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Happy Almost 2021 & Happy Reading!

12/2/2020

Here are 12 things I thought were worth sharing:

IMAGE: Shaylyn Esposito

1. Publishing companies want to tell you all about their new books!
2. To help commemorate their 125th Anniversary, the New York Public Library has some opinions on their favorite 125 Books for Teens.
3. A new kind of historical podcast series from a new kind of public educator.
4. The American Experience in 737 Novels: a history of American literature in map form.
5. For those of you who loved The Things They Carried, it will now be a movie!
6. Some thoughts from our amazing National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, in the middle of his 2-year term.
7. Open access image libraries – a handy list!
8. I missed this in October, but we now have a LIVE NYC Subway Map! Here’s a great video about how this complicated digital map was created.
9. Are you a bit moody after the year we’ve all had? Use your moods to find your next book!
10. If you haven’t checked it out already, head to Bookshop, the “Rebel Alliance” fighting Amazon for market share, and in turn, supporting scores of independent bookstores.
11. Here are some of the top Best Books lists of 2020:
Time Magazine’s Best YA and Children's Books of 2020
NPR’s Book Concierge 2020
100 Notable Books of 2020 (New York Times)
Best Books of 2020 (Goodreads)
Best Books 2020 (Publishers Weekly)
The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 (Time Magazine)
Best Books of 2020 (New York Public Library)
Best Books of the Year (So Far) (Amazon)
Best Books 2020 (School Library Journal)
Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature Best Books of 2020
Best Books 2020 (Worst Year/Best Books; Library Journal)
Times Critics’ Top Books of 2020
The Best Books we read in 2020 (The New Yorker)
Best Books of 2020 (Book Riot)
The Ten Best History Books of 2020 (Smithsonian)
The Ten Best Books of 2020 (The Washington Post)
Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books of 2020
The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 (Time Magazine)
The Best Books of the Year 2020 (Barnes & Noble)
12. As we hurtle towards January, we can look backward (just like the God Janus), at the many book awards that were given out this past year...

It's Good to See You!

8/27/2020

Here are 13 things I thought were worth sharing:

Welcome back to possibly the weirdest school year in recent history! All over the world, content creators have been retooling their offerings to make it easier for you and your students to learn and connect with each other. In advance of one of the most contentious presidential elections ever, it’s even more important than ever to consume and spread accurate information. Taking a free class from Checkology can help you do this.
One of my favorite things to do each September is to head to the Brooklyn Book Festival to buy books, meet authors, and steep myself in book culture. This year the festival will be online from September 28th-October 4th. Further uptown, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (a division of the NYPL) will be hosting their own online literary festival from September 21-26. I’ve already signed up for one of the events! Further afield, the National Book Festival (sponsored by the Library of Congress) will also be held online from September 25-27th. For the first time ever, part of the National Book Festival will be broadcast on PBS, so set your DVRs!
I have dusted off my list of Remote Learning Tools from this spring for you and your students, and will be adding new things on a regular basis (noted in yellow).
Our country is going through a much-needed racial reckoning, and our corner of Brooklyn is taking a deeper look at our collective educational history and is doing something about it.
Even if you don’t subscribe to The New York Times (you really should!), their Learning Network is always free to both educators and students. Take some time to peruse their many tools and make them work for you and encourage your students to enter their student contests!
Our school has an educational subscription to the New York Times. Please let me know if the link doesn’t work!
Leave it to a school librarian to rally her librarian comrades to crowdsource a free interactive ebook full of tech tools that will help you do your job!
Over the summer, I updated my Anti-Racism Reading List and will continue to add books to this list.
I just updated our Election 2020 page with new resources.
While Covid-19 has narrowed the options about where we can go in person, it has enlarged our virtual opportunities! Consider signing up for e-newsletters from local cultural organizations (like The Brooklyn Historical Society or Community Bookstore) so you can attend their many online offerings!
We may not all be ELA teachers, but we are all readers! It’s always good to take a fresh look at what we teach and what we read, with an eye for tweaking and for making some switches. Penguin Random House gives us some suggestions!
Want to send your students on a field trip to better understand diseases like Covid-19? Here are 7 virtual museum exhibits that explore pandemics.
Powered by Common Sense Media, Wide Open School makes it easier for you to provide engaging content to your students, wherever they are!

"We read to know that we are not alone."

6/15/2020

Here are 4 things I thought were worth sharing before we break for the Summer:

1. Here is the link to my Black Lives Matter Non-Exhaustive Anti-Racism Reading List that is updated on a weekly basis. These books will help dismantle the racism, both internal and external, that is all around us...

