Chalkdust in My Coffee

Winter Break Post #2: Reading Resolutions

My 2009 New Year's resolution was to read more for pleasure. It's time to check in and see how I did. 

Overall, I would say that yes, I did do more reading just for enjoyment this year. I did still read professional stuff and young adult lit, but by chance or by choice I enjoyed it. I mixed it in with many purely-for-pleasure books, which made for a good well-rounded year of reading. 

Here are some highlights that I would recommend to other readers: 

The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

Lowboy by John Wray

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (who I met a few weeks ago and heart heart heart)

Looking for Alaska by John Greene

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven By Susan Jane Gilman

When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Next year's reading resolution: read more magazines and journals. Or rather, read them more regularly and thoroughly.  I want to actually read more than three articles in each issue of the New Yorker and the NY Times Magazine that I get each week. Maybe subscribe to a fashion or health magazine again and read it for fun and inspiration. Do more than skim through English Journal and JAAL when they arrive. Read an issue of The Atlantic from cover to cover, which I haven't done in a year or two. Actually make recipes from Vegetarian Times. You get the idea. 

I've also decided that a resolution needs to be to FINISH reading books. I was browsing through my LibraryThing last night, and realized I have about 25 books I've started reading but despite enjoying them never got around to finishing. I've tagged them all with both "need to finish" and "to read in 2010", and hopefully at this time next year I'll be through all of them. 

Finally, I've resolved to read a poem a day in 2010. Maybe I'll be inspired, maybe not. I've done this sort of thing with my students before with good results, and since I have several books of poetry I want to read I think this will be a good way to get through them. 

I feel  strange admitting it, but I do have to force myself to read. I enjoy it, yes, but with the amount of work-related reading I do I often find it tedious to move my eyes over more lines of text at the end of the day. I constantly extoll the virtues of recreational reading to my students, and it is important that I practice what I preach. I have never gotten to the last page of a book and wished I hadn't read it -- clearly it is worthwhile. Last year's reading resolution actually worked; hopefully the three I've made for 2010 will do the same. 

Winter Break Post #1

Oh yes. I finally did it right this year. For the last five years, my thought process prior to winter break went something like this: 

I will have two weeks off around the holidays. That means a lot of "free" time. I normally wish I had more "free" time to get my grading done. Ergo, I should have all three of my preps turn in essays or projects, because I will have ample "free" time to grade them over break. 

It's now year six, however, and I am starting to feel more on the cusp of being a veteran teacher than a new teacher. This year, my thought process went more like this: 

I have had all four of my preps work very hard this semester; both I and they are mentally exhausted. I should not assign anything big during the week before break, so I can rest up and reenergize so I can be a better teacher when I return in January. 

In years past I would have worried that this was a lapse in academic rigor or professional consistency. I would have been terrified that it would be perceived as laziness by my colleagues, or a sign of low expectations by my students. However, as my confidence as a teacher grows, I realize that this sort of thing is necessary. I know I will be MUCH more excited and prepared to teach after two weeks of getting things done around my house and attending to my emaciated social life than I have been in the past after spending two weeks grading and wishing I were spending time with friends and family (or, conversely, spending time with friends and family and feeling bad because I know I should be working). 

I've already started enjoyed myself thoroughly, and it's only the second day of break. Hee hee hee. Why didn't I figure this out sooner?

Mentoring

This week I completed my state's new training program for mentors. I was already Pathwise trained last year, but now the state has changed over to a different version of mentoring... I have to admit, I do like it. It focuses more on formative activities with your Beginning Teacher rather than summative ones. One particularly interesting handout they gave was this: 

I love it because it is so true, even to an extent for veteran teachers.