So I haven't blogged in over a year because baby. It's not that I haven't had stuff to share and damn, there are mommy bloggers who have multiples and still get this done, but really it just wasn't a priority. BUT I thought I'd try for a quick Year-in-Review on the big three from this blog: reading, teaching, traveling. I'll admit that they often overlap, but here it goes.
This year was strange for me as a reader. While I opted for the larger phone once Orion was born so that it would be easier to read articles while breast feeding (and scroll facebook and watch videos and take better pictures...), I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be for me to sit down and read an actual book. The baby, who was less than 2 months old when the year began, often required the dedication of both of my arms, making it awkward to hold a book or turn pages. It took until spring break in April for me to finish my first full length book, No Summit Out of Sight.
Two factors brought me back to consistent reading: an idea for a memoir unit for my freshmen and Audible. The first came when I returned to teaching after my maternity leave and began my unit for Elie Wiesel's Night. In the two years I've taught the memoir, I have paired it with the required freshman research paper by creating a compare/contrast between Wiesel's work on the most well-known genocide of our time and excerpts from memoirs from the genocides in Guatemala, Cambodia, and Rwanda.
When I first created the assignment/unit, I think my goal was to expose students to history beyond Europe. While everyone seems to know about the atrocities of the Holocaust, I felt like too many students leave school without realizing that intolerance, prejudice, racism, and even genocide didn't end in 1944. I also feel like our curriculum can be too Eurocentric, so I wanted to expand the purview of the unit.
But, WOW, is that unit depressing. It's depressing to teach and it's depressing to learn. I also didn't really feel like reading excerpts of a few pages really accomplished my goal anyway. I really wanted my students to read a second full-length memoir, so I started researching teenagers and war memoirs. The prospect of vetting a bunch of these was unsettling, though. I already knew it would be difficult to find time to read a dozen or more memoirs in order to find some my 14-year-old students could connect with, but the idea of spending all of my free time reading about the horrors of war was just too sad. Instead I started finding other memoirs by teens. Teens who had overcome adversity. Teens who had invented something or accomplished something. Teens who had lessons to teach my students without enduring abuse, addiction, severe tragedy, or war.
So I set out on a year (really 8 months) of reading nothing but memoirs. The first one was wonderful but difficult to finish with an infant trying to grab it out of my hands, which is when I turned to audiobooks. I've never been a big fan of audiobooks except for long road trips because they tend to read slower than I do, which is frustrating and often sleep-inducing. But Audible allowed me to speed up the reading. Audiobooks meant I could listen/read while making dinner, taking a walk, or during my 40-minute-each-way commute. I could listen while playing on the floor with my baby or while feeding him. Audiobooks meant I could get back into reading without giving up time for sleep or seeing my husband or any of the other activities vying for my very limited time.
Here is the list of books I went through this year, mostly on Audible.
Jordan Romero, No Summit Out of Sight
9 year old decides he wants to climb the tallest mountain on each continent, completes the task by the time he is 14 and becomes the youngest person to have done so. Awesome. Easy read. Great for my students. Love. This one confirms my plan for memoir-based lit circles.
William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Been on my To Read list for ages and this memoir thing gives me an excuse. Teen in Malawi discovers a science book with a section on wind energy and decides to build a windmill to harness energy for his own home. Awesome. Great for my engineering-minded kids. Definitely going on the list.
I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: Stories of Becoming a Nurse
Short stories by multiple authors. Interesting but didn't really work for my purpose. Stopped before the end and returned, not because I didn't enjoy listening to it but because I couldn't devote time to a book that wouldn't ultimately be used for my project at this time.
Mark Owen, No Easy Day
Memoir of a member of Seal Team 6 who participated not only in the assassination of Osama bin Laden, but also several other significant events of the past decade. Totally out of my comfort zone but I LOVED it. Great for students but also great for me to read something so completely different.
Jeanne Watkatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar
Young Japanese-American girl's experience before, during, and after WWII. I assumed this one was a no brainer for inclusion in my unit since the internment camp experience dovetails well with Night, but after listening to it I just wasn't sold. I'm glad I finally read it, since I'd had it on my list for about a decade, but it just didn't work for my memoir unit. Returned to Audible despite finishing (love Audible's return policy!).
Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi
Recommended by a friend for this unit but it was a no go. While I thought it was interesting and kind of funny to listen to, the book is mostly set in the 1970s and just too dated for my students. Stopped early and returned.
Bethany Hamilton, Soul Surfer
13-year-old surfer from Kauai suffers a shark attack that takes her arm, learns to overcome her struggles with faith and family. While I personally cringe from all the God stuff in this book and it made me really uncomfortable to include it, I know it will jive well with some of my students, particularly my Mormon kids. Plus the religion thing works really well as a contrast to the loss of faith in Night. It's a must-include despite my personal hang ups.
Chrissie Wellington, A Life Without Limits
In an effort to find something for athletes, I found this one by a triathlete who stunned the world by winning the Iron Man competition in Kona, Hawaii not once but three times. As a super-amateur 5k run-walker this year (more on that in Travel), I was stunned by how much I related to Wellington's journey and how interested I was in her story despite it being so far from my own life (a professional athlete? ha!). Great for my athletes, especially the girls.
Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle
This one had TONS of recommendations. It was recommended by friends and teachers all over the internet, including all kinds of lesson ideas for including it in classrooms. But I just couldn't get on board. The premise of the story - two parents who choose their own interests and goals over providing for their young children and how the children manage in spite of this - just felt too much like neglect for my new-mom heart. I couldn't handle it. I was often with my infant son when I was listening and the behavior of the parents just disgusted me. Stopped and returned.
