Kimberly Hirsh

Right now, I’m working full-time, taking a graduate-level library and information science course, and taking improv. I’m on the board of 2 arts organizations. I’ve got family coming to town next week, and friends coming to dinner this weekend. I’ve got a presentation due and an improv performance next Tuesday, a paper due the Tuesday after that, and a final exam due the Tuesday after that. We just released a major project at work this week, but that project still has some loose ends, and we’re launching into the next phase of another big project ASAP.

And of course, there’s laundry to be done, dishes to load and unload, Halloween decorations to put away, Thanksgiving decorations to get out or make and then put away, mail to sort, bills to pay…

Earlier this week, I thought, “Am I going to get all of this done?”

Then I thought, “Obviously I will, because what is the other choice?”

But knowing it would all get done didn’t make it any less overwhelming.

Yesterday, in a startling moment of clarity, I knew what I needed to do.

I needed to recruit my likewise-too-busy, overwhelmed friends to a book group where we very slowly read Kim Werker’s Mighty Ugly together.

So I made a list of seven friends whom I thought might benefit from facing their creative demons right now and wrote them a loving missive inviting them to join me in January in this new adventure. I asked them to just let me know before Christmas so I could set up a Doodle poll for our first meeting. I said if they had to miss some meetings, that was totally fine. I was pretty sure they’d all say, “Oh, well, I’m so busy…” or “Let me see what the new year is going to look like…”

Within an hour, six of the seven had replied positively. (The last one hasn’t replied yet.)

And now we have a blog and a pinboard and a hashtag.

This is a thing that’s happening. I hope you’ll follow along, and perhaps start your own group or work through the book at your own pace. Maybe by January 2016, we’ll all be making a lot more and letting our creative demons stop us a lot less.

Okay, show of hands … who has read Shakespeare OUTSIDE of school required reading? Do you watch the plays? How about movies? Do you love him? Think he’s overrated?

I first read Shakespeare in 8th grade. We were assigned A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that was a smart move on the part of whomever made that decision. Thirteen-year-old me was ripe for a play about fairies and lovers. It was one of those interlinear versions with the original text on the left and a “translation” on the right. I loved it, though I frequently found myself thinking the “translation” was dumb.

In 9th grade, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Again, genius job, people who decide 9th graders should read R&J. Because developmentally speaking, they are supremely relatable characters when you’re that age. JC wasn’t so great - I’ve never been big on the histories, and it just didn’t grab me. I think that while the language is what makes Shakespeare remarkable, it’s the stories that have to be the gateway for somebody new to Shakespeare. If you can get them with the stories, then they’ll get over the challenges of the language, and maybe even find the beauty. My senior year, we read Othello, another one that didn’t grab me, again because I couldn’t relate.

In college, I chose to take a Shakespeare class to fulfill my English requirement. I hated the class because it was mostly the professor reading aloud to us, and he had a gravelly, expressionless voice. I think the most important thing to know about Shakespeare’s plays is that they weren’t designed as great literature. They were intended to serve as popular entertainment. This is why I think the very best way to experience Shakespeare is to see it performed - either live or in a movie. I am lucky enough to have the means and opportunity to see Shakespeare regularly performed at Playmakers Repertory Company.

If you can’t get to a theater, movies are the next best thing. Here are my top 5 Shakespeare adaptations:

1. Hamlet, directed by Kenneth Branagh
2. Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Joss Whedon
3. Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Kenneth Branagh (not artistically brilliant, but a very fun time)
4. Titus, directed by Julie Taymor
5. The Merchant of Venice, directed by Michael Radford

And three honorable mentions:

1. A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Michael Hoffman
2. Twelfth Night, directed by Trevor Nunn

Plus there’s a great recorded stage performance of Twelfth Night directed by Nicholas Hytner.

If you think you don’t like Shakespeare, try the Whedon Much Ado. It’s probably the most accessible Shakespeare adaptation on film. It grew out of Shakespeare readings that Joss Whedon used to have in his backyard. Inspired by him, I hosted two of these myself, gathering friends, assigning roles, and just reading aloud. It’s so much better that way than trying to imagine it all in your head. Not everybody there was a Shakespeare expert, but you don’t need to be. Try hosting your own reading and see how it goes.

tl;dr: I haven’t done much extracurricular Shakespeare reading, but I do love him; watch Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Edited to add: One more thing! I forgot to mention that if you can neither get to a theatre nor find a film adaptation, you should totally check out Manga Shakespeare. Having the plays illustrated in a cool manga style with the original text is the next best thing to actually getting to see actors perform it. Romeo and Juliet on the streets of Tokyo with katana fights? Yes please!

Edited to add, 2: I failed to mention Branagh’s Much Ado, which is what first set me in love with Beatrice. Because Emma Thompson is INCREDIBLE. Consider it to be #1.5 on my list of top 5 adaptations.

June and July were very busy months for me and I learned a lot. I thought I’d share some of it with you. Here goes!

Maker Faire NC. I went to Maker Faire NC on June 7. It was my first Maker Faire ever and it was pretty amazing. I was rather overwhelmed by both the number of people and the amount of stuff to see, but I still managed to explore, try new things, and meet new people. At The Bored Zombie’s booth, I made my first quilt block.

[caption id=“attachment_1454” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] My First Quilt Block[/caption]

This reminded me that I really enjoy sewing. I also bought the Learn to Solder Skill Badge Kit and learned that essential tremor and soldering aren’t good company for one another. My sister, Mary Elisabeth, made me a set of chain mail earrings with help from the good folks at Split Infinity Jewelry. Fueled by our Maker Faire fervor, she and I promptly went out and bought Aranzi Aronzo’s Cuter Book and supplies for making little felt stuffies, which we then promptly did.

Maker Faire was awesome and reaffirmed my affinity for the Maker Movement. I’ll definitely go back next year, and I hope to check out some local Maker Meetups soon.

Microsoft Office Mix. Have you checked out Microsoft Mix yet? It’s a supercool extension for PowerPoint that lets you make Khan Academy-style instructional videos and share them. I learned how to use this for a project at work. Here’s an example of a Mix I made - to show you how to upload your mix. How meta!

