught in a classroom are making decisions based on those assumptions and on behalf of students and teachers across this country. People like Michelle Rhee are pushing to evaluate a teacher's worth largely on test scores, and our secretary of education, Arne Duncan, wants us all to make education a "race" despite the fact that the very nature of a race is to leave people behind. I don't know any teacher who desires her classroom to be a race to anything. Most teachers I know want to guide each child by the hand and meet them where they're at to get them where they need to be. That's not a race Mr. Duncan, that involves patience and diligence and the understanding that all kids are different. I'm not seeing much room for differentiation in the educational policy that's being handed down these days. Any sort of dignity or professional image teachers used to have has been besmirched by politics and popular media who only portray teachers as incompetent and greedy. And while teaching at a private school has largely shielded me from most of this negativity, I can't help but wonder what's out there for me as I set out to begin my job search.

So I'm currently looking for answers. Answers for why, with all the negativity that's out there in politics and in the media, why should I stay in the classroom? Serendipitously, I'm taking a class this semester that is all about how to give teachers a voice in this time of educational "reform" and teacher bashing. The project I have chosen is on teacher retention. Because I want to know, despite all that we've been told we're doing wrong, who's choosing to stay and who's choosing to fight for teachers? Thankfully I have had a nurturing, supportive environment from which to learn these past seven years, and yet I still managed to burn out. If I'm questioning my future despite the fortuitous hand I was dealt, I can absolutely, positively see why teacher satisfaction is at an all-time low and those who haven't been as lucky as me are choosing to leave the profession.

And yet...

Despite all that seems to be going against teachers these days, there are still beacons of light in this surging storm, lightships to help guide the way home.

On Friday I drove to Grand Rapids to attend the Michigan Reading Association conference where I saw and connected with some of my favorite teachers: members of the Nerdy Book Club. It was there, as we talked, listened, and tweeted about all the things we are passionate about that I realized that this community, this tribe, is my ticket to staying in the classroom. You see, it's not just new teachers that need mentoring. Veteran teachers need support and communities to keep them going too. And these people are my bucket fillers. People like Donayln Miller, Brian Wyzlic, Paul Hankins, Katherine Sokolowski, Niki Barnes, Colby Sharp, Jillian Heise, Jessica Crawford, Sarah Andersen, Kristin McIlhagga, Erica Beaton... I could go on and on... These are my people, my tribe. They overflow my bucket with inspiration and hope. Because, when I click on a link to the Nerdy Book Club blog and read posts like this one from Brian Wyzlic, or listen to Paul Hankins read a poem about how books saved him that is so beautiful and so vulnerable that you must look away in order to wipe away your tears, it's really hard to want to walk away from it all.

So to my Nerdy Book Club tribe, I'm going to be enlisting your help in the next few weeks. I need your continued inspiration and sense of hope. I want to know why you stay. Inspire me. Because right now, I'm going to be needing the teacher equivalent of a Kid President Pep Talk:



If you're interested in helping me out, please let me know and I can email you the details of my project. 

Things are still up in the air and unknown for me. But one thing will always remain constant: education and literacy will always be my vocation. In what capacity that vocation is manifested remains to be seen.

Lunar Love giveaway hop

For my portion of the blog hop, I am giving away a copy of:

Ruined by Paula Morris
Published: August 1, 2009
Publisher: Point
Pages: 304
Format: paperback
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Young Adult

Goodreads summary:
Rebecca couldn't feel more out of place in New Orleans, where she comes to spend the year while her dad is traveling. She's staying in a creepy old house with her Aunt Claudia, who reads Tarot cards for a living. And at the snooty prep school, a pack of filthy-rich girls treat Rebecca like she's invisible. Only gorgeous, unavailable Anton Grey seems to give Rebecca the time of day, but she wonders if he's got a hidden agenda. Then one night, in Lafayette Cemetery, Rebecca makes a friend. Sweet, mysterious Lisette is eager to talk to Rebecca, and to show her the nooks and crannies of the city.

