POETRY FRIDAY- FRANCISCO X. ALARCON

I'm always on the lookout for authors, artists, and poets that look and sound like the children I teach. I have struggled, a little, (and would love some suggestions!) to find Hispanic poets that are accessible to elementary kids. 

On that note, Francisco X. Alarcón is a poet I absolutely love. His seasonal collections are ones that I return to again and again. Each poem appears in English and Spanish. He has lots of strong images, deals with issues kids face (e.g. grandparents, first day of school), and also does lots of great stuff with sensory details and looking at things in new and surprising ways.  He has a new book of poems about animals that is being released the last week in July. I can't wait to read it!

Green Grass

Francisco X. Alarcón

we love

to go shoeless

on green grass

Mother Earth

loves to tickle

our bare feet.

Hierba verde

Francisco X. Alarcón

nos gusta

andar descalzos

entre la hierba verde

a la Madre Tierra

le encanta hacernos

cosquillas en los pies.

BIG RUSS AND ME

I have to confess. I'm not much of a television watcher, and I'm sure not a Sunday morning television watcher. When my mom told me that Tim Russert had passed away, I had to think for a minute to remember who Tim Russert was.

Nevertheless, I'm fascinated by the stories of people's lives- who they are, what experiences shaped them, who they love, etc. Last weekend, then, I picked up BIG RUSS AND ME, the story of Tim Russert's relationship with his father. Russert grew up in a working class neighborhood in South Buffalo. His father, Big Russ, always held two jobs. First, he was a garbage collector and later a supervisor in the Sanitation Department. Then he drove a truck that delivered the newspaper in Buffalo. Tim grew up attending parochial schools. He talks again and again about the teachers, the nuns and priests that mentored and shaped him into the scholar, the thinker, and the man he became. 

In some ways, Russert's upbringing reminds me of my own. Big Russ believed in hard work, and discipline. Tim knew that the teachers/coaches/bosses were always right, and if he got in trouble at school, he would be in twice as much trouble at home. Big Russ, however, was also man who loved his wife and his kids, and who laughed often. Hearing people talk about Tim Russert in the past few weeks, it would appear that he inherited all of these qualities from his dad.

Most of all, Big Russ was a man of huge integrity. When I talk about integrity with my boys (and we talk about this subject on an almost daily basis) , I always tell them that everyone in your life- your family, your coaches, your teachers, your friends, the salesclerk at the grocery store- would describe you in the same way, and that you make the right choices and do the right thing whether or not anyone is watching you. My dad, as imperfect and human as he was, was a man of huge integrity. I hope I inherited this quality, and I hope I pass it to my guys. 

This book has made me laugh and cry. Big Russ reminds me of my dad- how hard he worked, how little he said,  and how much he loved us. He's been gone almost fifteen years.… 

POETRY FRIDAY

My poem is from Ralph Fletcher's waterific book, HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE BEACH LATELY? Ralph beautifully captures experiences of a day at the beach- getting buried in the sand, finding a hermit crab, playing in the waves, a summer storm, a beach barbecue. Perfect for reading at the beach, or for those of us land-locked beach wannabes in hot, dry Colorado!

The First Time

On my first trip to the beach

the sea refused to cooperate.

It kept curling and whirling

        bobbing and weaving

         clearing its throat

        whenever a wave drew back.

It kept moving and grooving

       shucking and jiving

      dishing and dancing

      razzling and dazzling

wouldn't keep still even 

long enough to shake hands.

- Ralph Fletcher

SNOW IN AUGUST

Several years ago, my book club read SNOW IN AUGUST by Pete Hamill. The book, a fable, is set in Brooklyn in the mid-1940's. The main character, Michael Devlin, is a twelve-year-old Irish Catholic immigrant, whose father died in World War II. Michael becomes friends with a Jewish rabbi, also an immigrant, from Prague. The antagonist in the book is Frankie, a twenty-ish punk who terrorizes the neighborhood, beating up Jews and destroying their property, with seemingly no ramifications. Good and evil come face to face again and again. I love historical fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed this book. At the same time, I found it a very difficult read. I had to draw on my background knowledge, and kind of fill in a lot that I didn't know. Most of the people in my book club felt similarly. 

In August, my fourteen-year-old son will start high school. Last spring, the school issued a summer reading list. Ninth graders have one book, SNOW IN AUGUST. I'm bound and determined that Isaiah will start high school on a good note. To that end, we started reading SNOW IN AUGUST about ten days ago. I'm reading a chapter a day aloud. Afterwards, we give the chapter a title, and note important events. We are on chapter ten, and should be done in plenty of time. 

At the same time, I am feeling more than a little frustrated.  I know some people would say that high school should be rigorous, but I wonder why the school would choose such a difficult book as a welcome. Zay doesn't have the background knowledge to read and understand the book himself, so I'm reading it to him, and scaffolding, and helping him make connections. I'm hoping our notes will help him to carry on coherent conversations when he gets to high school this fall.  I think about Zay's friend, Eddie, whose mom speaks mostly Spanish, and wonder how he will ever get through the book. Another friend, Justin, probably won't read the book at all, or will start the night before school begins. What will happen to kids who don't read the book?