2. Here is a treasure trove of Summer Reading Lists that should keep you busy:
The Ultimate Summer 2020 Reading List (contains multiple lists)
Publisher’s Weekly Summer Reads 2020
125 Books We Love (NYPL)
The Best Books of 2020 So Far (BBC)
Summer Reading 2020 with Bill Gates
Summer Reading at NY Libraries
BKLYN Public Library Summer Reading (Middle School)
BKLYN Public Library Summer Reading (High School)
Summer Reading List from ALSC (Grades 6-8)
UC Berkeley Summer Reading List
Let Books Create Your Summer (NYTimes)
NPR’s Book Concierge (Young Adult)
The 30 Best Beach Reads of 2020 (Parade Magazine)
The Best Books of 2020 (So Far) (Real Simple)
100 Books of Summer (Barnes & Noble)
The Best Books of 2020 so far (BBC)
New York Times Book Review
New York Public Library Quest for Adventure Summer 2020
SLJ Summer Series Best Reads 2020 (School Library Journal)
Summer Reading 2020 (Brooklyn Public Library)
ALA’s 2020 Best Lists

3. Take a minute to sign up for NYPL’s Connect newsletter which will keep you up to date on online author events, book clubs, and literary events in the community.

4. Please tell the teens in your life that It’s time for the 11th Annual New York Times Summer Reading Contest! A chance to think deeply and creatively about what is going on in our world, and a chance to get published in the New York Times!

"Poetry is an act of peace."

3/31/2020

Here are 17 things I thought were worth sharing:

With thanks to Pablo Neruda for this blog post’s title, poetry is EXACTLY what we should be turning towards in these difficult times. Whether it’s National Poetry Month (which begins today!) or not, the Academy of American Poets wants to help you celebrate!
Ask your students to write a response to a poetry video, and they just might hear back from that poet!
As we all stay at home and do our part to slow the spread of COVID-19, check out the hashtag #shelterinpoems on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
Create some spine poetry from the books you have around you!
Sign up for a new daily poetry podcast (created by our current U.S. Poet Laureate) that might just make you feel better!
Even though most of us are not riding the subways now, check out the MTA’s ongoing “Poetry in Motion” campaign.
Think about what role poetry plays in your life…
Sign up here to get a poem in your inbox every day!
This year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is on April 30th, and even though we probably won’t be together at school on that day, plan to celebrate anyway! You can download some poems for the day here, put together by several national and international poetry organizations.
Here are 22 Ways to Teach and Learn about Poetry with The New York Times (updated for 2020).
Billy Collins is one of my favorite contemporary poets, and more than 15 years ago, he created and edited “Poetry 180”, a way for poetry to be shared to high school students for every day they were in the school building. Enjoy this resource at the Library of Congress!
Here are two interactive tools that allow anyone to create, print, and share “erasure” poems: democratic texts and erasures.
We can’t travel very far these days, but we can now easily get back to 1954 if we want to!
Even though it’s physically closed, NYPL is still actively celebrating their 125th birthday! Click here to see 125 books that they just LOVE!
Smithsonian Open Access is a brand-new way to access and re-use millions of images from the Smithsonian’s archives!
The New York Times’ Learning Network now has a YouTube channel! Subscribe today!

Read to Remember & Read to Forget...

1/31/2020

Here are 17 things I thought were worth sharing:

