Reader Response: Ulysses
I look forward to doing a book review for Ulysses next, but a Reader Response based on my margin notes felt more appropriate given the nature of the work. Okay so this may not be as bad as I remember I mean it’s just some dudes eating breakfast and borrowing money from each other and then Stephen going to work to teach history and there are some funny observations and connections so I wonder if we’ll follow Stephen more or get back to Leopold well it looks like we are sticking with Stephen for awhile and he seems so incredibly broody…
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Reader Response: War and Peace
I loved War and Peace from the moment Pierre bumbled into scheming Anna Pavlovna’s party and proceeded to horrify everyone by fawning over Napoleon.
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Reader Response: Thank You For Your Service
“Thank You For Your Service” was not optimistic or pessimistic, angry or trite. It was simply, overwhelmingly honest. Like, two boxes of tissues honest.
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Book Review: Ulysses
I appreciate Joyce’s technique and experiments with style. I found his echoes of, and connections to, other literary works rather fun. I, in turns, enjoyed Joyce’s cleverness and found that cleverness eye-rollingly overdone.
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Book Review: The Fire Next Time & Between the World and Me
In short, we…deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation…
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Book Review: Praying for Sheetrock
Melissa Fay Greene’s Praying for Sheetrock is a well-researched, detail-oriented, unhurried read about a tumultuous time in the history of McIntosh County, Georgia.
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Book Review: Sapiens
The Vagabond Teen and I took Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari on the road this summer. We listened to the audio book on road trip days, read some chapters in our down time, and further dove into the subject of humankind, our biology, and our social history by watching videos about early humans and looking at what we’ve learned about our own deep ancestry through participation in National Geographic’s Genographic Project. Sapiens offers up what the title indicates–a view of human society and the way our biology and beliefs have influenced our development as a species over the course of…
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Book Review & Library Lesson: Tribe
This book…will serve as a valuable learning tool to emphasize to young writers the importance of maintaining a clear main idea in their writing and of utilizing an organized system of citation to give credence to their work.
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Book Review: Antifragile
I tackled Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile slowly–both to reflect on Taleb’s ideas, and because reading this book is like hanging out with a brilliant and obnoxious friend who is best taken in small doses. Nearly a year later, reading the book’s Conclusion, I found Taleb had articulated exactly why I couldn’t stay away from this dense, sometimes fervently arrogant, work: It is hard to find people knowledgeable and confident enough to like to extract the essence of things, instead of nitpicking. (p. 421) The concepts Taleb puts forth in Antifragile are simple, and not new, but the thought behind those concepts is…
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Book Review: A Little Life
This review contains spoilers. I am still emotionally reeling from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It is a brilliant and heartbreaking story that grows darker and more intense as it progresses. A Little Life begins as the story of four men whose friendship first develops in college. The characters are compelling from the outset, and they become even more so as their lives unfold, individually and in the context of their relationship to each other. To say that the story gains intensity as the author tightens focus one of the friends (Jude) seems inadequate. The slowly unearthed revelations about Jude’s past…
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Book Review: Go Set a Watchman
I’m not sorry I read Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. But. I have a few words of caution for my fellow Mockingbird lovers still on the fence about whether to read Go Set a Watchman. I wish I had approached this work as the rejected manuscript of a very talented young writer, and not as a companion to the well-crafted and beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. I suggest you do just that if you decide to jump off the fence and read it. I wrote the following observations as I was reading: The Quick & Dirty Half-Way Review I found that my old…
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Reading
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The narrative details a hectic week in a middle school library, highlighting the multifaceted responsibilities of a librarian. It begins with the librarian setting up a “You Belong Here” theme while juggling tasks like managing inter-library loans and addressing a parent complaint about a book. Each day presents unique challenges: hosting events, coordinating logistics, and…
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Welcome to my middle school library. It gets a little loud in here, but I think you’ll find what you need. As we begin this renewed blog journey together, I think you should know: I laugh every single day at work. Belly laughs, chuckles, giggles, and occasional snorts. I am certain that, to some, I…
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by Kate Gukeisen, written around 2016 Ten years agothe fighting got bad. Ten years agoWe madecasserolesthat we expected would go uneaten. We madecallsthat left us weeping on the flooruntil we put on brave faces to pick up children from school. Ten years agowe askedourselves when it would get better then we hopedit just wouldn’t get…
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This thing that is happening. It is global. Global. That means that it is happening to all of us and we are all doing our best to muddle through.
