Receiving a challenge to Beloved* one day does not mean you won't discover
Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures in a pile of donations the next day.
*Very informal and quickly and easily resolved, for the record.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Positively Amazing
I've been trying all weekend to come up with the words that would effectively, articulately explain how amazing Friday was, but those words either don't exist or continue to escape me, so the following will have to do.
As you may remember, a while back I posted two book trailers; I made them in preparation for a visit by two authors. A visit that was planned way in advance, and seemed like it was always way off in the future. Well, it happened last Friday.
I know. It kind of snuck up on me, too. (Yes, I know that "snuck" is, technically, incorrect. I don't care. Except inasmuch as I care enough to point out that I don't care.)
It was, in a word, amazing.
I was, to be frank, more than a bit nervous. What if no one read the books? What if no one showed up? What if they decided in the middle of it that they hated me, the library, and everything associated with it, and stormed out? (Never underestimate my ability to be completely irrationally neurotic.)
But it was amazing, and I take very little credit for that. Courtney Sheinmel and Regan Hofmann made this event what it was. Their books connected with my students, and, more importantly, they connected with my students.
We started with a book discussion and signing after school in the library, with separate groups for the two different books. Students showed up early; I don't think I've ever seen that many students show up early for something that didn't involve pizza. But they were there and waiting, books in hand. And even though it was a beautiful day outside, and most of their friends were outside enjoying one of the first days of spring, they stayed. And stayed focused and engaged. Which is kind of a big deal at the end of the day on a beautiful Friday--through in some attention issues, and, well, wow.
When I talk with people about working with LD students, most of them do not think of them as readers. . . and are even less likely to take them seriously as readers. Which is a mistake. Because while very few of my students would list reading as a favored pastime (hmm, could that be because people treat them like they can't read? But that's a separate discussion), when they connect to a book they connect like no other. In the discussion with Courtney about "Positively", which is about a girl born HIV-positive, one of my students made a connection between the stigma of HIV and the stigma of LD that took my breath away (more about that at Courtney's blog).
Though I wasn't able to sit in on it, I heard excellent things about the discussion that Regan led as well. And I got to see her in action that night, when she and Courtney addressed the entire student body. The Friday night programming at school can, at times, be a bit of a battle; students doing everything they can to get out of it, faculty doing everything they can to get students to stay in it. But kids--most of whom had not read the book--loved it. I have never seen a response like that before.
And, frankly, aside from my students, this was amazing for me. There were a lot of moving pieces to this project, and while I did drop a few balls and mixed a few metaphors, I pulled it off. And it went really well. The feedback has been amazing. Many students have, without prompting, told me how much they enjoyed the evening. The next day, I saw a group of students as I was walking towards the dining hall for lunch and they made a point of telling me how much they enjoyed the program; one even said she'd told a friend who'd skipped it that he was an idiot for doing so. Today, three days later, I continue to hear from students about how much they enjoyed it. Which, in the attention span of a teenager (particularly with the drama that tends to come with any weekend), is a really long time.
I'm also really excited about this because I think it started the ball rolling (or got the ball rolling again. . .) on us talking seriously about health and sex education on campus, and how what we do now (i.e. nothing) is woefully inadequate and a gross disservice to our students. In the discussions leading up to this visit I heard everything from one student thinking that HIV was spread like the flu, to one girl asking her friend if she could get HIV from sex (the girl explained to her friend that a) yes she could and b)she probably shouldn't be having sex until she was less misinformed). These students have questions, and avoiding them doesn't make the answers any less important.
If you take students seriously--as readers, as critical thinkers, as people responsible for their own education and health--they will, more often than not, rise to the occasion. I've always thought the idea that you somehow couldn't trust teenagers to step up, or give them certain kinds of information because they couldn't handle it, was ludicrous. And right here I have a clear example of why that idea is ludicrous. You know why so many teens don't step up to the plate? Because so many adults in their lives act like they can't or won't. Trust matters.
I feel like I haven't done this event justice. I love words. I count on my words. But they are failing me here, as I can tell that nothing I've said really expresses how amazing this entire day was. I can tell you this, though: I'm not exactly known for my sentimentality, but every time I've thought about it over the past few days, I've gotten choked up.