If I were still in the classroom, especially if I were in a 1:1 school, I would definitely use this for lessons students could come back to as often as they needed for reinforcement. I would also use it as an assessment, asking students to make their own Mixes to show me what they learned.

iBooks Author.  Speaking of things I would totally use if I were still in the classroom, I learned to use iBooks Author to create incredible multitouch books. I hate that these are exclusive to the iPad, of course, and I hope to one day figure out how to build such things with HTML, but it can’t be denied that this tool is easy to use but also feature-rich. I highly recommend the Lynda.com iBooks Author Essential Training course, if it’s available to you. There’s also a series of iBooks Author for Teachers courses with Mike Rankin that might suit your needs. And Lynda.com does offer institutional memberships, so you might try to convince your school or system to throw a little Professional Development money their way to help you with technology integration.

Content Strategy. At work, I’m responsible for literally thousands of pages of open educational resources. Each of these pages includes a huge amount of information. Content strategy is going to help me organize it all. I’m just dipping my toe into the waters. If you work in any sort of web publishing situation, you should check it out.

Improv. You may have noticed that I stopped writing follow up posts after week 2 of my improv class. That’s not because I didn’t learn anything, but because everything from that point forward was deeper learning about stuff I’d already mentioned. Especially listening. I swear, improv teaches you to listen so hard. Since then, I’ve performed in my class showcase and in something called The Humor Games, which was beastly. From that experience, I learned that being a really good novice doesn’t mean you’re accomplished at something. Other improv performers who have been doing this a long time have an ease on stage that I just don’t yet. I’m game for anything and I go big, which means my improv is usually fun, but some of these performers just blew me away, and competing against them felt really hard. But now I’m taking Improv 201, refining my skill, and learning even more. But mostly still learning that you should really listen, already.

Crochet and Knitting. So this is half a cop-out. I already knew how to crochet. But I’ve been taking Kim Werker’s Crochet Basics and Beyond on Craftsy anyway, because I wanted to brush up on the finer points of crochet. Already I’ve learned how to make my stitches tidier. I also started Stefanie Japel’s Knit Lab. It’s a great class, but equally delightful to the class itself is the fact that it comes with the Knitter’s Handbook, an amazing in-depth resource with videos, images, and instructions for a variety of knitting techniques.

[caption id=“attachment_1459” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] Crocheted Circles[/caption]

Thanks for reading all of that! I promise not to wait so long to update you on what I’ve learned next time.

Dear Joss,

Happy birthday! I hope you’re having a wonderful time. I imagine you’re working, which is probably the most fun way you could envision spending a birthday. I might have a cupcake later on your behalf. We’ll see.

I just wanted to take a minute to outline the ways you’ve changed my life. I’ve been a fan of yours for about 28% of the time you’ve spent on this earth, and about 42% of the time I’ve spent on this earth, so I feel like you’ve had a pretty big influence on me. Here are some ways.

1. You gave me something to sing about. Metaphorically, I mean. (Literally, too, every time I sing a song you wrote.) As a college freshman, I was deeply depressed and anxious. My primary response to this depression/anxiety was to vomit. After one particular bout of said vomiting, my then-boyfriend-now-husband gently said to me, "Come watch Buffy. It'll be fun." I did, he was right, and my life has been better ever since. I fondly wished, before that night, that I would just not wake up anymore. After that night, I wanted to live. Watching Buffy deal with all of the trauma of starting college made me feel less alone. Which brings me to the next way you've changed my life...
2. You gave me many of my best friends. Joss, you know about the WB Bronze. You know that 1997-2001 was a beautiful time of deeply meaningful fan interaction there. You know that we all came together and raised money for the Make a Wish foundation. What you might not know is that these people are still my best friends. A little over a year ago, I got together with them and it was like coming home. These people get me in a way almost no other group has. (Librarians get me the same way.) And when I am dealing with life's miseries, they help me through it.
3. You gave me a reason to travel. At 20 years old, I flew across the country to party with a bunch of virtual friends and RL strangers. And it was one of the best things I've ever done. Which is why I did it again at 21, 22, 28, and 31. Would I have ever been to LA if not for your work? Probably not, and that would be a shame, because it's one of the best places to be a tourist ever.
4. You gave me a reason to get really good at working with websites, which led me to my current job. Would I be able to talk about CSS and web design and content management systems if I hadn't worked on jossisahottie.com and other fansites? Probably not.
5. You gave me a purpose when my life was a mess. As a senior in college, I was in a rough place. My grades weren't great. My mom was really sick. I was, for the first time in my life, performing in a play where the other cast members made me feel actually disliked. But your show (Firefly) needed somebody to light a fire under its fans to get them talking about it, and I got to be that person. And it gave me something to focus on for literally years to come.
6. You gave me great storytelling advice. Everything is about emotion and structure. Give even the most apparently insignificant character a reason to be there. Buy yourself chocolate just because you have the idea, before you've even done any writing. Via interviews and DVD commentaries, you consistently help me become a better writer and performer.
7. You give me the feeling that everything you write is a gift just for me. Granted, I'm a narcissist, so I tend to think everything everyone does is done for me. But I'm pretty sure many of your fans feel this way. All of your work speaks so powerfully to the little details of existence, which I think makes it personal for everyone who loves it.

That’s 7 ways. I’m sure there are tons more. And I know I’m one of thousands (millions?) who feels so grateful to have been touched by your work.

So thanks, Joss.

Love,

Me

Remember how I went to improv class last week? I did it again this week! And I learned some new stuff, and had some earlier lessons reinforced.

Here’s what I learned:

Listen better. When you’re up on a stage with somebody, and you don’t have a script, you better listen carefully to what they have to say. Because if you don’t, what you say next might not make any sense or flow logically. And while that’s fun sometimes, it makes a story or scene hard to follow. I would argue that this is valuable even when you do have a script. As an actor, it can be hard to remember that the character you’re playing is saying your lines and hearing other people’s lines for the first time, ever. When actors bring the active listening technique from improv (and therapy) into their performances, I think the performances are much more effective and organic.

Be ready to let your ideas go. You might have a plan for where the scene is going, but you’re going to relinquish control of the scene regularly. So you need to know that your plan might never be executed, and be ready to work with somebody else’s plan. Again, this is valuable in daily life, too. I call myself a Type A- personality, which means I’m slightly less neurotic than somebody who’s Type A. I’m still a extensive planner. But I’m not actually in control of the universe, and my plans don’t always come to fruition, and I need to be okay with that.