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The Backlist Reader Challenge: fifteen books I’ve been hoarding on my To Read shelf are getting read this year! 📚 #BacklistReader
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This is Part 8 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 7 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 6 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 5 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 4 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 3 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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This is Part 2 of The Orphan in My Family Tree. It is the true tale of my ongoing search for the parents of my great great grandpa Fritz, who was orphaned in New York City in the late 1870s and sent, at the age of seven, to live with a foster family in Bow Valley, Nebraska.…
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I’d like you to meet Fritz. He is my great great grandfather on my mother’s mother’s mother’s side. His parents are a mystery in my family tree, and I love a good mystery. Family lore informs us that Fritz, whose real name was Frederick, was born sometime in the early 1870s in New York City.…
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I’m generally more of a “the journey is the thing” person than a goal oriented person, but for the past few years I’ve enjoyed participating in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. In years past, I’ve set reading goals that I knew would be pretty easy to blow past. My biggest challenge during those years was actually…
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While we enjoyed everything about our little visit, our greatest unexpected pleasure was the amazing food and wine we encountered in the little corner of Istria we visited.
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“Thank You For Your Service” was not optimistic or pessimistic, angry or trite. It was simply, overwhelmingly honest. Like, two boxes of tissues honest.
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I am instead suggesting we have continued conversations as a reading community about building the best collections we can that include characters and stories that have the potential to connect with each of us in a way that makes us all better and that increases our understanding of our society, our history, and our connectedness.
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I loved War and Peace from the moment Pierre bumbled into scheming Anna Pavlovna’s party and proceeded to horrify everyone by fawning over Napoleon.
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I appreciate Joyce’s technique and experiments with style. I found his echoes of, and connections to, other literary works rather fun. I, in turns, enjoyed Joyce’s cleverness and found that cleverness eye-rollingly overdone.
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I look forward to doing a book review for Ulysses next, but a Reader Response based on my margin notes felt more appropriate given the nature of the work. Okay so this may not be as bad as I remember I mean it’s just some dudes eating breakfast and borrowing money from each other and then…
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He cannot give me any sort of expected delivery window, which is all I really want…just a window so that I don’t feel powerless, with my schedule held hostage by the unknown. He hopes I have a great weekend. I hope he does not enjoy his weekend at all…
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We need to stop working from the assumption that people who express different opinions than ours are Super Bad Other Guys.
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Banned Books Week kicked off yesterday. I love Banned Books Week. It is a whole week dedicated to awesome stuff like celebrating our freedom to read and highlighting our right to access diverse material of our own choosing at our school and public libraries. And, equally as awesome, it is a reminder of the guarantee…
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Wrapping up the school year at a very special place… #itsaLIBERTYthing
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We honor the memory of fallen heroes on this day, including many who were much more than heroes to us–they were our friends.
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A decade ago, our military was facing a dizzying op-tempo, coupled with the kind of violent warfare that my family, and many other young Army families in the regular combat arms community, had not been exposed to quite so intimately before. I have felt comfort in reading stories from other military spouses processing their most galvanizing deployments from that time. Stories in which…
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In short, we…deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation…
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Melissa Fay Greene’s Praying for Sheetrock is a well-researched, detail-oriented, unhurried read about a tumultuous time in the history of McIntosh County, Georgia.
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We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. -ALA’s The Freedom to Read Statement
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Photo credit: The featured image on this post is Vote by Theresa Thompson, made available via a Creative Commons 2.0 license by personalincom.org/vote. I became a librarian because I am passionate about empowering people by connecting them with information they can use to positive effect in their lives and communities. With the election fast approaching, we all continue to…
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The Vagabond Teen and I hit the road for a summer adventure as our Vagabond Soldier left for his own adventure afar. Here are but a few photos…and after the photos a sampling of our travel playlist. Our take away from the experience: America is amazing and wonderful and quirky. As are Americans! Road Trip…
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The Vagabond Teen and I took Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari on the road this summer. We listened to the audio book on road trip days, read some chapters in our down time, and further dove into the subject of humankind, our biology, and our social history by watching videos about early humans and…
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This book…will serve as a valuable learning tool to emphasize to young writers the importance of maintaining a clear main idea in their writing and of utilizing an organized system of citation to give credence to their work.
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Being involved in Army Life looks different for every family.