Courtney Sheinmel, Regan Hofmann, and me
As you may remember, a while back I posted two book trailers; I made them in preparation for a visit by two authors. A visit that was planned way in advance, and seemed like it was always way off in the future. Well, it happened last Friday.
I know. It kind of snuck up on me, too. (Yes, I know that "snuck" is, technically, incorrect. I don't care. Except inasmuch as I care enough to point out that I don't care.)
It was, in a word, amazing.
I was, to be frank, more than a bit nervous. What if no one read the books? What if no one showed up? What if they decided in the middle of it that they hated me, the library, and everything associated with it, and stormed out? (Never underestimate my ability to be completely irrationally neurotic.)
But it was amazing, and I take very little credit for that. Courtney Sheinmel and Regan Hofmann made this event what it was. Their books connected with my students, and, more importantly, they connected with my students.
We started with a book discussion and signing after school in the library, with separate groups for the two different books. Students showed up early; I don't think I've ever seen that many students show up early for something that didn't involve pizza. But they were there and waiting, books in hand. And even though it was a beautiful day outside, and most of their friends were outside enjoying one of the first days of spring, they stayed. And stayed focused and engaged. Which is kind of a big deal at the end of the day on a beautiful Friday--through in some attention issues, and, well, wow.
When I talk with people about working with LD students, most of them do not think of them as readers. . . and are even less likely to take them seriously as readers. Which is a mistake. Because while very few of my students would list reading as a favored pastime (hmm, could that be because people treat them like they can't read? But that's a separate discussion), when they connect to a book they connect like no other. In the discussion with Courtney about "Positively", which is about a girl born HIV-positive, one of my students made a connection between the stigma of HIV and the stigma of LD that took my breath away (more about that at Courtney's blog).
Though I wasn't able to sit in on it, I heard excellent things about the discussion that Regan led as well. And I got to see her in action that night, when she and Courtney addressed the entire student body. The Friday night programming at school can, at times, be a bit of a battle; students doing everything they can to get out of it, faculty doing everything they can to get students to stay in it. But kids--most of whom had not read the book--loved it. I have never seen a response like that before.
And, frankly, aside from my students, this was amazing for me. There were a lot of moving pieces to this project, and while I did drop a few balls and mixed a few metaphors, I pulled it off. And it went really well. The feedback has been amazing. Many students have, without prompting, told me how much they enjoyed the evening. The next day, I saw a group of students as I was walking towards the dining hall for lunch and they made a point of telling me how much they enjoyed the program; one even said she'd told a friend who'd skipped it that he was an idiot for doing so. Today, three days later, I continue to hear from students about how much they enjoyed it. Which, in the attention span of a teenager (particularly with the drama that tends to come with any weekend), is a really long time.
I'm also really excited about this because I think it started the ball rolling (or got the ball rolling again. . .) on us talking seriously about health and sex education on campus, and how what we do now (i.e. nothing) is woefully inadequate and a gross disservice to our students. In the discussions leading up to this visit I heard everything from one student thinking that HIV was spread like the flu, to one girl asking her friend if she could get HIV from sex (the girl explained to her friend that a) yes she could and b)she probably shouldn't be having sex until she was less misinformed). These students have questions, and avoiding them doesn't make the answers any less important.
If you take students seriously--as readers, as critical thinkers, as people responsible for their own education and health--they will, more often than not, rise to the occasion. I've always thought the idea that you somehow couldn't trust teenagers to step up, or give them certain kinds of information because they couldn't handle it, was ludicrous. And right here I have a clear example of why that idea is ludicrous. You know why so many teens don't step up to the plate? Because so many adults in their lives act like they can't or won't. Trust matters.
I feel like I haven't done this event justice. I love words. I count on my words. But they are failing me here, as I can tell that nothing I've said really expresses how amazing this entire day was. I can tell you this, though: I'm not exactly known for my sentimentality, but every time I've thought about it over the past few days, I've gotten choked up.
Courtney Sheinmel, Regan Hofmann, and me
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Four down, four to go
I have been scanning like a madwoman the past couple days, in a hopefully-not-futile attempt to get all of the novels for this Spring's English classes converted to e-text and mp3 before classes resume. I am, clearly, reaping the rewards for having had the audacity to take some of my vacation time as an actual, you know, vacation.