photo illustration by Joan Wong

On the eve of Black History Month, LeVar Burton and a few friends have created “This is My Story”, a series of 6 short videos in which Burton shares stories that speak about some of the racist experiences of most black people in the United States. Difficult to listen to but necessary to hear, Burton proves yet again how transformational stories can be…
Google’s Black History Month video has gone viral.
Medium has created “The Zora Cannon”, a list of what they believe are the greatest books ever written by African American women. They also compiled a list of “The Next Generation” of black women writers they think you should read right now. Subscribe to Medium for free via your Google account.
My grandparents were among the millions of African Americans who traveled north during the Great Migration. These photos were all taken over a three week period in 1941 on the South Side of Chicago, where and when my father grew up. An amazing visual record of an important time in our country’s history.
400 years after slavery came to our shores, one of our most decorated African American novelists, both for young people and adults, traveled to Ghana to see what echoes of the past she could hear there.
Now you can read some articles and newspapers that Frederick Douglass wrote and edited!
Move over, Turnitin! You have some competition!
Just a reminder that whether you have a BPL, NYPL, or QPL library card, they all give you access to CulturePass, which in turn gives you access to dozens of NYC cultural institution, all free of charge!
Although I am a die-hard Brooklynite, I love my NYPL library card! Sign up for their Book of the Day newsletter!
The Library of Congress is keeping up with the times, and just created The LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive which collects and preserves online content which documents LGBTQ+ history, scholarship, and culture in the United States and around the world.
Canva is an amazing design resource (I use it all the time!), and now they have created an Education Program so you can apply with your school email and credentials to get a free subscription to Canva Pro!
We are living through times fraught with political turmoil and divisiveness. Reading, by its very nature, puts you in the shoes of other people. Check out a story about a woman’s reading project: “In the year leading up to the 2020 election, I would read (at least) one book from each state, as well as from Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., prioritizing contemporary fiction and memoir, with the hope of exploring shared experiences, such as family, identity and a sense of home.”
Attention art teachers: Paris museums just put 100,000 images online for unrestricted public use!
Want some free (or cheaper) alternatives to Photoshop & Illustrator?
Creative Commons just released a Chrome extension so that you can find and download CC-licensed photos (and their attributions) with just a click!
A listing of FREE (and sometimes FREE) cultural institutions in NYC!
Kialo Edu is a custom version of Kialo, the world's largest argument mapping and debate site, specifically designed for classroom use. Kialo’s mission is to promote well-reasoned discussion online, and to that end, Kialo is free for educators to use...

Time to Hibernate & Read!

12/6/2019

Here are 11 things I thought were worth sharing:

1. It’s the best time of the year to buy books for yourselves (and maybe other people!) Here are some helpful end-of-year lists you can check out to help you make your decisions!
100 Notable Books (New York Times)
Best Books of the Year (So Far) (Amazon)
Best Books of 2019 (Goodreads)
Best Books 2019 (Publishers Weekly)
Best Books 2019 (School Library Journal)
Best Young Adult Books of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews)
Best Books of 2019 (New York Public Library)
CSMCL Best Books of 2019
NPR’s Book Concierge 2019
Time Magazine's Must-Read Books of 2019

2. Better World Books + the Internet Archive = Perfect Together!

3. Even in these trying global and local times, there are reasons to be cheerful...

4. Want to get ahead and add more tools to your mental toolkit? Take some of these classes/certifications!

5. Teaching climate change to your students? Subscribe to Acid News for free!

6. There are more and more great books for teens about depression and other mental health issues. Check out some of them here and here.

7. Did you know that Poets.org created poetry lesson plans for multiple subject areas?

8. Brooklyn Prospect now has access to Adam Matthew’s Race Relations in America database! Click here for more details!

9. Stay tuned for details on our new free online access to the Financial Times and their lesson plans for teachers!

10. The folks at Stanford are really helpful! Check out their new & free Civic Online Reasoning curriculum that you can use with your students to help them better evaluate the information they come across in their digital lives.

11. Teachers, check out FindNYCulture! It is a “a searchable directory of New York’s 4600+ museums, libraries, historical societies, science centers, parks, zoos, university art galleries, planetariums, and more.” Perfect for teachers and parents!

Fall into a great book!

10/29/2019

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing...

Got six minutes? Use them to read!
If you haven’t signed up for the New York Times’ Learning Network, do that today! They have tons of useful features, like Lesson of the Day to enrich your curricula and enlarge your students’ worlds!
I am always proud of my profession, and even more so when I read stories like this and this and this.
More proof that Print is not dead!
For the IB teachers in our school, sign up for some free on-demand IB webinars from Ideas Roadshow, which has “created a wide range of ‘on-demand’ webinars for DP coordinators, DP librarians, TOK teachers/coordinators, EE coordinators, and DP subject teachers in Groups 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6”.
More IB love from Ideas Roadshow! Sign up for their Investigating Knowledge emails that will enrich your IB curricula!
Interested in the state of public education nationwide? The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University has made their findings interactive and to quote an architect of the project, Andrew Ho of Harvard, “If you imagine state tests are separate pieces of cloth, we have found a way to stitch them together in a patchwork quilt. The result is a national perspective on the geography of educational opportunity. It is an unprecedented view of how our kids are learning in public schools and districts.”
Google Books is 15 years old! Learn about the history, future, and redesign of something that I use every day and that adds immeasurably to our world of knowledge and research!
During my first semester of library school, I read several articles about prison librarians, people who are 'a religion within the religion’ of librarianship. It was so moving to read about the ardor they had for the role they were playing. If you are interested, here is the open-access online book from UNESCO called “Books Behind Bars”.
And stay tuned for information about our high school becoming part of PBS’ POV Community Network!

Welcome Back!!