Everybody hears Darth Vader differently. I’m not going to explain that one. Take from it what you will.

What did you learn this week?

 

I’m two sessions away from finishing Sketch 201 with DSI Comedy Theater. Since January, I’ve spent most Saturday afternoons sitting around a table with other sketch students, talking about what makes comedy work and figuring out how we can make ours better. Why am I doing this? One, because Tina Fey is my hero. Two, because I’ve always liked writing funny stuff. Three, because I felt like it.

But more important than why I’m doing it is what I’ve learned. I’m not done yet, so I’m sure I’ll learn more, but here are some of the things I’ve taken away, that aren’t necessarily about the mechanics of sketch writing.

I can sit down and write if I must. I’ve always been that idiot who thinks academic writing can absolutely be forced, but creative writing can only happen when the muse strikes. All of the writing books will tell you that you just need to put your butt in a chair and write, but like many people, I always thought, Maybe that works for you, but not for me. Nope. Turns out it works for me, too. But what I’m writing at that first pass might not be great, and that’s okay, because…

Sometimes the first draft is really the outline, and that’s okay. In addition to taking this class, I’m working full-time, taking a graduate level Digital Humanities course, and just finished performing in an operetta. That means writing time must be squeezed out, and there was one day when I had about 45 minutes to get my sketch done. This meant I didn’t have time for careful planning and brainstorming. It meant the writing was the brainstorming. I weekly send my instructor a note that says, “This is a very rough draft, I’m so sorry, I’m still working out my ideas.” But of course, that’s what drafts are for. In a research paper, you might be able to create a detailed outline before you sit down to write, but you’ve done a lot of the intellectual work already. In creative writing, the writing is the intellectual work.

The best comedy comes from pain. The funniest things I’ve written have consistently been when I’ve taken on something that depresses me. A sketch about how desperate librarians are to prove their relevance - how hard they are working to demonstrate their natural awesome - while at the same time not losing track of how much they really love the work? Hilarious. A commercial parody recruiting teachers to work in North Carolina, taking every change the legislature has made to gut the career and making it sound like an enticement instead? Priceless. Sometimes I actually feel worse after writing these - but they’re still funny.

I’d rather write satire than anything else. I’m very content to view fluff, but I want my comedy to mean something. I’d rather be South Park than Family Guy. (Which is not to say Family Guy is never satirical, but I think if you run the numbers you’ll find South Park is satirical more often.)

Specific = funny. A librarian pulling her pants down to show people her hip tattoo? Funny. A librarian pulling her pants down to show people her hip tattoo of Ranganathan’s laws of library science? Funnier.

If you’re familiar with the work of James Paul Gee and Henry Jenkins, then you’re probably also familiar with the concept of affinity spaces. Briefly, an affinity space is a place, either virtual or physical, where people with a shared interest can get together and informal learning takes place. If you want to know more than that, Wikipedia has your back.

I’ve been feeling like I want to take up a new hobby - in particular, an art or craft. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is. I was thinking about origami, but I’m not settled yet. I was also thinking about a decision I’ve made recently: to give up on being an expert. If I have an honest epitaph when I die, it’ll say, “She didn’t work up to her potential.” This was the rallying cry of my teachers over and over again. Which, I have to tell you, says a lot, because in high school and grad school I was pretty stellar. So my potential must be galactic or something.

I just don’t always apply myself. Or, more often, I apply myself, really hard, and then I stop. And it doesn’t just happen educationally, but in my hobbies/personal interests, too. Craft supplies and interests accrete to create a Great Barrier Reef of Stuff-Kimberly’s-Enjoyed-but-Doesn’t-as-Much-Now-but-Might-Come-Back-to-Later.

I’ve decided to call this process of getting super into a thing and then letting it fade into the background an “affinity phase.” I made a little timeline of my life to track these, and while some have distinct periods of activity, others sort of float around and I come back to them from time to time. What qualifies something to serve as an “affinity phase” in my life? The number of books I’ve read, blogs to which I’ve subscribed, or supplies I’ve bought can be a good indicator. The number of people to whom it connects me is another one.

I was watching the Making of Featurette on Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing Blu-Ray. He was talking about whether he’d do another Shakespeare or not, and sort of dodged the question, saying that he wants to do lots of different things. He said he’ll never get very deep into one thing, so he might as well go for breadth. I pointed at the screen and flailed. Joss Whedon gets me, you guys. (In case you’re curious, the Joss Whedon affinity phase of my life extends from 2000-2003; he hangs around but fades into the background after 2003.)

So I’ve identified this phenomenon in my life, named it, and am working to embrace it. My next step is to figure out how to make it work for me. In one sense, it already has - I’m currently working in a job where I get to do a million different things, most of which draw on some core affinity that I’ve had over time (education, web design, writing, editing), and where most importantly, I am expected to and rewarded with praise when I keep learning new things. But in a more personal sense, I feel at sea. I’ve got to figure out how to live with and be happy with this very essential part of my nature even when I’m not at work.

I’m re-treading ground here that Kim Werker covered more than 5 years ago. That’s okay. We’ve all got to figure these things out in our own time.

When I was a junior in high school, my teacher unceremoniously dropped a test with a low grade on it on my desk and hissed at me, “The play you were in is over. There’s no excuse for grades like these.” This was one instance in a long line of many when a teacher called me out for not working to my potential. (I worked really hard, so I’d probably be a supernova of brilliance if I’d actually worked up to my potential. Oh well.)

She wasn’t taking a scientific approach to the whole scenario, though. My grades as I’d been rehearsing the play were excellent, because I’d been forced to carefully manage my time and plan for reading and studying. Now, with my evenings completely unstructured, I regularly told myself that I could study later. And later often meant half-heartedly doing the readings and cramming the night before the test.

On the other hand, when I was rehearsing multiple plays, leading the Latin club, writing a skit for the NC Junior Classical League competition, and creating fan works for Sailor Moon, I was handling it all pretty well.

