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Being Disruptive (With Texts)

 


Dear English Language Arts Methods candidates,

As you enter your senior year, student teaching, licensure, degree, your own classroom, I thought that the most loving thing I could do as your professor is give you summer reading. So ʻONO! (and I am not being facetious, it really will be utterly delicious)

Choosing summer reading options when I taught Advanced Placement in high school as well as when I taught 8th grade was really the most joyful thing I did during spring break. Your first lesson is to always give readers choice (a) and try to make the choices as diverse and disruptive (b) for the scholars that will be coming into your classrooms. If you feel like literature may be so deliciously challenge worthy that you need to send a parent letter home, or even that for a little bit you are afraid that you may be fired. . .well you are heading in the right direction. Choosing summer reading options gives you a chance to dream about your students that you do not yet know. Your choices are a way to introduce yourself to these scholars and to have a get to know you conversation with them through text.

Choosing summer reading options gives you the opportunity to be the hero by putting in young scholar's hands those "windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors" (c) that they did not know they were missing in literature in the first place.  

Choosing summer reading allows you to reimagine spaces - classroom spaces, library spaces, spaces at large that help students be seen, be recognized, be healed. Over half of students in the US identify as students of color. Over 1/8 are served under the individuals with disabilities act. Over 1/6 of your students are living in poverty (NCES 2023). More than 4/5th of LGBTQ+ high school students report feeling unsafe in their current schools. (GLSEN 2021)

Choosing summer reading options allows you as BIPOC, AAPI Indigenous humans and future educators to live your principles  (d) in creating an environment for learning as well as live your craft by being readers, writers, story tellers who teach your young scholars to harness their own mana and voice as readers, writers, story tellers. 

So here is the assignment (and I hope you got a chance to visit the links above first - you are going to need to read it any way):

• Either use a case study student from a previous class, or choose a reluctant reader you know between the ages of 12 - 18. You are reading for them this summer so do not go to your "comfortable genre."

Read YA or middle grade texts that you would wish for them (not necessary, but try to use current books - like last 5 years)

Find 3 that you would like to pass on to your scholar (can mix genres, modalities, fiction, non fiction, graphic novel, etc.) Your book hope for would be that these three would be the impetus for them to read more.

Write your short book talk, blog about, record somehow enough information about what the book is about and why you think your reader will enjoy it so that you can book talk it this fall. 

Need help finding books to borrow from the library? **If you do not have a public library card. . .seriously? This is part of live your craft.

Hawaii State Public Library - staff picks for teens

ALAN - Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE

American Library Association YALSA lists

The Walden Awards

Remember that even when you use these lists, keep your disruptive lens on and your young scholar in mind. 

Finally, here is my own blog, Minding the Middle that I have had for over ten years. 2024 is not a big reading year (100 YA books)  however, I read for diverse readers and diverse ages. I privilege BIPOC and AAPI literature but they must be BIPOC and AAPI authors. There is a difference, and there are definite gaps in some areas, but that is a conversation for another time.

Enjoy your summer and enjoy your reading!

Kumu

The link references:

(a) "The danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TEDGlobal video, July 2009 18:32 Link 

(b) #Disrupt Texts.org - website. Pages to pay attention to: What is #disrupttexts? - memorize their we believe - live it in your own space and join the work: https://disrupttexts.org/lets-get-to-work/

(c) Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop talking about how she defines the need for multicultural books through her analogy of mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors

(d) Core principles from #disrupttexts


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