50 Books in a Year Book #7: Come Be With Me

My friends and I used to while away our time in the Walden books on the Mall by reading Nimoy poetry aloud to each other in our most dramatic of poetic voices. It was really fun as I'm a firm believer that something can be so bad that it's good, and these poems are so deliciously awful I want to read them out loud to everyone. So, I joined a poetry challenge for 2014 just so I could read as much Nimoy as I could!

Thank-you Open Library for having this book to loan.

And, instead of a careful review, I thought I'd let the book speak for itself.

 Look at these delicious poem titles. "Rocket Ships" is by far my favorite, but the poem that follows comes in at a close second.

I also enjoy this one. What I love, love, love about Nimoy poetry is that there are gems lines in every one. In "I Love You" that line comes at the end, "I miss what I am/When you are here...". True right!?

And, here it is MY favorite. This one also seems to be all the rage on the interwebs. Read it and you can see why, the whole thing is so darned fun and I absolutely adore the last stanza, "I guess I'm just/An old-fashioned/Space-man". I can imagine Nimoy reading this whole poem book out loud. 

I think it would be great if Zach Quinto also read Nimoy poetry out loud, maybe they can work that into the next Star Trek movie.

50 Books in a Year Book #6: Differentiated Assessment

You know you're a teacher when...you find an education book that has a title that sings to your soul, you buy said book, read and mark up said book (as so much of it gels with your thinking...) and can't wait to get to school to talk about the strategies with your friends...

Gosh, I'm an edu-nerd (that's a word, look it up!)

I don't know if I've ever talked to you about my teaching philosophy. Here are my core beliefs:

1] "Fair isn't always equal".
2] Data (hard and soft) should drive all decisions.
3] Students need to read, write and think every class period.
4] 21st century skills are essential.
5] Relationships are key.

The one thing I have a hang-up with is differentiated assessment,which puts a real kink in #1, 2 and in some ways #3, so when I saw this book at the used bookstore I had to buy it.

This book is an easy and fast read and has loads of useful information.

There are even aspects of the book that can be put into practice immediately.

Such as the following holistic model, which has been modified to assess vocabulary.

Things in the book that gel with my thinking:

1] Feedback: It needs to be prompt and helpful, and it should go both ways. Discuss questions that many missed and why the answer was wrong, and carefully consider the validity of any student complaints about a test.

Put feedback questions on the final page of a test. Example: "I can (circle: well/somewhat/not at all) do [learning objective]" or "I still need more help with ____________"

2] Outcome fairness: Tell students how they will be graded, from the very beginning of the class (or unit). Provide rubrics or checklists so students can self-evaluate as well. Base students' grades only on his/her individual contribution to group work.

3] Teacher assigned projects
Students have a choice of content not product or of product not content.

Things I'm working on:

1] Multiple assessments

2] Student designed formative assessments
Send a Problem

3] The use of logs to show evidence of learning
Content Area Logs
Reading Response logs
Dialog journals
Narrative logs

4] Student choice projects
Compacting: students may select an activity to do while others do more a more traditional unit of study
Students who have a strong interest in a particular subject may wish to work with you [the teacher] or a community mentor to design an independent study of an area of interest.
These projects must engage the students in something that is challenging, must be involved in a real-world task or application, must be learning through doing, must be created in such a way that the student can tell what needs to be completed next and the student must be able to communicate his or her learning.

In the end, she has a 12 step process for incorporating differentiated assessment into your classroom. I like #12 the best. After finding a type of assessment that works for and after using this type of your assessment in your classroom with feedback from students, it says, "Keep trying this form of summative assessment until you feel comfortable with it. Then try another, and another."

I think I'm well on my way.

50 Books in a Year Book #5: Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today

I think I may have a little crush on Ernest Hemingway. And, not just because he was so incredibly good-looking, although he was incredibly good-looking (I mean look at the cover of this book!) and, even at 60, he had that rugged man thing going on. I'm sure he would have been fun to talk to while guzzling daiquiris in Cuba. The crush comes more from the life of the man who wrote one of my favorite books of all time.

I wish I would have learned all about Hemingway, the man, earlier in my life. I would have read more of his books/read more about his personal life/mourned his passing appropriately...

Anyway, it would seem that there are only two kinds of people who talk about Hemingway, those who love him (I think it's those people who 'get' that he was more than this animal killing/Castro loving caricature that's been built up over the years) and those who loathe him (I think you can count all his ex-wives in this category and anyone who only sees Hemingway as a thump your chest, club your women man's man).

Clancy Sigal is all about some deep Hemingway love. He's felt this way since the young age of 15 when he stole a copy of A Farewell to Arms and loved it. Read this book...fall in love with Hemingway the writer and the man, and, if you are like me at all you'll become a little bit obsessed and will then try to make up for lost time by reading all the Hemingway you hadn't yet. By the end of Sigal's book I had hopped on the Hemingway love bus as well.

It was easy.

First Sigal tells you that to understand why Hemingway matters today we must first understand the man, Ernest Hemingway. We have to understand his foundation.