In slicing and scanning these books (side note: I am considering starting a business called the Slice 'n' Scan), I have learned several things:
a) Mass market paperbacks SUCK. Slicing out the pages without thoroughly mangling them takes more concentration than I would like to give to such a task. Also, they have less of a white-space border around the text, so as you inevitably get farther away from cutting right against the spine of the book as you get deeper into the book, there is way less room for error. Also, when you put tape over the inevitable errors, it obscures the text beneath it, meaning text editing, which is a pain.
b) There are two settings for scanning--single-sided, and double-sided. Generally I leave the program set to double-sided, as that's most of what I scan. However, I haven't figured out how to make that the default, which means when I have to re-start the program after an error, or have selected single-sided to rescan a page, I have to remember to turn double-sided scanning back on. Who wants to guess how many times I only copied one side of the pages from an entire chapter before realizing I had failed to do so? Who wants to guess how many times I did that twice in a row?
This process makes my brain get a little. . . squishy.
c) It would be so much less mind-numbing if I could somehow do something else, at least while the pages were scanning, but this task requires *just enough* attention that you can't do something else at the same time. Not that that stops me from trying. I have managed to get the number of unread items in my reader down to 70 (from 532), though I did make use of the "Mark All As Read" button more than once, and neither task really gets my full attention, leading to the types of errors mentioned above.
d) The optical character recognition program is really, really good, but far, far from perfect. It's hard to explain, even if I did have a visual, but I'll try. The text you see on the screen from the page you scan is not necessarily the same as the text the program "sees" and reads. Sometimes I can tell, while editing, what underlying text needs to be corrected. Oftentimes I have no idea until I save a copy as a text file, and see a random string of symbols. And I'll admit that I don't always go back and correct these errors because there is just so much I can do. In reality, I should be doing a LOT more text editing (and I won't get into the details of the types of errors I see and routinely force myself to ignore), but I have to make a decision between having good quality copies of all the books or excellent quality copies of a few of the books. I hate having to make that compromise, but I think I've made the right one.
Also, I can only correct one word at a time. I have no words for how aggravating that is.
In slicing and scanning these books (side note: I am considering starting a business called the Slice 'n' Scan), I have learned several things:
a) Mass market paperbacks SUCK. Slicing out the pages without thoroughly mangling them takes more concentration than I would like to give to such a task. Also, they have less of a white-space border around the text, so as you inevitably get farther away from cutting right against the spine of the book as you get deeper into the book, there is way less room for error. Also, when you put tape over the inevitable errors, it obscures the text beneath it, meaning text editing, which is a pain.
b) There are two settings for scanning--single-sided, and double-sided. Generally I leave the program set to double-sided, as that's most of what I scan. However, I haven't figured out how to make that the default, which means when I have to re-start the program after an error, or have selected single-sided to rescan a page, I have to remember to turn double-sided scanning back on. Who wants to guess how many times I only copied one side of the pages from an entire chapter before realizing I had failed to do so? Who wants to guess how many times I did that twice in a row?
This process makes my brain get a little. . . squishy.
c) It would be so much less mind-numbing if I could somehow do something else, at least while the pages were scanning, but this task requires *just enough* attention that you can't do something else at the same time. Not that that stops me from trying. I have managed to get the number of unread items in my reader down to 70 (from 532), though I did make use of the "Mark All As Read" button more than once, and neither task really gets my full attention, leading to the types of errors mentioned above.
d) The optical character recognition program is really, really good, but far, far from perfect. It's hard to explain, even if I did have a visual, but I'll try. The text you see on the screen from the page you scan is not necessarily the same as the text the program "sees" and reads. Sometimes I can tell, while editing, what underlying text needs to be corrected. Oftentimes I have no idea until I save a copy as a text file, and see a random string of symbols. And I'll admit that I don't always go back and correct these errors because there is just so much I can do. In reality, I should be doing a LOT more text editing (and I won't get into the details of the types of errors I see and routinely force myself to ignore), but I have to make a decision between having good quality copies of all the books or excellent quality copies of a few of the books. I hate having to make that compromise, but I think I've made the right one.