Terms and conditions:
Must be 13 or older to enter and have a U.S. mailing address
One winner will be selected
Use the Rafflecopter widget to enter
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Don't forget to visit all the other blogs participating in the blog hop:

Make a button, read a button

I don't know if it is across the country, but in Michigan March is Reading Month. So every year we put out a calendar of different weekly reading events. In addition to being World Read Aloud Day yesterday, it was also "Read a button day" at our school. But this year one of our teachers had the great idea to have students design their own buttons.

Here are some of their designs:

Teachers got in on the act too.

 And finally, this one was mine:

Happy World Read Aloud Day!

Last year during World Read Aloud Day my 6th graders paired up with their 3rd grade buddies and I read to them Audrey Vernick's newest (at the time) picture book So You Want to Be a Rock Star. Afterwards, the 6th graders read a book to their buddies.

Anyone who knows me knows what a huge fan I am of Audrey's books so this year I took a leap and asked if SHE'D read So You Want to Be a Rock Star to the 3rd and 6th graders via Skype. Because Audrey is a rock star when it comes to talent and graciousness, she obliged. But she did me one better: Instead of reading an already published book, she gave us a sneak peek at her upcoming picture book, Bogart and Vinnie.

After the read aloud, Audrey answered some questions the students came up with beforehand, but the answer that stuck with me the most is one I will be telling students for the rest of my teaching career. My 6th graders are currently working on a research project and one of my challenges as a teacher is to make research feel relevant because so often it feels like an exercise in futility.  "This is so boring!" and "When will we ever have to use this in the real world?" often ring through the classroom walls. Since Audrey has written a few nonfiction picture books, I wanted her to give her take on the research process. Her advice: find the story. Facts are important, but it's what you do with those facts once you've collected them that's of equal importance. Don't get so bogged down with facts that you forget that there's a story to tell. So from here on out, you will forever and always hear me telling my students to find the story.

That advice absolutely shows in Audrey's writing. I think you'll agree if you've read Brothers at Bat that she wrote about more than just an all-brother baseball team and found a way to make it about more than just baseball. As someone who is not a fan of baseball I can tell you that it is also a human-interest story and that great writing can transcend likes and dislikes. I normally hate fantasy novels but I love Harry Potter. I normally hate baseball, but in between the pages of an Audrey Vernick picture book, she makes me see why it's such an important part of American culture and history. Why? Because she found the story.

But let's not forget about Bogart and Vinnie. And while it might not be a nonfiction picture book, Audrey still managed to find the story based on her fascination with the idea of inter-species friendships.  In this book Vinnie, a happy-go-lucky, good-natured, yet clueless dog finds happiness and companionship in a giant, lazy rhinoceros. News of their unusual friendship spreads and they become a world-wide sensation. I'm already seeing the potential with this book to be a wonderful reading ladder to our newest Newbery winner The One and Only Ivan.

Audrey reads from Bogart and Vinnie

More Bogart and Vinnie

Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to Skype with us Audrey! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of Bogart and Vinnie in June!

Cookbook Review: Tyler Florence Fresh

"I love writing about food as much as I love cooking. It's my mission, as well as my passion, to push myself and my team to discover the truth of flavor, a naked honesty that reveals itself once you start to understand the soul of the ingredients in front of you. The image your mind produces when you taste something amazing -- say, a fully ripened heirloom tomato in the third week of August or the funky earthiness of a white truffle in November -- sends a crystal clear signal from your palate to your brain, a high-def sensation that fully completes the flavor experience. That is always the highest goal of cooking. I am consistently fine-tuning my cooking techniques so that the signal of pure flavor and the integrity of fresh ingredients shine through. I love turning the subtle nuances of great flavor into moments that truly affect you. My goal is to give you tastes you'll never forget." (p. 1)

I want to get this out of the way right off the bat: I did not make a single recipe from this cookbook. Nor do I have any desire to. And while I generally like Tyler Florence, I'm not sure he gets his desired message across in this cookbook, which is, as the name suggests, to focus on healthy, fresh ingredients in your cooking and to let the flavor of each ingredient shine. Where this book really misses the mark for me however is in its pretentious, intimidating delivery. The photographs, while beautiful, are way too stylized and scream "This is much too intimidating for you so don't even bother." While I am generally a fan of beautiful food photography, I prefer the food to say, "Eat me. I'm delicious!" instead of "I belong on the wall in a modern art gallery."