So...

Read the right books:

King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard

The Four Feathers AEW Mason

Just So Stories and The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain

Westward Ho and Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley

Tom Brown's School Days Thomas Hughes
Ernest Hemingway on Writing Larry Phillips

Watch all the movies:

• Even the Hemingway big screen productions...even though he didn't really like the adaptions and neither does Sigal, concerning A Farewell to Arms he says, "With luck Hollywood won't remake the first two films of this wonderful novel again." He goes on to talk about how Hemingway viewed the whole business, "Hemingway famously said that the best way for a writer to deal with the movie business was to arrange a quick meeting at the California state line: 'You throw them your book, they throw you the money. Then you jump into your car and drive like hell back the way you came'" (138).
• Charlie Chan
• Four Feathers (I think he's talking about the old version, but I'm sure the latest one would do)
• Midnight in Paris
• Hemingway and Gellhorn

Try to...
Be Teddy Roosevelt

Be white

Be upper middle class

Be able to fish and hunt and survive in the wilderness

Be a devout follower of 'muscular Christianity' 
Be courageous and brave
Be unwavering; practice what you preach
Be on the side that fights for the rights of the individual
Be a journalist
Be an alcoholic
Be the best man
Be a good father

and, above all...

Be a contradiction to those who don't bother to understand you, and don't care if they don't try. I think I believe and emulate this trait most of all.

Then we must understand Hemingway the person who became the writer.

When you...

• marry, no matter how many times you marry, marry for love. Don't be afraid to cut ties when you realize that 'maybe' it wasn't love after all.
• write, write simply, "short words, brief paragraphs, few or no adverbs" (62) and honestly about what you know and ignore the critics. Or, should I say try to ignore the critics.
• love, love all living creatures and love life. These are not contradictions to how Hemingway lived and died. Sigal talks about how each of the women in Hemingway's life, in turn, became a muse for his books and stories. Sigal even used Hemingway's characters as role models for his own foray into adulthood and romance.
• play, play hard. Hemingway lived his life well and that could be shown by his large amount of injuries and slashes and gashes and aches and pains.
• speak, speak what you believe is truth and stick by what you say. Hemingway loved his father, hated his mother (more on that in Chapter 6: The Women in His Life) and he made no bones about either.

Finally, we must understand the writer.

So, why does reading Ernest Hemingway matter today?

• He is one of the pillars of Modern America. Against his will, as Sigal notes, "If Hemingway had known as a young man that his fate would be as a classroom Assigned Great Writer he'd probably have shot himself long before he did in real life" (17).
• Just typing and retyping his stories help writers get into the flow of his style. Just ask Joan Didion, Salinger, Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, Garcia Marquez, Ann Beatty, Charles Johnson, Terry Tempest Williams, Gordimer, Mailer, Elmore Leonard, Proulx, Russell Banks, Walter Mosley and I'm sure we could find more.

In each of his books, stories and essays we can find a person to emulate, to adhor, to immortalize. And, in true contradictory fashion, I'm just sad that his fourth wife loved him so much that she allowed him to have and be himself to his own peril. Sigal creatively constructs a book that delves into the man, by showing us the people around him and then showing us how those people created the writings that we still cherish and revere to this day. If you need proof read Chapter 7: It's Not Only Men Who are Victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-The Sun Also Rises and get into this "thinly disguised autobiographical travelogue" (110). 

Sigal has such a love for Hemingway that it shows in the way he writes about every aspect of the man.

50 Books in a Year Book #4: The Sign of Four

The second novel starring the illustrious Sherlock Holmes is a mash up of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and The Moonstone. In it you will find many of the tropes of any awesome detective story. It's still a pretty darned amazing and entertaining book.

Things That Surprised me...although, I suppose, they really shouldn't have:

1] Mary is a pretty awesome character, she is more than Conan Doyle's Yoko (sorry, Yoko). I like that she is calm and patient. I like that she is reserved and understated and pretty. I'd never really thought of Mary as a character to be fleshed out, she doesn't ever seem to be much of the story and in this novel she is the story. She's so smart.

2] It's lovely the way that Watson talks about and to Mary.

3] I'd always heard about, but didn't really remember reading any drug references and this book starts and ends with casual cocaine use. I didn't really expect that.

4] How easy old Detective stories are and how much new Detective stories and procedural dramas owe to these inventive stories.

Why Sherlock Holmes is pretty cool (evidence from this book, of course):

1] He says what we are all afraid to say.

2] He does what we are all afraid to do.

3] He's pretty darned cocky.

4] He doesn't seem to need people, although he needs Watson.

And, a couple of notes on Watson:

1] He is a good friend, quite patient, kind and thoughtful.

2] I'm sure these qualities also make, in him, a good husband.

The only problem I had was the fact that I probably watch too many mystery shows and read too many mystery books for me not to know the ending (I mean I didn't get it all, but I definitely got the gist). I wish I would have read this the same year I read The Hounds of the Baskerville (I think I was in 6th or 7th grade), boy that book amazed me every second!

