PCTELA Blog’s Top 5 Books of 2016

This list includes the top books I read this year. While any list like this will be limited and slightly biased, these five books, which came out this year, were 5-star quality. I read 125 books this year, so this is only 4% of the books I read in total (meaning these are better than the top 5%).

I chose these titles because they had the best writing, the best stories, and the most lasting effect after I read them. Each of these books stuck with me at least a week after I read them. They are also the books I passed out to friends the most and had the best response after friends read them.

1.Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
2. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
3. The Unseen World by Liz Moore
4. Hagseed by Margaret Atwood
5. Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

Posted by Kate, PCTELA Blog Editor

Book Review: What Light by Jay Asher

2016 was a tough year and I am not sad to see it coming to an end. Amidst news of war and death, despair and ridicule, I found myself escaping into literature to find solace. This holiday season, I found comfort in a story of forgiveness and redemption. Jay Asher’s What Light is a sweet, innocent tale of young love that left me feeling all of the good feels.

In this contemporary YA novel, Sierra, a teenager whose family moves from California to Oregon during the holiday season to run their family Christmas tree farm meets Caleb, a boy whose troubled past keeps most people in his small town from getting close to him. Although friends and family caution Sierra to distance herself from Caleb, the two develop an irrepressible attraction to one another. As the pair fumble through their first love, readers are charmed by their awkward, yet relatable interactions as our own middle and high school memories come rushing back.

Once again, Jay Asher draws readers in with his ability to develop meaningful characters and build suspense. While What Light is a much lighter read than the bestseller Thirteen Reasons Why, Asher’s talent for keeping readers invested in his characters is ever-present in his writing.

What Light was just what I needed right now. If you are looking for a break from the sadness that seems to be permeating the world, do yourself a favor: Curl up by the fire with a peppermint mocha and enjoy the feel-good novel, What Light.

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Sara is a 7th grade English teacher in the State College Area School District. She enjoys reading and spending time with her two sons, husband, and dog.

Book Review: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Book Review: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah writes brilliantly, balancing his wisdom and insight with humor and a lighthearted tone that belies the seriousness of the content. I would put this book in my top 5 books of the year.

I really enjoyed the format of this memoir. Noah intersperses facts and stories about life in South Africa with more personal stories and anecdotes. But he doesn’t just share his own stories, he shares the wisdom he’s gained from his experiences.  When he talks about how he was able to start a small business with a CD writer, it was only because a friend gave it to him.  This translates to his insightful observation about opportunity:  “People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”

There are a number of shorter chapters in this book I’d love to share with my seniors. Whether they were the chapters about learning to talk to girls or learning to be authentic or how much his mother taught him about having optimism in life, I found the writing to be relatable. On the other hand, I felt like I learned a lot about what it was like to live in post-apartheid South Africa. It was like reading an engaging history lesson by an insider. And yet, Noah made the point that as the son of a black mother and a white father, he was basically always an outsider. This balance throughout the book, of content, humor, wisdom, and insight made it a fascinating read.

If you got a book gift card for the holidays, consider buying a copy of this book. I polished it off in less than 24 hours, and I’m excited to share about it with my students.

Posted by Kate, PCTELA Blog Editor

Friday Five: Our Best Posts from 2016

This Friday, we’re celebrating a year of professional development, a year of teaching, a year of reading, a year of writing, a year of poetry. The list below contains five of our most popular blog posts this year.

1. “Where’s That Diploma? Claiming Respect as Teachers” written by PCTELA’s own Bob Dandoy
2. “Let’s Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable” by Danielle Ambrosia
3. “Book Review: Up Late with Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian” by Kate Walker
4. “Friday Five: Reasons to Watch Stranger Things Before Going Back to School” by Brian Smith
5. “A Poem: “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith” (check out Maggie Smith on twitter)

And if you’re making a New Year’s Resolution to write more, or to put yourself out there professionally, you’re always welcome to share a post with us and we’ll publish it. Just contact Kate (kap 17 @ scasd . org). We accept book reviews, opinion pieces, lesson ideas, and many other types of writing.

Posted by Kate, Blog Editor, PCTELA

Watching Proof with My Students

So we’re finishing up a modern play unit (see my previous thoughts about The Flick), and I wanted students to see how popular plays can turn into films. I decided to show the 2005 film adaptation of David Auburn’s Proof. What I love about this film is that we can watch 20-30 minutes of it and then have an in-depth 20-30 minute conversation about it. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the play is PG-13, so I don’t have to worry about inappropriate scenes (there’s one intimate one, and I just fast-forwarded through it.) The issues in the play include many my students want to talk about: mental illness, taking care of ailing parents, making decisions about college, relationships (between siblings and significant others).

Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Anthony Hopkins do an incredible job bringing the play to life.  I asked my students how they can see this film as different from others since it was originally a play and they responded: the scenes seem to be only in a few settings, the dialogue seems more intense, and the setting seems less important. I was fascinated in the differences they noticed. 

So if you’re looking for a great mini-unit for your students, reading, watching, and discussing Proof might be just the thing to engage seniors in class discussions.

Posted by Kate, Blog Editor for PCTELA

Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

This book, about what happens to the world after the Georgia Flu hits it and wipes out most of humanity, may not be the best book to read when you have the flu yourself.  However, I really enjoyed reading it, even if I was feeling under the weather myself. Perhaps it made it easier for me to imagine the world as we know it coming to an end.

We follow Kirsten, Jeevan, and Clark, people whose lives once touched the great actor Arthur Leader, who drops dead in the middle of a production of King Lear. The narrative jumps back and forth from when the epidemic hit to fifteen years later, and hits a few years in between.  One lovely element of this imagined post-apocalyptic world is the troupe of actors and musicians who travel from town to town with caravans painted with the saying:  “Survival is insufficient.” (A nod to Star Trek).

There are some heart-wrenching observations about what it means to be human, and what makes up humanity. One observation, “Hell is the absence of the people you long for” seemed especially poignant.  But I really enjoyed the conversation about how people who knew what the world was before the flu seemed to have lost more than those who never knew the ways things once were: “What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”

I’ve been off the dystopian novel for a while, but this beautifully written rendition brought me back around.  I especially enjoyed the bits with Miranda, creator of the graphic novel Station Eleven, which weaves itself through the narrative in wonderful ways.

What Happens When Teachers Get the Flu

First, we go into denial. No, my head is not hotter than the Sonoran Desert. No, my brain does not feel like a vise is squeezing it from all sides. No, I don’t have chills, you do.

Next, we move into acceptance. Accept that you’re sick and make those sub plans while you still have at least one iota of a brain cell still functioning. Accept that you’ll have to make a sub plan, accept that you’ll have to email colleagues to make sure said sub plans arrive where they need to be, copies have been made, and supplies are available for the guest teacher (also known as the sub).

After acceptance comes anxiety. What if the sub doesn’t arrive? What if the students are confused? What if there aren’t enough copies? What if the plans I wrote up in a nyquil-induced haze make absolutely no sense? What if students are bored in class and it is my fault for not creating the best sub plan ever? What if I don’t end up grading that big stack of papers I meant to grade but now I’m too sick to read?

After anxiety hits, reality arrives, in the form of cute emails from students telling you to feel better, drink tea, cuddle your cats. And the odd question or two (are these assignments due at the end of the period? do we have to read these aloud when we finish?) may actually show up in email, but nothing earth-shattering or shocking. No news that your classroom caught on fire or that your students rebelled en masse and walked out. And so you continue to snuggle in your blanket, sipping ginger-ale, petting your cats, whilst fading in and out of consciousness and only sort of watching daytime television.

Finally, as the flu drains from your system, so, too, does the anxiety, the worry, they unrealistic scenarios of what might have happened when we were out. We wake up, go in to school after a day (or two) of being out sick, and discover, to our delight or chagrin, that the world did not stop when we were out sick. A few students may confess they are glad to see me, and a few students may wish I were out one more day.

And, as Kurt Vonnegut so elegantly put it, “so it goes.”

Image of the snapchat sticker I used most on the days I was out sick. 

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Posted by Kate, Blog Editor for PCTELA, who should have gotten the flu shot this year.

NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing for High School Juniors

Something I learned through PCTELA was that I could get involved in committees and make a direct impact on our students and teachers by being involved. This blog was created as a result of a committee within PCTELA about two and half years ago.  Also because of PCTELA, I became a member of NCTE’s Achievement Awards in Writing Advisory Committee, which helps create the yearly prompts and create guidelines for evaluating student writing.

This blog has two purposes:

1. to challenge you to join a committee with your state affiliate or with NCTE. Committees allow you to get work done with a small, dedicated group of people.
2. Encourage the members of your high school to celebrate student writing along with us and help students apply for this writing award.