High School Kimberly has some wisdom to offer to 30-something Kimberly. Since I received a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2011, I’ve been carefully guarding my energy, living in fear of trying to do too much for my poor self-attacking body. This month, through a confluence of small accumulating commitments, I find myself working full-time, rehearsing an operetta, taking private voice lessons, serving on the boards of two arts organizations, serving on the boards of two academic organizations, taking a graduate level English course, and taking a sketch comedy writing class. In addition, I’ve taken on the projects in the books One Year to an Organized Life and I Will Teach You to Be Rich.

And in spite of the fact that I feel overwhelmed and occasionally flake out on my responsibilities to the various boards and have a giant mound of dirty laundry at all times, it’s been a great thing for me. I haven’t been this engaged with the world and with life since my senior year of high school.

I really like when people talk about “showing up,” meaning bringing your full self into the experience you’re having - whether that’s work, learning, family time, or something else entirely. For the past 15 years I’ve barely been showing up for anything - out of fear that parts of me will be unwelcome, or that I will exhaust my inner resources, that I will be a disappointment, or that experiences will disappoint me. This month, I’ve been forced to show up. I’ve got too many things going with too little time to do any of them half-way.

I’m learning from this first month of what is bound to be an intense spring semester that not only can I handle taking on lots of things, I can thrive, and I am a better person for doing it.

Pull Down the Night by Nathan Kotecki. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from the publisher. Buy it from IndieBound or Powell’s (affiliate links).

Bruno and his brother Sylvio are the new kids at Suburban High this year, but they quickly make friends with the remaining members of The Rosary, a clique steeped in elegant, dark music and culture. Sylvio has always had those interests, but Bruno finds himself suddenly drawn to them - perhaps because of his powerful attraction to Celia, the protagonist from The Suburban Strange. Through his connection with Celia and his interactions with the school librarian, Bruno discovers that his intuitive understanding of maps has a supernatural source. He has to use these skills and his new understanding of the supernatural realm of the Kind and Unkind to help him solve two mysteries: why students around school are receiving “kiss notes” from a ghost and then discovering loved ones betraying them, and why kids all over the school are suddenly finding themselves deeply depressed.

My relationship with the author:

You should know that I can’t be unbiased about this book. Nathan Kotecki is my friend (see more about how we met in my review of The Suburban Strange). I’m listed in the acknowledgments. So if you’re looking for an unbiased review, you probably want to look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the honest perspective of the friend of the author who’s also a former high school teacher and school librarian, well, you’ve come to the right place.

What I love:

• The supernatural stuff starts right away with Bruno mysteriously finding himself in the Ebentwine, a liminal space with a definite Wonderland vibe.
• The references to dark music and culture flow fast and free, just like in The Suburban Strange. But this time, I didn't find myself wishing I'd had goth friends to shepherd me around, probably because I got that out of the way in the first book.
• There sure is a lot of time spent in the school library hanging out with the school librarian, who is so much more pleasant than adults in YA literature often are.
• Bruno has a geography teacher who won't let him coast, but gives him the opportunity to work on an individualized project that also helps him expand his supernatural skills.
• Marco. Marco Marco Marco. He's a featured player in this book, and I love him, and it makes me so happy.
• Everybody, Bruno included, seems to love Celia in a way that makes her dangerously close to a Mary Sue, but there is an actual explanation for why everyone loves her so much.
• Bruno and Sylvio have a very positive relationship. I love siblings who get along most of the time. Of course they don't get along all the time, but they never seem to deliberately annoy each other or snipe at each other.
• All the little ways in which you know this book comes from the same world as The Suburban Strange, but it really is its own story.
• Bruno and Sylvio's dad, who is a minister, but understands that his sons need to explore faith at their own pace.
• The whole mythology of this world. There are Kind and Unkind, talented people who have the opportunity to use their supernatural gifts for good or ill. And these aren't things like super strength or throwing fireballs, but things like literally traveling through the pages of a book, or being able to shape reality through drawing it.

How my wish from last time got fulfilled:

• I said I wanted to see more menace in the school setting, and boy did Pull Down the Night deliver. This is the eeriest school library since they built Sunnydale High on top of a hellmouth. (We put that in lowercase, since we know there's more than one of them.)

What I need to warn you about:

• While this book is much quicker-paced than The Suburban Strange, it's still not an action/suspense thriller. So if you're looking for that, maybe pick up a different book, and give this to your goth friend.
• You're going to want to find all of the music that goes with this book. But you don't have to, because Nathan made a Spotify playlist. I highly recommend listening to the playlist while reading the book, if you're the kind of person who can have music going while you read.

[caption id="" align=“alignright” width=“224”] Image from Bytemarks on Flickr[/caption]

Lately I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the Quantified Self movement. The basic idea is that technology has made it increasingly easy to track small changes in our behavior and our lives, and that the data we collect can be used to improve our situation. I wanted to start my very own Quantified Kimberly project, but as I thought about it, I realized that I’ve been practicing one variant or another of the Quantified Self for years.

Here are some of the things I’ve tracked:

• calories consumed
• weight gained or lost
• minutes spent exercising
• miles walked
• reps of various exercises
• blood pressure
• lipids levels
• blood sugar
• thyroid hormone levels
• menstrual cycles
• chores completed
• grades
• books read

Some people think QS has merit just by virtue of the fact that people are paying attention to what they do. But I think its real power lies in reflecting on the data and using it to inspire change and then track the results of that change.

Little Data

Of all the things I’ve tracked, the only ones that I’ve really used systematically or to improve my life are the medical data. I received two endocrine diagnoses (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and polycystic ovary syndrome) largely because of my own efforts to track symptoms and hormone levels. Doctors are impressed by data. So are school administrators and legislators, of course.

It’s easy to feel bad about data collection; sometimes it feels like when we collect data on student achievement we are dehumanizing our students’ experiences and our own teaching. But I wonder if the QS movement has something to teach us about helping students take responsibility for their learning. This doesn’t necessarily mean having them pay attention to their own scores on standardized tests or benchmark assessments. It might mean something simpler and more readily visible.

QS and Formative Assessment

When I was teaching using the Cambridge Latin Course, each textbook unit came with an “I Can” checklist. The checklist put in jargon-free, student-friendly language the objectives for the unit. I would show this checklist to my students at the beginning and end of the unit. I think now that it would have been more effective for me to actually give them the checklist. Were I still in the school now, I think I might use completing the checklist as an exit ticket, and reviewing the checklist as a bellringer. As students walked in the door, I could hand them the checklist. Instead of checking or putting their initials in a box to indicate what they understood, I would have them note the date. I could then quickly review to see which students didn’t feel they had achieved the lesson objective. This would be a quick formative assessment and it would also allow students to see their own learning growing before their eyes.