I also found some of Florence's message in Fresh to be conflicting. On one page he admonishes molecular gastronomy saying, "I'm glad to see a focus on ingredients in their purity replacing manipulation of ingredients just for the sake of novelty," (33) but a little further into the book, he dedicates an entire page to explaining how to make "pearls", AKA the spheriphication of liquid (61). That is most definitely a technique of molecular gastronomy.

I found Fresh to be more coffee table book and a celebration of food styling and photography than a practical cooking manual for the home kitchen. The photographs are beautiful for their own sake, but I didn't find any of them setting off any salivary glands, which to me is a much more noble goal to have as a cookbook photographer than, "how can we blur the line between food and art?" And I'm not saying this because I dislike modern art; I actually quite enjoy it. But as someone who does enjoy modern art, that's not what I'm looking for in a cookbook. I'm looking for the photographs to make me hungry, not admire their artistic genius.


Tyler Florence Fresh
Published: December 4, 2012
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Pages: 256
Genre: Cookery
Audience: Advanced Home Cooks/Professional Chefs
Disclosure: Library Copy

No Strings Attached giveaway hop

For my portion of this blog hop, I am giving away a paperback copy of:

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 

Goodreads Summary: 
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.




Terms and Conditions:
Must be 13 or older to enter and have a U.S. mailing address
One winner will be selected
Use the Rafflecopter widget to enter

It's Monday! What are you reading? 3-4-13

 

Originally hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, Jen and Kellee  over at Teach Mentor Texts also host a kidlit version of It's Monday! What are You Reading?

Last week I finished:

The Big Sea by Langston Hughes
I much prefer Hughes's poems to his prose writing - at least when it comes to his autobiographical writing - I haven't read his fiction work yet. It was interesting to read about his life, but I was hoping his writing would be a little less utilitarian given that he is a poet.


Picture books I read and enjoyed last week:

Bark and Tim: A True Story of Friendship by Audrey Glassman Vernick and Ellen Glassman Giardo
I love the story behind why Audrey and Ellen wanted to write this book: they found one of Tim Brown's paintings on eBay and were drawn to it. This is one of those gems of a picture book that is currently hard to find as I believe it is no longer in print but since I am an Audrey Vernick fangirl, I had to seek out one of her lesser-known titles. :) 

 
Mutt Dog! by Stephen Michael King 
A homeless, yet resourceful dog always manages to find a place to sleep for the night, but today's find just might have led him to his forever home. I can never resist a good dog story, and this one is definitely a heartwarming one.


Surfer Chick by Kristy Dempsey, illustrated by Henry Cole
Two birds of a feather -
a chick and her dad -
lived by the shore
in a radical pad.

And with those first few lines paired with the lively, colorful illustrations, I knew this book was going to be great fun. And I wasn't wrong. This would be a fantastic classroom read aloud. 

 
Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Adam Rex
Adam Rex's  illustrations in this book are so adorable they make you want to SQUEE! I didn't find the actual story particularly memorable, and the illustrations definitely do the heavy lifting here. 


Graphic novel from last week:
 
Babymouse The Musical by Jennifer L. and Matthew Holm
By far my favorite Babymouse so far. I laughed throughout the whole thing. The musical theater references were absolutely brilliant, and while there is a great deal that kids might not pick up on, that what makes Babymouse one of those kid books with adult appeal too. It's kind of like Shrek that way: a cartoon movie made for kids but with some subtle adult humor thrown in to keep them entertained too.  


Currently (still) reading:

Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin 
Still really enjoying this book. I can definitely see why it was such a heavy award winner. 


Currently listening:
 
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain 
Wow. This book is definitely a game-changer. I'm fascinated by all the research on the science of introverts. I'll have more to say about this one once I'm finished with it. 

Last week I reviewed:


Period 8 by Chris Crutcher

The Fellowship for Alien Detection by Kevin Emerson


Michael Symon's Carnivore


Other posts from last week:
Giveaway: Evermore and Blue Moon by Alyson Noel
Our school visited a mosque last week