50 Books in a Year #3: The Lost Souls Companion

Ok, so the full title of this book is The Lost Soul Companion: Comfort and Constructive Advice for
Struggling Actors, Musicians, Artists, Writers, and Other Free Spirits and I received it for free from a lovely friend who was moving and needed to down-size.  She actually gave me a whole pile of books, but this is the only she said anything about as the author is from Bloomington, a town where she used to live and a place I'd been to visit with her.

At first, I wasn't really sure about this book as its chapters are filled with drawings and words that propel each point along and I didn't know if I should take it seriously and then there were times that the book got way too serious talking about suicide and anti-depressants for those who struggle with the day to day task of living.

And, then I found the part of the book that spoke to me directly:

1] You only have enemies if you allow yourself to have them.
2] Spreading positive energy around take effort, but the effort is worthwhile.
3] Have good movies to uplift you.
4] The best part of travelling is coming 'home'. You always return a little bit changed--a little bit more than you were before you left.
5] The Bad Day Box...just the idea that there is a box to help you get over bad days is such a pleasant idea.

While I can honestly say that I would never have picked this book on my own, I am glad that I read it, as some of the quirky advice spoke straight to my little lost soul.

This is an autographed copy and the inscription reads: "May you find inspiration in these pages." I suppose, without meaning to, I did.

50 Books in a Year Book #2: Charlotte Temple

All the morality of Jane Austen without any of the fun, Fantine without all the wonderful singing. Vanity Fair lite...triple ugh. Dear Reader, I've decided I loathe being talked to directly by the narrator.

I'd like to write more, but you see, I'd start talking about this book out of context of its time period and I'd be bad-mouthing things about it that weren't really in its control...like the plot, the lack of character development and other things that make books worth reading. I'm glad it's the first successful American novel, blah, blah, blah. I'm not sorry that I read it, blah, blah, blah...I'd recommend it to no one. I mean unless your into seduction novels, full of crap whose sole purpose is to make girls afraid of their feelings, of living, of leaving their parents homes and going out on their own...

See, I've gotta stop.

50 Books in a Year Book #1: The Sun Also Rises

The first time I read this book I was a senior in high school. It didn't give me a lust for Spain, Paris or bullfights, but it did give me this itch to travel and explore the American Dream. This year I'm teaching this book in a separate unit with some Harlem Renaissance thrown in for good measure. I look forward to talking about it as a part of Modernist literature and as another aspect of the American Dream, our disillusionment, or the death of the dream as it were.

The second and third times I read it, I focused mostly on character development with emphasis on Lady Brett Ashley. I'm a sucker for guys like Jake Barnes (more about that later), truly he's the reason I love this novel, but he wouldn't be the totally flawed, screwed-up, believable man he is without Lady Brett Ashley.

You see, I think she's a pretty amazing look at the modern woman. I may not want to emulate her 100%, but there are aspects of her character that, like Wonder Woman and Laura Holt, are part of mine.

The traits I like are simple:

1] She does what she wants Drinking, yes please. Smoking, okie doke. A bullfighter, a count, Cohn, sign her up. During my first read I thought what my students always think about her (you know that she's a ho), but she really isn't. If she was a man doing what she's doing nobody would care. It would seem a lot of people can't get past this to realize that she is just coping with her unhappiness and it is just part of the drinking and the other stuff that they are all doing.

2] She is independent and what confines her is in her head. This is true of all women. Heck, this is true of all  people. In the 1920s I think this was just becoming the normal view of things.

3] She loves and wants to be loved Brett loves Jake. Jake loves her. Their lives are complicated. This is pretty real stuff.

4] She can run with the best of them She's pretty darned honest about who she is and what she does. Sometimes strangely so...she's not going to let anyone or anything get past her. Sure, she doesn't really have any dreams or goals, but none of them do really, and I'd pick her over Daisy Buchanan any day (honestly, can you read both novels without comparing the two).

This time around I read it as a person past her 20s enough that I can remember them fondly with only a tiny hint of nostalgia.

There's a review of the movie adaptation on IMDB, and while I don't recommend watching the movie if you love this book, it is only a shadow of the book, even if it does have some great name actors and in that respect reminds me of the movie for The Fountainhead, I do love this review for the following:

the 'Lost Generation' Hemingway wrote of were disillusioned young Americans, who, shattered by the horror and brutality of a meaningless 'Great War', lost their innocence, and became a 'live fast, die young' crowd of expatriates, settling in Paris. These were men and women in their twenties and thirties...

As a person now in my late thirties I understand the feelings of these characters, and while I've never been to war, I understand what it means to be lost...in some ways we are all at one time or another lost. In this novel we see Hemingway's understanding of that. We see, that although he must not have felt this hope himself, he wants us to see that we don't always live in this lost moment in our lives. He also wants us to see that this hedonistic time helps mold and shape us. It is one of the many pillars that hold up our foundation. Yes, foundation. I'd even go so far as to say that it's part of that stereotypical American journey.

I can't wait to read this book again.