QS in the 1:1 Environment

I think QS principles and techniques could be especially valuable in the 1:1 environment. I recently attended a Google Apps for Education summit, and I think you could probably use Google Forms and Spreadsheets to help students track their own learning. Many schools now require teachers to make grades available in a system that parents and students can review online, but how often do those particular numbers tell us about mastery or growth?

In the 1:1 environment, students might copy a simple form and spreadsheet that you provide, then fill out the form and be able to periodically review the data. The form might be as simple as one question - for example, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you learn today?” It could also be used, however, to track the relationship between learning and other variables - for example, whether students had gotten enough sleep, or how long it had been since they had eaten. We know these physical needs affect learning. It might be valuable to students to see their own learning in relationship to these concerns.

All of this is me spitballing. As I explore this movement more, I think I will generate more ideas about how it might apply to learning.

The Quantified Kimberly: Sleep

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="259"] SleepBot[/caption]

In the meantime, I’m designing my own QS experiment. In spite of the best thyroid numbers I’ve had in years, my energy has been low lately. I think poor quality sleep is the culprit. So I’m going to install SleepBot on my phone and track my sleep patterns for a week. After that, I’m going to use interventions based on the tips in this Lifehacker article. Follow me on Twitter for daily updates on my progress.

Here’s my schedule:

November 19 - 25 - Gather baseline sleep data; make no changes to sleep habits.

November 26 - December 2 - Intervention 1: Reduce screen time before bed.

December 3: Reflect on Intervention 1 and plan next steps.

What Do You Think?

Is the Quantified Self movement dangerous? Does it have potential for use with students? Are your students self-tracking already? I know self-tracking has been used in behavioral interventions; do you think it would be useful in academic interventions as well?

I think as a school librarian, there are some collaborations that come really easily, like language arts and social studies, while there are others that you have to work really hard to set up. It never occurred to me when I was in the middle schools that I should make an effort to work with the Health/PE teachers. I just didn’t feel like information literacy really fit with their programs. But lately I’ve been examining the North Carolina Essential Standards for Healthful Living, and I found some standards here that make me think I should’ve tried harder.

Because I work in North Carolina, that’s where I’m focusing, but I imagine the standards in other states have something similar.

Beginning with the fourth grade standards, there is a focus on analyzing health information and products. This is a great opportunity to teach critical literacy. You could have students watch clips from infomercials, examine magazine ads, etc. You could have them explore the internet and find conflicting information and try to resolve that information. This focus proceeds all the way through high school, with the objective “Monitor the effects of media and popular culture on normative beliefs that contradict scientific research on health."

If you’re currently in a school, I encourage you to talk to your health and PE teachers about how you can work together beyond just pulling books about the rules of certain sports (all that I really did for those teachers, I’m sad to say). This is a great opportunity to ask kids to think critically. It is incredibly relevant to their daily lives and will continue to be so as they become adults. Just figuring out what’s the healthiest food to eat requires us to use these skills daily.

If you collaborate with your health/PE teacher in this way, I would love to hear about it. Comment here or email me: kimberly at kimberlyhirsh dot com.

A few months ago, just for fun, I typed in “are the new vampires” in my Google search box, just to see what popped up. I found a stunning array of possibilities, including zombies, ghosts, and robots. But my favorite of all the suggestions was that mermaids are the new vampires. I’ve been obsessed with mermaids since I saw Splash more than 25 years ago; I sang “Part of Your World” in a mermaid costume at a high school chorus concert, insisting that boys carry me on stage since mermaids can’t walk. My home office is decorated around a mermaid theme, and this very website featured a mermaid in the header until yesterday. (See her in the picture on the right? My mom made her for me.)

A friend from high school recently connected me with the mermaiding community, where I learned about Raina the Halifax Mermaid’s book, “Fishy” Business: How to Be a Mermaid. Raina includes a list of recommended mermaid fiction, but even more useful, she provides the URL for this Goodreads list of the Best Mermaid Books.

As I’ve watched my former school library and classroom teacher colleagues chat about their summer plans on Facebook, I’ve occasionally had a twinge of longing for the times before I was a twelve-month university employee. That said, I wouldn’t trade my excellent job and full-time employment for anything, so I’m looking for ways to capture the feel of a summer vacation that match my current schedule. I think reading a giant stack of mermaid books (especially on my upcoming beach vacation) is a great way to get the job done.

So stay tuned for reports on mermaid reads. What are you going to read this summer?

The Poetry Friday roundup is over at The Poem Farm today. Our host, Amy, shares a poem about diving. I myself have been thinking a lot about swimming lately, and researching the Total Immersion method and my own options for pool membership. So I thought I’d look for a swim-related poem myself.

NPR obliged me with the beautiful “Swim Your Own Race” by Mbali Vilakazi. I’m just going to share some lines from the opening. Head over to NPR to read the whole poem.

Beneath the surface tension of shattered bones, dreams and splintered muscles things broken and those that may never be replaced.

Pulling the weight of it, you do not tread the water wounded and in retreat

By the determined strokes of fate you swim your own race

My husband has a cat that he generously shares with me. Or perhaps it would be better to say the cat has him.

We confuse people because we regularly call him “The Kitty,” but his name is actually Laertes.

I explain this by saying that “The Kitty” is the name that the family use daily, but “Laertes” is his name that’s particular, peculiar, and more dignified. Of course, we’ll never know his deep and inscrutable singular name.

The Naming of Cats

by T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James, Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey — All of them sensible everyday names. There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames: Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter — But all of them sensible everyday names. But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular, A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified, Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride? Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum, Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat, Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum — Names that never belong to more than one cat. But above and beyond there’s still one name left over, And that is the name that you never will guess; The name that no human research can discover — But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

A post from a friend on Facebook that linked to a blatantly incorrect article about new reading requirements in the Common Core prompted me to create this graphic.

I learned just today about The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative. This initiative, sponsored by the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons, aims to develop a common metadata framework for describing learning resources on the web. At LEARN NC, we have applied domain-specific metadata to our learning resources for years. Our resources are aligned to curricular objectives and searchable by grade level and subject area, among other characteristics. I would say we’re ahead of the curve on this one.

