Kids Antiracist Book Club: Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell PArker Rhodes

January 20, 2021.Reading time 4 minutes.

Looking for a book to add to your middle school curriculum that will spark meaningful conversation about racism, especially in schools and sports? Black Brother, Black Brother, by Jewell Parker Rhodes, could be it. Read it with… Jerry Craft’s New Kid to compare microagressions and overt racism, and open readers’ eyes to look more critically […]

November Antiracist Read: We Want to Do More Than Survive, by Bettina L. Love

December 3, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

My November anti-racist read was We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, by Bettina L. Love. I experienced this book via audiobook, and then re-read the hard copy from my local library. Here is some information about the book, from IndieBound: Drawing on personal stories, research, and […]

Kids Antiracist Book Club Reads to Start Meaningful Conversations with Young Readers

September 14, 2020.Reading time 49 minutes.

I’m not working in a school library this year, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve lost sight of the importance of stories. While sharing the reading that I’ve been doing to try and learn and grow this year, I keep getting the same questions over and over again: Can I read this book with my […]

June Antiracist Read – This Book is Anti-racist, by Tiffany Jewell and Aurélia Durand

July 28, 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

My June antiracist read was This Book is Antiracist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work, written by Tiffany Jewell and illustrated by Aurélia Durand. Here is some information about the book, from Quarto Kids: Who are you? What is racism? Where does it come from? Why does it […]

Creating a Book Soundtrack with Middle Schoolers

July 7, 2020.Reading time 6 minutes.

7th and 8th grade digital book club is 2/3 of the way through The Honest Truth, a novel by Dan Gemeinhart. Last week, I wrote about one of the ways that we’re exploring identity and privilege through the novel (you can read about that here). This week, we’re taking a new angle to make a […]

Discussing Identity and Privilege in Online Book Club with The Honest Truth, by Dan Gemeinhart

July 2, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

One of my summer classes this session is an online book club for 7th and 8th grade readers. While I’m eager for the chance to connect with middle schoolers after a spring semester of mostly focusing on my K-4 readers, I’ve never done an online book club before. I was excited, but worried it would […]

Student Spotlight: Hayley’s Favorite Books to Start a Conversation about Mental Health

June 11, 2020.Reading time 11 minutes.

As adults and teachers, we spend a lot of time trying to convince our students why reading is meaningful, exciting, and worth their time. And if we’re not careful, we end up doing more talking than we do listening. Last year, we heard from 14-year-old Jack about why reading is meaningful in his life. Today, 15-year-old […]

Faculty and Staff (Digital) Book Club: New Kid, by Jerry Craft

April 7, 2020.Reading time 9 minutes.

I did not expect to be hosting our New Kid Faculty and Staff Book Club from my dining room, in my slippers. If I’m being honest, once our school closed, I wasn’t expecting to host this book club at all. While we were all thrilled when more than 50 members of our faculty and staff […]

Quest: Exploring Food Insecurity with the Rice and Beans Challenge

February 28, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

The average Supplemental Nutrition Benefit Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit per meal in the US is $1.86 (source). For the final experiment in our How Can We Help Solve the Hunger Crisis? Quest, we did an experiment to find out what its like to prepare a nutritious, delicious meal for our “Quest family” on that budget. […]