Malala Yousafzai, I am Malala
Another that's been on my list for a while, but I wasn't sure I could handle as an audiobook because I struggle with Ms. Yousafzai's accent. Luckily, she only reads the forward and the rest was much more manageable for me. This Nobel Prize winner who talks about peace and the importance of education despite being targeted for assassination by the Taliban is exactly the kind of teen-with-a-message I was looking for. Added to the list!
Jo Anne Normile, Saving Baby
I was looking for something for my FFA-types or even just a good book with a dog and I found this story of a racehorse owner turned activist. Again, I was surprised by how moved I was by the story considering I have no experience with horses and have never been one of those girls who dreamed about riding or owning one. Still, I fell in love with Baby (and the cause of mistreated racehorses) through Normile's words and I think my students will, too.
Kevin Hazzard, A Thousand Naked Strangers
This fast-paced, in-your-face, sometimes-gory account of the life of an EMT was gripping, funny, and just raunchy enough to be perfect for my teens. After the nurse book didn't work out, I still wanted something for my potential future medical workers. I considered Atul Gawande's Better, which I read a few years ago for the PSAT summer program at Elite, but it was too cerebral. I wanted something that was more hands-on. BINGO. I think the chapter titled "Death By Broccoli" will be the intro material when I show it to my students later this month. (Plus that title, man, way too perfect.)
Johnny Anonymous, NFL Confidential
I had a surfer girl, a woman triathlete, a racehorse book, and a boy who climbs moutains, but I still didn't have a book for my traditional football-baseball-soccer boys and I really wanted to fill that niche. I polled a lot of people and did a lot of searching in this category. I liked the idea of a really famous player but I also wanted the memoir to be current. I needed something that was going to be accessible to a demographic of traditional non-readers but that would also work in a literary-educational environment, since I know I'm going to assign writing topics like theme, character development, conflict type, and compare-contrast to Night. NFL Confidential was gritty, raw, vulgar, and totally delightful. I knew my students would absolutely love it but at the same time I knew I could never assign it. Ugh. The search continues.
Ben Utecht, Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away
A football player who was recently in the NFL talking about the damage caused by his many concussions? Sounds awesome. Got preachy really fast. Stopped and returned and ran away.
Nate Jackson, Slow Getting Up
At first I wasn't wild about Jackson's style. It's full of terse syntax and simple vocabulary. It includes cussing (but so does A Thousand Naked Bodies and No Easy Day - certain professions seem to be either profanity-laced or way-too-preachy and there doesn't seem to be an in between). Jackson isn't a star or even a starter and most students won't recognize his name. BUT he's basically Joe Football. He's the every player that my kids could probably relate to. And by the end of the book, I really liked him. While NFL Confidential was funnier and possibly more interesting, Slow Getting Up fit more of my writing topic criteria. Done. Put it on the list!
Lawrence Anthony, The Elephant Whisperer
Still looking for a traditional pet-lover book. Found a guy who inherited a herd of wild elephants on a conservation in Africa. So NOT a traditional pet-lover book, but I still listened to about a third of it before I realized that it was also about twice as long as I could accommodate for this unit. I wasn't invested enough to finish for my own enjoyment. Stopped and returned.
Misty Copeland, Life in Motion
The first African American woman to become a principal ballerina for the American Ballet? Yeah, that works. Plus she's young and current and students will recognize her name and she's great for my dancers.
Mike Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
I was still concerned that I didn't have enough for STEM kids, which is why this one made it on the list. It's the story of the astro-scientist who, in his quest for a tenth planet, actually proved that there are only eight. It was surprisingly funny and written in a way that non-astroscientists could completely understand the controversy and the result. LOVE, again.
At this point I felt like I had enough for my students. 11 books made the lit circle list that I will be introducing in just a few weeks now. I'm still working on funding all of the copies I need (130+ books is a challenge), but the parents have been amazing so I'm not (too) worried. I wanted a variety of demographics, interests, ages, and locations. I wanted to find something for every student (because I really believe everyone can love reading if they are reading about something they love). I wanted people who had overcome adversity (both internal and external) but who hadn't been involved in the severely damaging lifestyles or events that normally lead to book deals: eating disorders, drug or alcohol abuse, physical or sexual assault/abuse, gang/prison time, abandonment, etc. I wanted inspiration.
This project stretched my reading to completely new areas of interest that I never would have ventured into before. I had experienced this a little when I taught the PSAT book camps from 2010-2013 since they often included books, especially nonfiction, that I may never have found on my own, but this was different. Reading outside my comfort zone was shocking mostly because I didn't really feel uncomfortable at all and actually felt incredible kinship with the various authors I read. I never thought I'd enjoy a book about football or triathlons or racehorses, but I fell in love with all of them.
Due to the success of reading nothing but memoir from March - October, I decided to complete the year with all non-fiction titles. These included Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, the story of the black female mathematicians who helped NASA win the Space Race and that is now a movie coming out next week; Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania, the story of big business and natural water and fight over America's drinking water; Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling, a memoir about her life leading up to and including The Office; and Originals by Adam Grant, a book in the vein of Outliers or others by Malcolm Gladwell that probes how people who rebel against conformity succeed in changing the world around them. I even started (but have yet to finish) The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a book that Joe has been begging me to read for years.
I'm excited about the reading I did this year because it has been a while since I've read this consistently for pleasure but also because I was able to find pleasurable reading in so many different areas. I'm now looking forward to books that range from a video gamer's memoir to Reading Lolita in Tehran. Between Audible and the time I spend commuting, I have a lot of books to get through.