But I didn’t learn about LMRI until today. I consider myself fairly tapped into what’s happening in libraries, especially in school libraries, and I feel like this should have been on my radar before. When I explored the LRMI site I found that while they have solicited input from teachers and school librarians, the connection between this work and the work of school librarians, which seems so obvious to me, is not present in their framework.

I fault no one involved with the LMRI for this. To myself and other trained school librarians, the notion that making educational resources more discoverable would affect our work perhaps more than that of anyone else in a school might be obvious. But so many people don’t know what we do, that I’m not surprised or even chagrined that we have to make the connection ourselves.

But we have to make the connection. We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. We can’t sit around waiting for others to invite us to these conversations about open educational resources and how to make them easy to find and to use. It is our job to make this happen and we have to go out there and do it.

While I’m not situated in a K-12 school, I consider myself to be the librarian of a vast digital professional collection, and I think the LMRI, if adoption is widespread, will necessarily influence my work and how my colleagues and I ensure the findability and usability of LEARN NC’s resources. I’m going to keep a close eye on this initiative, and I would encourage all librarians, but especially those in school and academic libraries, to pay attention to it as well - and to look for opportunities to add our voices to the conversation.

What do you think about the LMRI? Is it an exciting development? What pitfalls might be involved? I myself am cautiously optimistic about the whole thing.

The Suburban Strange by Nathan Kotecki. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children. 2012. Reviewed from ARC from the author. Buy it from IndieBound or Powell’s (affiliate links).

Celia Balaustine is entering her sophomore year of high school, but it’s her first year at Suburban High. She’s all set to spend the year trying to be as invisible as possible, with only her sketchbook for a friend, when fellow artist Regine takes her under her wing and introduces her to a clique called The Rosary. The members of The Rosary are interested in dark alternative culture, including literature, fashion, and music. They pride themselves on being different from the other kids in their school. But as different as her friends are from the rest of their classmates, Celia can’t help but be drawn into the school’s drama as young girls begin to be gravely injured on the eve of their sixteenth birthday. She wants to stop these incidents from happening, as well as protect herself from becoming the curse’s next victim. But can she?

My relationship with the author:

Before I jump into telling you what I loved about this book (and there’s a lot), I need to tell you how it came to my attention. My former supervisor Emily (whose old job I now hold) contacted me and told me that her friend was having his first book released soon and would love to get a big name to be present at his book release party, and she knew I had connections in the YA lit world and thought I might have some suggestions. After some back and forth, Emily and Nathan and I sat down for lunch so he could pick my brain for my expertise as both a kidlit blogger and a school librarian (by training if not position). Over the course of the conversation it came out that we are both seekrit goths, me coming at it more from the fashion angle and him from music, with both of us crossing over into the other interest some. I confessed my lack of education on the music part of things, and he assured me that he could fix that. So, yes, I do have mix CDs that serve as, essentially the soundtrack for this book. Yes, the author treated me to lunch since I am helping him with publicity. Yes, I felt like it would be good if I liked this book.

So know all of that, because I don’t want to deceive you about my relationship with this book.

What I loved:

• Celia's friends in The Rosary are darkly glamorous. They discuss music, art, and literature in ways that some reviews have suggested aren't realistic for teenagers, but as a former high school teacher, I found this eminently believable. Kids are into all sorts of things, and some of them are beautifully pretentious. Mostly they grow into pretentious but self-aware adults, the kind of people I like to spend time with.
• This book has a gay couple in the most stable relationship in the whole book. And it's not a huge deal. They're just a couple, who both happen to be guys. And they're probably two of the most fully-realized characters in a book full of interesting people. They're my favorites.
• The curse has a component whereby girls who are virgins seem to be the only targets. This leads to a lot of frank but not vulgar discussions of sex, its importance, when you should do it and who you should do it with. I think books that model this kind of conversation are far preferable to those that ignore it or make it all gross.
• The members of The Rosary are immensely studious. Yes, they do party at Diaboliques (described in Colleen's review as a fairytale goth club and I can't put it better than that) until three in the morning, but they also encourage Celia to do her homework as soon as she gets home from school.
• There's a romance in here that is a slow burn, which is exactly my kind of thing (both in my own love life and the stories I like to read). There won't be any flailing and crying, "I love you, but also I want you to be my dinner!" here - the obstacles to romance are external reactions to internal circumstances and I kind of love that.
• The decadence of description of the clothes, atmosphere, music, and Celia's emotions. I spent a good chunk of this book being a little sad that I didn't have a tightly-knit group of goth friends to shepherd me through school. (I had a tightly-knit group of diversely-interested friends who were wonderful, but I was one of only two of us you could categorize as goth, and not at all aware of it as a genuine subculture rather than just a cruel label folks gave spooky kids.)
• The quiet menace of the supernatural. You know the whole time that supernatural stuff is going on, but it's not the focus until far into the book.
• The subtle way in which this fits the mold of a classic Gothic novel, going as far back as The Castle of Otranto and Jane Eyre and as recent as Rebecca or even The Thirteenth Tale.

What I'd like to see more of:

• The school setting as a menace itself. This is definitely present here, but I have hopes that it will be even more present in future books in the series. I was lucky enough to hear Nathan speak to a young adult literature class at UNC's School of Information and Library Science (my alma mater!) and he mentioned that the school itself would serve as a unifying thread throughout the series. I hope he explores the relationship of this place with the supernatural mythology he's building more as the series goes on.
• More supplemental materials (appendices, maybe?) consolidating the myriad cultural references. But I'm a librarian, so it's likely I'll do a re-read and pull together literary and musical references (perhaps even create a Spotify playlist) and share that here.

What I need to warn you about: This book is deliberately paced. There was definitely a point at which I thought, "Okay, I see why the Amazon reviewers complained about it being slow." That said, it's all leading somewhere and it's all valuable. If I were doing reader's advisory, I wouldn't hand this to somebody looking for fast-paced action. I would hand it to somebody looking for atmospheric spookiness.

The big climax and resolution of the mystery are not why you want to read this book. They are of course very important to have, but what’s going to keep you interested is the mood and the world-building. Don’t jump in here expecting a typical suspense thriller. If you ran the numbers, I suspect you’d find mystery resolution takes up a very small percentage of pages or words here. But the supernatural element is woven throughout.

