Kim, thank you for getting us back here.
I DID mention sumreading, but only as a fond memory of the past. Just looking back at this year, there have been so many moments where I have looked at my life (look at your life! look at your choices!) and felt definitely out of control of the situations in which I have found myself.
Teaching -- as Camila can attest, I'm sure -- is among some of the hardest, most draining, most rewarding, most under-appreciated endeavors that we can take on as people! Teaching in urban settings is all of these things on steroids. It is, in this country, also a profession that has been culturally devalued to such a degree that the community of educators that I get to work with is a community that inherently struggles to give and receive love, that lacks trust, and, because of various experiences, has grown a quiet sense of despondency about life and about work.
In many ways, this year, I have lost touch with who I am and what it is that I want for myself or to establish a sense of purpose. There are going to be so many opportunities this summer, while here in India (after two years away), to connect once again, more steadily, with that self. I'm so excited to honor my needs and wants and commit myself to following that old Shakespearean adage into the school year: "To thine own self be true."
My summer reading list, with some comments
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
(My roommate in Baltimore, Phoebe, and Nathan, both, have been pushing this book hard. It is an amazing read and I am moving super slowly through it to savor it. Excerpts to follow soon. Definitely see why it's one of the "Great American Novels".)
The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities For Moving From Theory to Practice in Urban Schools, Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell
(Denis, my TFA mentor coach lifesaver and friend, has helped me push myself to make the most of this first year... and he lives by this book. For more from Andrade-Duncan, check out this ted talk about roses growing from the concrete, and deconstructing schools as seats of oppressive pedagogies, and allowing them to become havens for critical thinking and student empowerment).
The God of Small Things, Arundathi Roy
(Nathan has two books that I've given him for assigned reading. The other is Chimimanda Ngozi Adiche's Americanah. Anyone on this blog who's yet to read BOTH books -- you should read at least one. They are among the most important books of my reading life, if we can call it that. I'm rereading this one, just because.)
Any more would be overwhelming, I think. I'm also doing some intensive LSAT preparation, beginning tomorrow. We can add the Powerscore guides to the LSAT to this list, but I thought that would be rather depressing, so just unofficially, that's on the docket as well.
Kim, I'm so excited for you to be incubating this "idea" for a novel this summer!!! I am of course down to read anything you've written and are ready to share. I'm super excited for you and for this baby of an idea to grow into something great and complicated and powerful! Know that you have all of our support :~)
I hope that you all are doing well in your respective corners of the globe, that the summer months, though they mean something different now than they did before, still offer you lots of quiet moments of reflection, and gentle relaxation.
Vic and Bryan, I know you're both rocking summer internships, and I hope these are fruitful from an intellectual perspective and a personal one. Emily -- are you still a paralegal? Still studying for the LSAT? I hope whatever you're doing that it is bringing you lots of joy. Camila - are you still going to be a little engine that could? Or are you taking your teaching skill(z) elsewhere? Sophie my dear, you're always in my thoughts. I can't wait to see you in New Haven, and I've been carrying a letter that's meant for you, that I didn't know where to send.
Kim my dear, you're the very best (of the... best) for bringing me back here.
Infinite thanks.
Better posts to follow, and that too, about language in the aforementioned books. Language is indeed everything, Kim! It so, so, so, so is.
LOVE YOU ALL.
Devika
"Ms. B"
I DID mention sumreading, but only as a fond memory of the past. Just looking back at this year, there have been so many moments where I have looked at my life (look at your life! look at your choices!) and felt definitely out of control of the situations in which I have found myself.
Teaching -- as Camila can attest, I'm sure -- is among some of the hardest, most draining, most rewarding, most under-appreciated endeavors that we can take on as people! Teaching in urban settings is all of these things on steroids. It is, in this country, also a profession that has been culturally devalued to such a degree that the community of educators that I get to work with is a community that inherently struggles to give and receive love, that lacks trust, and, because of various experiences, has grown a quiet sense of despondency about life and about work.
In many ways, this year, I have lost touch with who I am and what it is that I want for myself or to establish a sense of purpose. There are going to be so many opportunities this summer, while here in India (after two years away), to connect once again, more steadily, with that self. I'm so excited to honor my needs and wants and commit myself to following that old Shakespearean adage into the school year: "To thine own self be true."
My summer reading list, with some comments
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
(My roommate in Baltimore, Phoebe, and Nathan, both, have been pushing this book hard. It is an amazing read and I am moving super slowly through it to savor it. Excerpts to follow soon. Definitely see why it's one of the "Great American Novels".)
The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities For Moving From Theory to Practice in Urban Schools, Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell
(Denis, my TFA mentor coach lifesaver and friend, has helped me push myself to make the most of this first year... and he lives by this book. For more from Andrade-Duncan, check out this ted talk about roses growing from the concrete, and deconstructing schools as seats of oppressive pedagogies, and allowing them to become havens for critical thinking and student empowerment).
The God of Small Things, Arundathi Roy
(Nathan has two books that I've given him for assigned reading. The other is Chimimanda Ngozi Adiche's Americanah. Anyone on this blog who's yet to read BOTH books -- you should read at least one. They are among the most important books of my reading life, if we can call it that. I'm rereading this one, just because.)
Any more would be overwhelming, I think. I'm also doing some intensive LSAT preparation, beginning tomorrow. We can add the Powerscore guides to the LSAT to this list, but I thought that would be rather depressing, so just unofficially, that's on the docket as well.
Kim, I'm so excited for you to be incubating this "idea" for a novel this summer!!! I am of course down to read anything you've written and are ready to share. I'm super excited for you and for this baby of an idea to grow into something great and complicated and powerful! Know that you have all of our support :~)
I hope that you all are doing well in your respective corners of the globe, that the summer months, though they mean something different now than they did before, still offer you lots of quiet moments of reflection, and gentle relaxation.
Vic and Bryan, I know you're both rocking summer internships, and I hope these are fruitful from an intellectual perspective and a personal one. Emily -- are you still a paralegal? Still studying for the LSAT? I hope whatever you're doing that it is bringing you lots of joy. Camila - are you still going to be a little engine that could? Or are you taking your teaching skill(z) elsewhere? Sophie my dear, you're always in my thoughts. I can't wait to see you in New Haven, and I've been carrying a letter that's meant for you, that I didn't know where to send.
Kim my dear, you're the very best (of the... best) for bringing me back here.
Infinite thanks.
Better posts to follow, and that too, about language in the aforementioned books. Language is indeed everything, Kim! It so, so, so, so is.
LOVE YOU ALL.
Devika
"Ms. B"
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