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This year’s submission link can be found here: 2017 Achievement Awards in Writing Submission Site.  Deadline: February 24, 2017.

Eligibility:  Juniors in the current academic school year are eligible to be nominated by their school’s English department.

Award Specifics:

1. Best Writing – one sample which the student considers her or his best work. The best writing may be in any genre or combination of genres (poetry, narrative, argument, expository). An excerpt from a larger piece of writing by the student is acceptable with a paragraph explaining the piece from which the excerpt was taken. Maximum length for the best writing is six (6) pages. The student’s name and “Best” must appear in the upper left-hand corner of each page.
2. Themed Writing – must be written based on the topic developed by the Achievement Awards Advisory Committee. Maximum length for the theme writing is four (4) pages. The student’s name and “Themed” must appear in the upper left-hand corner of each page. 2017 Achievement Awards in Writing Theme.

This year’s submission link can be found here: 2017 Achievement Awards in Writing Submission Site.  Deadline: February 24, 2017.

This award is not just about winning, it is about our approach to helping students become better writers and thinkers.  Here are our guiding principles:

• The Achievement Awards in Writing serves as a powerful means through which NCTE can recognize and empower student writers and their teachers.
• The awards also offer a powerful opportunity for writing instruction: for student writers and writing teachers.

Please consider sharing this information with department heads, counselors, principals, and teachers. For more information, go to the Achievement Awards in Writing main website. Thank you for considering this opportunity to share and celebrate student writing.

Posted by Kate, PCTELA Blog Editor and committee member of NCTE’s Achievement Awards for Writing Advisory Committee.

Friday Five: Transforming Traditional Literary Analysis

This week I collected essays for my Moby Dick unit, and I’ve been encouraging students to consider transforming their essays and writing an argument about the book that may not fit a typical traditional literary essay. I’ve been impressed by the creativity of my students, and how they maintained a high level of writing and rigor while still pursuing a creative idea.

Here are five examples of the types of transformed essays I received:
1. Moby Dick on trial: the student wrote as the court reporter, and put Moby on trial for murder of the crew of the Pequod. He even figured out how to format the document like an actual court document.

2. Psychologist’s report about Ahab’s PTSD: the student wrote as a doctor who consulted other characters and proved Ahab’s seeming insanity resulted from the trauma of losing his leg to the whale.

3. A letter as a potential professor to a department about a proposed course on influence in Moby Dick: This student presented an argument about the importance of Shakespeare, the Bible, and mythology.

4. An essay comparing Moby Dick to Mad Max: Fury Road: This student notes the parallels between the two texts and how it points toward archetypes and collective unconscious in our culture.

5. An essay explaining why Moby Dick would make a great opera: This student, an opera aficionado, argues which type of songs each character would sing and why based on the evidence in the book.

this whale image was made by a student in my class 

Posted by Kate, Blog editor PCTELA

Book Review: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

Book Review: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

I’ve been meaning to check out this book, and a conversation with a publisher at NCTE prompted me to grab a copy because I mentioned I was looking for a companion piece for Their Eyes Were Watching God and she told me it had similar themes of female friendship and coming of age elements.  I am so glad I picked up a copy.  This novel is like prose poetry and it addressed the issues of friendship, of family, and of finding yourself.

August, returns to Brooklyn for her father’s funeral, and the visit with  her brother and seeing an old friend bring back a flood of memories about the 1970s Brooklyn she knew as a girl. They moved from a farm in Tennessee, and she remembers trying to comfort her brother: “The green of Tennessee faded quickly into the foreign world of Brooklyn, heat rising from cement. I thought of my mother often, lifting my hand to stroke my own cheek, imagining her beside me, explaining this newness, the fast pace of it, the impenetrable gray of it. When my brother cried, I shushed him, telling him not to worry. She’s coming soon, I said, trying to echo her. She’s coming tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” The language is rich with substance and allusion.  The future/now August looking back on her younger self shows compassion and understanding the August of the past would have longed for at the time.

You will like this book if you like coming of age novels, if you like beautiful prose, if you like stories about friendship between young women.  Another benefit this book has is representation. August’s father turns to Islam in his grief, so we have a regular guy who also happens to be a practicing Muslim, along with the family friend who helps them shift eating habits. I’m excited to see what my students say about it, as I have a few of them reading it for a choice novel right now.

Posted by Kate, Blog Editor PCTELA