My favorite quotes:

"We're a set of small black shiny beads who string around together, finding beauty the rest of the world has overlooked." (p. 5 in the ARC)

“We’re in high school. Of course we’re egocentric,” Ivo replied matter-of-factly. (p. 83 in the ARC)

Who should read it: I would recommend The Suburban Strange to readers who like books with a lot of atmosphere, a little mystery, and a slow but sustained reveal of supernatural elements.

A review roundup happens when I read a book but either didn’t have the time to write a review or read it so long ago that my memory about it isn’t good enough to write a review. I gather links to other reviews in the kidlitosphere and share excerpts from them. These are reviews of books that I know darkly-inclined young people will enjoy. 

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker. Carolrhoda Books. 2009. Library copy. Buy it from IndieBound or Powell’s (affiliate links).

In Written in Bone, Sally M. Walker explores what scientists learned from excavating graves in Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. They book examines not only burial practices, but also the evidence these excavations provide about lifestyles in the Colonial era.

Spooky Factor: Any time the pitch for a book begins with, “So, we exhumed some corpses…” your spooky kids are going to be on board. I myself think it’d be fun to read this, then write an essay called, “What I Learned from Dead People.”

On to the reviews!

A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy:

Did you know that sometimes people used their cellars not to store food but as a trash dump? An archaeologist explains, “people lived upstairs and dumped fish parts and pig parts and chamber pot contents and goodness knows what else down there.”

Imagine that. Imagine dumping that refuse in your cellar. Wouldn’t it smell? How healthy would that be? Why would you do that? And then I thought about Laura Ingalls Wilder and the books where the Ingalls were snowed in for days and days and days. As a grown up rereading the series, I’d wondered, where did they put the trash? Go to the bathroom? Is that why a basement was used as a trash pit? And then… as the chapter reveals… a body was buried in the basement. Treated like garbage. Hidden. Unknown. For hundreds of years, until the secret was revealed. What was it like, to live in that house? To know that body was there?

Stacked:

When I first had heard about this book, I didn't quite know what to expect. I am pleased with this and found myself really fascinated with what archaeologists do with human remains. I think that this book has a huge appeal, both to those interested in history and science, as well as those interested in the all-too-common "something different." Oh, and boys will eat this one up! This is a book about people doing something and it gives boys tools to learn with (I mean, there's also really cool images of skulls and bones, too).

librarian by day:

Colorful pictures and flowing prose explains the process of excavating and studying a grave site, and explains how the details observed and analyzed tells us about life in colonial Virginia and Maryland.

Kirkus:

...profusely illustrated with photos of skulls and skeletons...

In her first #TeachersWrite minilesson, Kate Messner talks about making time to write. This has consistently been a problem for me. I am undisciplined about it, like I’m sure so many others are.

The assignment that goes with the minilesson is this:

Make a writing plan for your summer and for your school year.

Share:

1. What you found that you might be able to cut out of your schedule or cut back on to make time to write.
2. When you’ll be writing each day & for how long. Remember to be realistic. 15 minutes is fine to start.
3. Where you’ll usually write.  This can be different places on different days, depending on your schedule.
4. Who you told about your plans. Remember, sharing your writing plans with the people in your life helps to make them real and reminds your family & friends to give you that space for writing.

So. Planning time.

1. I spend a lot of time just aimlessly browsing online or watching TV. I think I can probably carve out 15 minutes of that time each day for writing, and as I’ve learned from FlyLady, 15 minutes at a time can accomplish a lot after a while.

2. So 15 minutes is for how long. When? I think it makes sense to do it as soon as my husband is out the door and off to work, in the summer. Once I’m back at work, I might take 15 minutes out of my lunch to do it.

3. Where? I have a beautiful home office that is serving as a storage space right now. In addition to spending 15 minutes a day writing, I’ll spend 15 minutes a day getting the office in shape. Once it is, that’s where I’ll write. Until then, I’ll write at our breakfast (and lunch and dinner) table.

4. I haven’t actually told anybody about my plans yet. I guess I’ll chat with my husband about it when he gets home tonight. And maybe my sister. I tell each of them a lot of stuff.

What about you? Are you making time and space to write?

Like so many folks in the education industry, I recently embarked upon my summer vacation. I was that kid who couldn’t wait to sign up for the library summer reading program, who three weeks into summer was ready to go back, and who loved school/office supplies with a passion bordering on the unnatural.

And I’m not that different as an adult. After all, I am a learning enthusiast, so it follows that if I have more free time, I’ll learn more, not less. Two excellent opportunities came to my attention via Twitter. They’re both low pressure and easy to jump into at any time, which is great as I’ll be traveling for most of July.

The first is Teachers Write!, a virtual summer writing camp for teachers and librarians. Author Kate Messner and a host of her writing friends will be sharing advice, giving challenges, and generally building community. I am about to dive into it all now - 15 days after it officially started.

The second is the Level Up Book Club, a place to read books about gamification and discuss the gamification of education. Gamification is a topic near and dear to my heart and one of the things that drew me to library school in the first place. Should I go back for a doctorate, it would be one of my chief research interests. So I’m jumping into this one - again, late due to loose ends that needed to be tied up at the end of the school year - and will be making my way through Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken over the next week and a half - if I can tear myself away from the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire, that is.

Check these two out and let me know if you’re already participating or if you sign up. See you there!

In Social Media for Social Good, former social media consultant Heather Mansfield, principal blogger at Nonprofit Tech 2.0, provides a guidebook for nonprofits entering the social media world for the first time. Mansfield divides the Web into three eras: the Static Web (1.0), the Social Web (2.0), and the Mobile Web (3.0). She explains the importance and value of online tools in each era, explaining that each builds on the era before it. She also identifies specific tools such as Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube, and gives best practices for using these tools. At the end of the book, she includes “Your Nonprofit Tech Checklist,” a step-by-step map for planning your organization’s social media strategy.