9/3/2019

Here are 12 things I thought were worth sharing:

If it’s September, it’s time for the Brooklyn Book Festival! The Festival runs from September 16th-September 23rd, with the Children’s and YA day on Saturday, September 21st, and the flagship day on Sunday, September 22nd. Click on the link to see all of the both up-and-coming and world-famous authors that will be in attendance!
Diversity is much more than a buzzword. It is a powerful way many of us structure our schools, lives, and reading lists, and now it is a new book search engine!
In case you missed it when it originally aired last year, now you can stream PBS’s “The Great American Read”!
How about some free posters celebrating Women Role Models in Science, Technology, and Math? They are available in 7 languages other than English!
Need data sets to let your students loose on? Try SCB, UNSD, FiveThirtyEight, ProPublica, Socrata, BigQuery, Quandl, data.world, data.gov, World Bank, GapMinder, Knoema, OEC, index mundi, and Pew Research. Here are some tips and lessons to make your students more data literate!
The Fifty Greatest Coming-of-Age novels (according to Literary Hub)...
The 1619 Project from the New York Times came out this summer to much praise and acclaim, and some criticism. Here it is on PBS NewsHour, and here is the collection of poems the Times commissioned to accompany the project.
Summer is not the only time to dive into reading! Try these tips that might help you be a more active and committed reader all year long!
Need strategies to help you pronounce the names of your new students?
September is #LibraryCardSignUpMonth! Put your own oxygen masks on first and make sure your own cards (BPL & NYPL) are active, and then make sure your students have active library cards as well!
Every year the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) curates and put out a list of the Best Websites for Teaching & Learning. Here is the list for 2019!
If your students are in grades 9-12, please let them know about the National Poetry Month Poster Contest! The winning student will receive $500, a $500 gift certificate to Blick Art Materials, art supplies from Sakura Color Products of America, and signed copies of books by this year's judges, renowned graphic memoirist and comic book artist Alison Bechdel and former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. The student will also be featured in American Poets magazine. Submissions will be accepted online between September 1 and October 25th, 2019.

Summer Reading is my jam!!

6/3/2019

Here are 13 things I thought were worth sharing:

Illustration by Nishant Choksi

1. Some Summer Reading Lists for you!
UC Berkeley Summer Reading List
Book Your Summer (Barnes & Noble)
NYPL Summer Reading 2019/Teen Book Lists
Publishers Weekly Summer Reading 2019
The Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2019 (Southern Living)
The Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2019 (Parade Magazine)
The New York Times Books (interactive)
We are Kid Lit Collective

2. The kids should see this. No really, they should!

3. Creative Commons has upped their image game and now has over 300 million images, with advanced searching options coming soon!

4. Statewide Summer Reading Resources out of Albany!

5. Literature & Math teachers, Unite!

6. Here is a spiffy updated MLA formatting poster shared with us from a library in Beijing!

7. It’s time for the 10th Annual New York Times Summer Reading Contest!

8. Go see some great live music in Brooklyn this summer! And here is a longer listing for all five boroughs!

9. Request a Woman Scientist, right here.

10. The Best Advice You Ever Received (and are willing to pass on)

11. Last fall, Google launched a new search engine that is helping scientists find the data sets that they need.

12. Want to walk the runway representing the subject you teach? Check out these dresses!

13. Free computer science curriculum from Google? Yes, please!

Happy 200th Birthday, Walt Whitman!

4/9/2019

Here are 7 things I thought were worth sharing:

1. America’s Poet, Brooklyn’s Own Walt Whitman, will turn 200 on May 31st, 2019! There are a multitude of happenings celebrating a man who celebrated himself and the city and country he called home. Click here for the 8-page tabloid “America Celebrates Walt Whitman” that lists events in New York City, places all over the country, and beyond. Some events have already happened, and some stretch into the fall, so be sure to check the list soon!

2. There are two new interactive tools that allow anyone to create, print, and share “erasure” poems from both democratic texts or stories from the New York Times.

3. As Spring Fever grips us in its talons, procrastination can easily run amok. Here are two takes on procrastination (TED & NYTimes), which will help us understand it when it happens to us or to our students…

4. Have we forgotten how to read? How to pay attention to pages instead of screens? I have hope that we can balance what both bring to our lives. So does Michael Harris. Another call to action to put down our screens and take up life again…

5. Love Pharrell? Love STEAM? Then check out Pharrell’s new Netflix series called Brainchild!

6. SYNC returns on April 25th and runs through August 1st! Be sure to sign up so you can get 28 free audiobook downloads over 14 weeks and fall in love with the spoken word again…

7. Want to share videos with your students but don’t want the surprise of objectionable content popping up? Try boclips!