Remote Teaching Journey -- Assumptions and Conversations

 

One of my new routines for this year is link to the CNN10 news for the day in an open Google doc with a table where my scholars can add their name, plus their noticing and wondering.

The first day I added this to our schedule (Thursday this week), there was a story about housing in LA and how homeowners are converting two car garages into apartments. I made the assumption that this would not be an engaging part of the news show for 10 year-olds, but recommended it as connected to our social studies standards on the topic of Economics.

In our end-of-day Google Meet, I shared how surprised I was that many had connected with that news story in their notice/wonders. One girl piped up that she found it fascinating because she wants to be an architect. Another loved that people did this not just for the money, but to help people have a home near their work.

Lesson: Never Assume.

In a writing workshop lesson under the doc camera, we began creating our identity webs this week. As I made mine, I talked about identity as the story we tell about ourselves. When I meet someone new, one part of my story often begins with, "I am a teacher." 

I went on to explain that identity is also the things about us that people see, and I added "woman" and "kind of old" and "white skin" to my identity web. I explained that I often don't think of my identity of "woman" until I am in a place where that stands out, at the car repair shop, for instance, where I am likely the only woman there. I encouraged them to think of the parts of their identity that others see.

On Friday, we watched this video about Ibtihaj Muhammad, which led to conversations about the meaning of the words stereotype and bias, and then I read aloud The Proudest Blue. 

Lesson: My commitment to be an antiracist teacher will not be revealed in big splashy announcements about my commitment, but rather in all the small conversations we will have (planned and unplanned) throughout the year. Being an antiracist teacher is a way of life, not a lesson plan.

Good Talk by Mira Jacob

Over the years, we've written about/reviewed lots of graphic novels here at A Year of Reading. When the Cybils were brand new, I chose to judge graphic novels so that I could learn more about the format. Perhaps my love of graphic novels was fueled by a childhood reading diet of comic books.  Stacks and stacks of comic books. (There were also shelves and shelves of books, the Weekly Reader Book Club books, mandatory purchases at the shopping mall bookstores when we drove the 3 hours to Denver, and the regular trips to the local library. But there were also always stacks and stacks of comic books.)

I've tagged 148 books "adult" in Goodreads, and three of them are graphic novels. But get this...all three of them are also memoir. I have no idea what that means. It just made me go, "Hmm..."

This is the most recent adult memoir in graphic novel format that I've read, and I think you should read it, too:

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

by Mira Jacob

One World, March 2019

Mira Jacobs is East Indian and her husband is Jewish. With a combination of drawings and photographs, the book is built around Jacob's conversations with her six year-old biracial son about Michael Jackson, brown and white skin, Trump's election, and police violence. Jacobs also allows readers to "listen in" on her conversations with her own parents, brother, and grandmother about how her family discriminates against her because her skin is a (tragically) dark brown, and with her mother in-law about how people at a party she throws assume Mira's the help because she's not white. There are conversations between Jacobs and her white friend about parenting, and conversations between Jacobs and her husband about dealing with white men who hold all the power without even being aware that they do.

This book, for me, was a window.* Perhaps for you it will be a mirror.* If we're going to repair the race issues that continue to divide our nation, we're going to have to use books like this as sliding glass doors* so that we can have conversations like these not just in our imaginations as we read, but in real life with the people around us -- other adults, our students and children, co-workers, politicians, family members, publishers, etc., etc., etc.

*Dr. Rudine Simms Bishop coined these terms in 1990. "Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." (1990, p. ix)

Exploring Identity

Thunder Boy Jr.
by Sherman Alexie
illustrated by Yuyi Morales
Little, Brown and Company, 2016
review copy from the public library

Thunder Boy just wants a normal name. He knows his name is special. "I am the only Thunder Boy who has ever lived." Except for the fact that he shares his name with his dad. He wants his OWN name. He thinks of the things he's done in his life (wonderful disconnects between the words and pictures for savvy readers/viewers) and comes up with all kinds of possible names, from the fierce Not Afraid of Ten Thousand Teeth to the silly Mud in His Ears. In the end, his dad gives him a new name that is all kinds of perfect.

I Am NOT a Chair!

by Ross Burach

HarperCollins, February 14, 2017

review copy provided by the publisher

Giraffe keeps being treated like he's a chair, and he just can't get the words out when he has the chance to explain that he's a giraffe, not a chair. He tries building a chair so that others can clearly see he's not a chair, but that doesn't work. And when giraffe decides that he will stand up to the NEXT animal he sees...and that turns out to be a lion...it doesn't turn out quite like he'd planned, but he is able to tell everyone the next day. You can use the last page to teach irony. Now that Giraffe has let everyone know what he isn't, he needs to be more aware of those around him!