Mansfield provides a wealth of information and enhances her own advice by providing Nonprofit Examples of Excellence at the end of each chapter and a “Google This!” section with recommended search terms for more information and examples. Social Media for Social Good has both breadth and depth. I purchased it to support my work with the Durham Savoyards as we enter our 50th Anniversary year; the time seemed ripe for launching our organization into Web 2.0 and beyond. Mansfield focuses on suggestions that at first glance would work only for large non-profits with the budget to hire a social media manager, but with some tweaking, the work can be spread across a range of volunteers.

I highly recommend this book not only for anyone working with a 501(c)3, but also for anyone working in education. The principles are applicable to any organization that relies on external participation and support to succeed at its mission. I think they are especially relevant in the field of education, where providing readily-accessible evidence of the good work we do helps us demonstrate the need for continued funding and personnel support. For example, Mansfield suggests having the Board or staff of your nonprofit create a “Thank You” video for supporters. At a school library, you could have students create a video to thank donors or volunteers. In a classroom, you could create a Flickr pool for your Donors Choose project and post the URL in the project description so donors could follow your students’ progress through the project. Social Media for Social Good provides many more suggestions and best practices that will enhance your organization’s online marketing strategy. Check it out at your library or buy it today!

Social Media for Social Good by Heather Mansfield McGraw-Hill 2011 ISBN 007177081X

Storytime: My 17-year-old brother is a student at an online high school.  (I think it’s TRECA but I’m not 100% sure of that.)  Sometime last spring, my mother described to me a challenge he’d had when working on an assignment in his history class.  The teacher had given him a question of causality: What were the reasons that a particular historical event had happened?  (I can’t remember what event in particular; I think it probably had to do with the start of a war.)  The teacher had instructed the students to “do some research” and “write a paper” about it.  The teacher didn’t provide suggested resources for the research or guidance on the research process.    Without this kind of guidance, my brother  spent hours sorting through Google results and ended up writing an unfocused paper that chronicled every possible cause he could find, rather than a cohesive paper making an argument for a particular cause or related set of causes. I said to my mother, “Well, doesn’t he have a school librarian that he could ask for help on assignments like that?”

“No,” she replied.  “They only just got a case worker for IEPs.”  As a (at the time, future) school librarian, this made me sad.  Since that conversation, I’ve been considering what it would look like for students like my brother to receive library services.

The North Carolina Virtual Public School, as I understand it, operates on a different model than TRECA does.  It is not a full-time academy, but rather provides opportunities for students across the state who might not otherwise be able to take certain classes.  Theoretically, students enrolled in NCVPS have access to school librarians at their home schools and would be able to ask for their assistance.  But, at least in my experience as a middle school librarian, collaboration between the distance teacher and the school librarian is rare and could present significant challenges (mostly due to time constraints; in a world of Skype and GoToMeeting, I think actually setting up the communication would be pretty simple).

For this reason, I think there need to be dedicated virtual school librarians, who work exclusively with teachers and students involved in distance learning.  As of 2009, “not one online high school [had] a school librarian position” (Darrow, 79).  Because of this, we don’t know exactly what such a position would look like.  University libraries, however, provide some promising models with e-learning librarians and distance  learning services.

Based on an informal survey of job descriptions for university librarians serving distance learning students and instructors, plus my own brainstorming based on guidelines like AASL’s Empowering Learners and NCDPI’s IMPACT, here are the services I imagine a VSL might provide:

• collaboration with teachers, either synchronous or asynchronous, to create information literacy lessons embedded in their courses, to assist with the research process, or to provide lists of resources
• consulting with students, to help them through the research process and help them identify relevant and reliable resources
• providing/managing a virtual space where students could create & share their work (blogs? wikis? I'm not sure)
• creating free-standing information literacy lessons for commonly-addressed issues
• participating in classroom discussion fora to answer questions
• holding office hours for virtual reference/unplanned consultations

I'm sure given time, I and the whole world of my librarian colleagues could come up with more.  There's plenty of evidence that having a full-time dedicated school librarian improves student learning.  Isn't it time we served the more than a million students enrolled in online courses?

References

Darrow, R. (2009.) School libraries are essential: Meeting the virtual access and collaboration needs of the 21st-century learner and teacher. Knowledge Quest, 37(5), 78-83.

When you are building a collection and especially if you need to defend your collection against challenges, it is important to take into account the developmental needs of your user base.  This is especially important at the school library, where discussions about what is or is not appropriate can become heated.

When considering the developmental appropriateness of materials in my collections, here are the resources I use:

Stages of Literary Appreciation from Literature for Today’s Young Adults by Alleen Pace Nilsen, et al. (PDF of first chapter provided by the publisher) Nilsen and her colleagues identify seven stages of literary appreciation, from birth through adulthood.  When using this to build or defend your collection, it is important to remember that we retain characteristics from the earlier stages as we grow into the later ones.  For example, in late elementary school, we may want to lose ourselves in the fantasy of literature.  In middle school, we may want to find ourselves reflected in the books we read.  Even though we now want to find reflections of ourselves, our desire for escape and fantasy has not disappeared.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Facts for Families.  The AACAP has created an excellent set of resources on a variety of topics of interest to the families of children and adolescents.  At their website you can download a complete set of these resources, search them by keyword, or browse them by keyword or in the order in which they were released.  Two I have found especially helpful are Normal Adolescent Development - Middle School and Early High School Years and Normal Adolescent Development - Late High School - Years and Beyond.

Developmental Tasks and Education by Robert J. Havighurst.  Havighurst identifies six stages of development and tasks that occur within them.  The quickest overview of these is at Wikipedia.

Developmental Assets from the Search Institute.  For a variety of age groups, the Search Institute has identified 40 developmental assets.  These assets describe what children and young adults need to be successful and to avoid high-risk behaviors.  While the other resources have identified characteristics of your students, these identify resources that enhance their lives.  This can be useful for advocacy more generally and for selecting books where characters have and benefit from the developmental assets or do not have them and must work to overcome their situation.

Having these resources available makes it easy to justify the inclusion of works in your collection without having to rely exclusively on your personal opinion or even your professional judgment.

Many thanks to Sandra Hughes-Hassell for introducing me to these resources in her Young Adult Literature and Related Materials course.

 

 

Since I’m now working as a middle school librarian, I feel like what I read is inextricably tied to how I work. Because of that, I’ve imported all the posts from my lectitans reading blog to this blog.  From now on, all reading posts will be made here in the category “Reading.”  I will not make any new posts at either of the earlier lectitans sites.