Also, I can only correct one word at a time. I have no words for how aggravating that is.
I will give $5 to anyone who can show me a real, live teenager who uses the word "sexting"
Rethinking Sex Offender Laws for Youth Texting
The article is worth a read, but there are two points that I thought were worth highlighting:
1)
Professor Adler said. “While sexting is bad judgment, it’s simply not what the Supreme Court had in mind when it crafted the child pornography law. It just doesn’t make sense that in a lot of the sexting situations, the pornographer and the victim are one and the same person.”
That's a *headdesk* moment if ever there was one.
2)
The district attorney told parents of the students involved — both those in the images and those whose phones contained the images — that their children could be prosecuted for child pornography unless they took part in an after-school program.
The program, divided by gender, involved random drug tests, probation and classes in which the girls would “gain an understanding of what it means to be a girl in today’s society,” by, among other things, writing essays on why their actions were wrong.
Yep, nothing will address this issue quite as effectively as a good ol' five-paragraph essay.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Put the what into where now?
While assembling my new desk from IKEA tonight (yay for new new allen wrenches!) I was thinking about visual literacy. I struggle with directions that are written only in pictures; there were two pictograms at the beginning of the directions which I'm pretty sure were telling me that I should get someone to help me with this project, and also assemble the desk on a carpeted surface. However, in addition to having weak visual literacy skills, I also live alone and have wood floors.
As my recent forays into book trailer creation has emphasized for me, visual literacy is not my strong suit. But I got an overwhelming reaction to the book trailers, and almost all 50 books I had were grabbed by students; there is no doubt in my mind that that that would not have happened if I had only talked about the books. People respond to images. And even though I'm not always great at interpreting images, they always provoke a reaction in me. I feel comfortable with words. I like words. But not everyone does. And while I've always been sort of vaguely aware of it, the experience with the book railers really highlighted for me the fact that my students do a lot better with images than with words. But in order to present something in images, I have to be able to think in images first. Which, to put it simply, is hard.
Though perhaps my visual literacy skills are improving with practice; this is the first time I've assembled a desk that I haven't needed to take off the drawer runner thingies and put them on what I suddenly realize is the right way after 20 unsuccessful minutes of trying to put the drawer in.
I also recently read something in the New York Times Idea Blog about Exit signs that had me thinking that we, as a nation, might not have developed these skills:
So I might be bad at this, but at least I'm not alone. And I'm going to keep working at it, if only so future furniture assembly involves fewer headaches, and also so I can design visual representations of famous movie quotes.
As my recent forays into book trailer creation has emphasized for me, visual literacy is not my strong suit. But I got an overwhelming reaction to the book trailers, and almost all 50 books I had were grabbed by students; there is no doubt in my mind that that that would not have happened if I had only talked about the books. People respond to images. And even though I'm not always great at interpreting images, they always provoke a reaction in me. I feel comfortable with words. I like words. But not everyone does. And while I've always been sort of vaguely aware of it, the experience with the book railers really highlighted for me the fact that my students do a lot better with images than with words. But in order to present something in images, I have to be able to think in images first. Which, to put it simply, is hard.
Though perhaps my visual literacy skills are improving with practice; this is the first time I've assembled a desk that I haven't needed to take off the drawer runner thingies and put them on what I suddenly realize is the right way after 20 unsuccessful minutes of trying to put the drawer in.
I also recently read something in the New York Times Idea Blog about Exit signs that had me thinking that we, as a nation, might not have developed these skills:
Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don’t touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system.
So I might be bad at this, but at least I'm not alone. And I'm going to keep working at it, if only so future furniture assembly involves fewer headaches, and also so I can design visual representations of famous movie quotes.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Technology Tip, Part Two
If you’re going to use school-issued laptops to spy on students, and use evidence gathered from such ill-considered practices to accuse students of wrongdoing, be sure that what you’re accusing the student of doing is something that is actually wrong, and not just eating some candy while doing homework.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Today's lesson
Over-reliance on spell check means that you will spend two pages of your paper talking about a book in which characters were sent to be re-educated by pheasants, making it very difficult for your proof reader to stay focused on your paper, distracted as she is by images of pheasant-run educational institutions.
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