The book is chock full of beautiful writing and description. It moves way too slow for my son's tastes. At one point he said, "We've read three whole chapters and nothing has happened." Today, we read a fourteen page chapter, most of which described Prague in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With so much good YA literature, couldn't they have chosen something a little more interesting and engaging, a little quicker paced, for summer reading?

I also wonder what they are going to do with the book. Is it the basis for a study of WW2 or immigration, or good vs. evil, or heroes? A genre study of fables? Are the kids going to take tests, and need to remember lots of details, or will they write essays about the book? A statement of purpose would have been really nice.

Sometimes it's hard to be a parent and a teacher. 

BAD BLOGGER

I've been a bad blogger for the past two months. Excuses I could use:

1) Mid-May: Hard drive on my six month old Apple computer crashed. No computer for two weeks.

2) End of May- End of school year. No reading, no blogging, no nothing.

3) Early June- Working on a huge project for DPS. No reading, no blogging, (my kids would say no cooking!), no nothing

4) Late June- Memphis for AAU Nationals Basketball with Kadeem

I think I'm struggling a little, too, with the whole idea of blogging. Do I just write about books, or do I share a little of me, too? People who know me would want to know, for instance, that about two weeks ago my sweet, laughing, yellow lab, Maggie, was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen, and had to be put to sleep. And they would probably want to know that 12 hours after returning from Memphis, I was at the Dumb Friends League looking for a new friend. Jack Black, an eight-week-old black Lab/Rottweiler, mix will join our family this afternoon. 

Anyway, I said this blog was going to be about reading, and I have been doing a little of that too. In June, I read almost exclusively adult stuff. 

1) YEAR OF FOG- Photographer Abby Mason is walking on the beach with Emma, her fiancee's six-year-old daughter. Abby is distracted by something on the beach and looks away for a brief time, probably less than a minute. In that period of time, Emma disappears. Abby spends the next year trying to figure out where Emma has gone…This is a page turner, one of those you devour, because you can't wait to see what will happen

2) QUIET STRENGTH by Tony Dungy- I'm always looking for books that will help me understand my guys better and provide positive role models for my boys. I've been looking at this book since it came out in hardback a year ago, and finally purchased it two weeks ago, in paperback, I definitely was not disappointed.

Tony Dungy, head coach of the NFL Indianapolis Colts, was a former high school and college football standout, who played in the NFL for about three years before becoming a coach. He is also a committed Christian and a father of six. One son, Jamie, tragically took his own life, about two years ago. 

Dungy impressed me with his commitment to Christ and his family. He continually stressed that football is just a game, and he talked again and again about people he knew, e.g. his sister, who is a pediatrician, who do more "important work." I loved his perspective and his sense of priorities. This is one I will definitely read again, and one I would like my guys to hear.

I've also read  Jodi Piccoult's CHANGE OF HEART and THE BREAKDOWN LANE by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Both were ok reads. Piccoult amazed me, as she always does, by her ability to put a totally new twist on an event, or a character's motivation. As she often does, Piccoult addresses the subject of Christianity and why people believe what they believe. She isn't afraid to ask hard questions. I know this makes some evangelical Christians uncomfortable, I appreciate her perspective.

Jacquelyn Mitchard is one of my favorite authors, but THE BREAKDOWN LANE didn't do that much for me. I read it in Memphis, and it was an ok read, but definitely not great.

Finally, I read PLAYING FOR PIZZA by John Grisham. I've enjoyed many of Grisham's books over the years, this one, not so much. All the way through, I kept wondering why he wrote the book, what message he hoped to deliver, what he wanted readers to think about when they were done reading.

THE BROTHERS TOUGH!

I finally figured out how to post pictures. Here are the "Brothers Tough" during the Fall 2007 Football Season. Isaiah is 13, Kadeem is 12. Football players never smile, or at least not when they have their helmets on!

THREE CUPS OF TEA BY GREG MORTENSON AND DAVID OLIVER RELIN

Greg Mortenson is a mountain climber, who ended up in a remote and impoverished village in Pakistan, after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Over the past fifteen years, he has built more than 55 schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A few "book gems"

"When the porcelain bowls of scalding butter tea steamed in their hands, Haji Ali spoke. "If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Dr. Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time."

Mortenson continues,  "That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I have learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills…Haji Ali taught me to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them" (p. 150).

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'Tell us, if there was one thing we could do for your village, what would it be?'

'With all respect, Sahib, you have little to teach us in strength and toughness. And we don't envy you your restless spirits. Perhaps we are happier than you? But we would like our children to go to school. Of all the things you have, learning is the one we most desire for our children.'

Conversation between Sir Edmund Hilary and Urkien Sherpa, from Schoolhouse in the Clouds,  as quoted in 3C of T, p. 27

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"When your heart speaks, take good notes."  Judith Campbell, as quoted in 3C of T. (p.33)