If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~ Charlie Parker
books
So Long, Harry Potter
Dec 24th
I can’t believe we finally got to the end of the Harry Potter series. Oh, I read them all myself years ago as soon as they came out (but after all the kids in the line in front of us got their copies …I didn’t elbow anyone out of the way). But the thing with having your own kids is … you can revisit books as read-alouds and rediscover (sorry) the magic of what first drew you in. So, for the past year or so, my seven year old son and I have been completely immersed in the world of Harry Potter, and last night, we came to the last word on the last page of the last book. Here is my son’s reaction:
“NOOOOOOO!!!!”
Uh, yes.
What I loved about the read-aloud experience, other than how close it brought me to my child in the shared literary experience, is how I could see parts of the story that I had long since forgotten as a reader myself. The entire last book — The Deathly Hallows — is much darker than I remembered, and also, much more complex than I remembered, too. Rowling’s writing certainly improved as the series went on, which is a relief when you are faced with reading aloud seven very large books. The secrets and plans and puzzle of who owns what and why …. OK, so that is still a bit confusing, but I loved how my son and I kept stopping, as I asked him what he thought and he asked me why something had happened. You could see the wheels turning in his head as Harry discovered the “truth” of the situation and all of the pieces that were set in motion in earlier books. We both held back tears when Dobby died, and we expressed anger when Dumbledore was killed, and then we scratched out heads when we realized it was all part of a larger plan.
And so, I say, So Long Harry Potter.
You’ve been in our lives like a faithful companion for the past year or more, and I honestly don’t foresee myself reading the Harry Potter series for a third time. I know: never say never. But I can imagine my son coming back to the books when he is a little older, and maybe, just maybe, he will find himself revisiting Hogwarts as an adult, too, with his own child by his side as he rediscovers the boy living inside the cupboard at 4 Privet Drive . And he may well remember the sweet snuggling times we two readers had as we followed Harry Potter on his adventures into the magical world, right to the very end of the tale.
Peace (with Potter),
Kevin
Book Review: The Connected Educator
Dec 19th
It says a lot about a book when the last line is “Choose to be powerful.”
So ends The Connected Learner: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall. Here is a book that explores the ways that teachers need to be connecting with other teachers outside of the physical confines of their buildings or school districts, and joining the movement to use online tools for professional development, professional inquiry and action projects. (Note of disclosure: the writers sent me a free copy to review but laid out no expectations of a positive review.)
While many trade books are emerging about ways to engage our students as learners on the global stage with technology as a tool for engagement, Nussbaum-Beach and Hall train their sights on the people who can really make a difference in the classroom: the teachers themselves. And, as they rightly note, as more teachers start using technology for constructing valuable learning spaces for themselves, they will then understand the power and potential of those concepts for their students. We need teachers to become models for our young people, and to make that engagement in the information world more transparent.
“Teachers must learn to model connectedness and enable students to develop personal learning networks, made up of people and resources from both their physical and virtual worlds — but first, teachers must become connected collaborators themselves.” (p. 4)
At my own school, we spend one period a week in what was first called a Professional Learning Community, and now has been relabeled as a Community of Practice. (So, I was interested to see the chart in this book that defines both of those ). Our aim, as set forth by our building principal, is to use data to drive changes in our curriculum, and to focus as a teaching team on an issue. Our principal has the right idea to structure collaboration among colleagues, but I wonder what it would be like to connect our small learning sphere to other ones emerging in other schools, and how shared action research projects and collaboration might unfold. I don’t think our school is ready for that. Most schools are not. But this book paves a path of rationale for why educators might consider a move in that direction.
I enjoyed the many anecdotes from teachers in this book as they talked about the ways that connections improved their teaching and students’ experiences. I also appreciated that they walked the walk here, too, setting up a variety of platform spaces for readers of the book to engage in the material. The chapters connect to a Voicethread, a Google Doc presentation, a Wallwisher, a hashtag on Twitter, and more. While there has not been much activity on those spaces (and I wonder, will there be? Perhaps as the two writers use the book as a jumping off place for workshops and seminars, those spaces will grow with new insights. One can hope), the fact that those elements are there in the online world shows how the experience of learning from books can be extended to reader engagement with virtual tools. Which is yet another model for our classroom, right?
The Connected Educator is enlightening in many ways, and if you are seeking for ways to move beyond your own professional learning circles, Nussbaum-Beach and Hall show you the way forward. Remember that last line of the book. Choose to be powerful. It matters.
Peace (in the connections),
Kevin
Book Review: Maps and Legends (Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands)
Dec 17th
I’ve long been a fan of Michael Chabon, ever since I stumbled upon his Summerland book and read it aloud to my first son, then my second son and now I have it in the queu for my third (probably after we finish the Harry Potter series, and we are more than halfway through the last book there). Summerland is a messy book but full of imagination, and it has baseball at the center of its fairy tale narrative. That always hooked my kids.
Then, I loved The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, with its hook of characters inventing a comic strip. Imagine: an entire novel built around the creation of a comic strip. (The book went on to win a number of literary awards).
So, I did not hesitate to pick up Chabon’s collection of essays when it went on a fire sale at McSweeney’s publishing house. Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands is an uneven but always interesting mix of writing and speeches in which Chabon explores the creative areas where writers go to find their way, often without maps or understanding of where they are going. I appreciate the way Chabon takes comics and pulp fiction and science fiction and even ghost stories serious and defends their place in the world of literature. Maps and Legends provides a little window into one writer’s view of the world, and for me, I enjoy getting those glimpses. The insights into Carmac McCarthy, in particular, brought me back to a period of time when I devoured McCarthy’s novels. Chabon reminded me of why I was in that phase.
Chabon ends with the text of a speech he gave a number of times that centers around the discovery of Golems that connect to his childhood, only to let us in on the joke at the end: the narrative is mostly pure fiction, and he did it to understand how much, as readers, we buy into the narratives we are given as fact, and to let us know that, just like the writers, we readers are often in undiscovered countries, making out way forward with only the maps of insight and experience — and even those can’t always be trusted.
Peace (in the lands beyond lands),
Kevin