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This review contains spoilers. I am still emotionally reeling from A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It is a brilliant and heartbreaking story that grows darker and more intense as it progresses. A Little Life begins as the story of four men whose friendship first develops in college. The characters are compelling from the…
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Originally posted on Nerdy Book Club: ? Children do not become readers because we tell them to read, but because we immerse them inside of our own reading lives and invite them to create their own. These immersions charge us, as teachers and readers, to tell the story of our roads to reading, detail our…
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What that means to those of us looking for blog pictures is that we can more easily find content from creators who are happy to share their work with others. The beauty of these licenses for the content creators is that they can share their work and retain a degree of control over who uses…
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I’m not sorry I read Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. But. I have a few words of caution for my fellow Mockingbird lovers still on the fence about whether to read Go Set a Watchman. I wish I had approached this work as the rejected manuscript of a very talented young writer, and not as a companion…
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I am in the first month of my second year as a high school librarian. Our first month of school involves setting or reviewing goals for a number of stakeholders in the school community. From the school governance board, to the technology department, to the literacy team, we have each been focused on our goals, and on…
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When I graduated in May 2014, I adjusted my tagline to “Reports from the intersection of library & information science, education, and lifelong learning.” I thought that change would help me focus my writing. What it actually did was trip me up and stop me from writing about things that were important to me. I am…
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I have a rare, quiet moment this afternoon–not long enough to dive into anything deep and philosophical, but long enough to share a little bit about how we celebrated the freedom to read in our school in September. Inspired by Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, we caught the attention of our students and teachers by setting the…
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My MoMA MOOC, Take 2 I loved the Art & Inquiry course offered by MoMA on Coursera so much that I signed up for another MoMA MOOC. I recently finished Art & Activity, and found it just as inspiring and engaging. This time around, I focused on working with secondary students in my projects to…
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I’m excited to share this celebration video I’m creating for one of the classes I worked with during my practicum. I am going through their project packets to provide a final round of feedback—and am excited that their planning and creativity resulted in some amazing projects! Sharing a few snippets of their hard work seemed like a great…
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I had an NPR Parking Lot Moment this morning. I was listening to a talk show guest describe the way he coached his clients to connect with audiences by communicating authentically, briefly, and with passion. He spoke about preparing people he worked with to become more effective speakers by asking them questions inspired by Steve…
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The Art & Inquiry MOOC I was taking through Coursera from MoMA wrapped up this week. I’ll receive my grade next week, and wanted to share some of my learning with you here. In addition to the slides included in this post (that will take you through an inquiry lesson plan that uses artwork as a…
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MoMA’s Art and Inquiry I’m half-way through my first MOOC, and I am so happy I picked a good one. Last semester, one of my classes considered MOOCs for different ages and types of learners, and during my investigation and learning I saw that the Museum of Modern Art in New York offered an “Art…
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I love vintage books. I have shelves full of them at home. I once bought a 1930s era dictionary at a Goodwill store just to browse through it and see what words I could *not* find there. I have a special passion for old etiquette books and what they reveal about the behavioral and societal…
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Blind Date with a Book campaigns have become popular at all sorts of libraries. The concept is simple: library members choose and check out a “mystery book,” read (or abandon) the book, and then provide feedback about whether they connected with or liked the book. The purpose of campaigns like this one is to encourage…
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In early December, I thought I would post book reviews here every few days to keep my blog rolling through the weeks between fall semester and spring semester. I knew I would read over the break–in spite of days of driving with car-sick cats, and days of unpacking, and weeks of getting to know my…
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I have written about Storybird before, and tonight I was able to share some of my Storybird learning with my Information Technologies in Educational Organizations classmates during a webinar. I wanted to provide a few additional resource links here as a follow-up to that experience, and I wanted to share the learning with anyone else who may…
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Today I’m sharing an advocacy video I created for my Technologies class. In my “real” advocacy video, I would include photos from my school library. In this practice video, I enjoyed including photos from my volunteer experiences, library fieldwork, and visits to the local library with my preschool classes. Enjoy!
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Originally posted on Dog-eared & Overdue: What’s a library? This is about the Carthage Free Library. I’d love to hear about your public, academic, or special library. My library is located in a charming building on Budd Street, but its services are at the Farmer’s Market, the school gym, and anywhere the community gathers. My…
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This week in my Information Technologies in Educational Organizations course, we’ve been learning and talking about leadership, advocacy, and evidence-based practice. As future school librarians and engaged members of society, my classmates and I know that many of our country’s school and public libraries are in trouble. We know that user-centered, evidence-based practice and an effective advocacy plan…
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Dear School Librarians and Fellow Future School Librarians, We are better than this. We are educators and information specialists, and we need to stop comparing ourselves to Internet search engines. I agree with everything this constantly circulated graphic says about what librarians do. However, I hate that the focus of the message shifts in one…
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A wiki is a content collaboration tool that enables people to work together remotely to share ideas, develop new understandings, plan and negotiate processes, make decisions, and solve problems. A wiki can serve as a sandbox for collaboration and working together, and it also can serve as a presentation medium for finished work. Students can…
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Glogster is a Web 2.0 Tool that makes it easy for librarians, teachers, and students to present media-rich information and links for further exploration about…well, about anything, really. Glogster features a palette of text boxes, frames, and upload and embed options that offer a balance between customization and ease of use in creating interactive online…
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The first time my Vagabond Soldier deployed to Afghanistan, resources about the country were hard to find, out of date, and seemed to reveal little about the true spirit and culture of the Afghan people. Even though my son was a baby at the time, I wanted to find stories to share with him that…
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Interested in learning more about the Second Level Digital Divide and what a school librarian can do about it? Click the link and read on! Umland_Gukeisen_IST668_DigitalDivide
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Teacher-librarians can use blogs in their school libraries to connect with students and the community, to support learning standards, and to give students a voice in collection and program development. I like the idea of a blog written by the school librarian(s) that promotes library activities and resources; a blog written by students in which…
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Teachers, Did you know the American Association of School Librarians has learning standards that align with the Common Core learning standards you use in your content area teaching? The AASL Learning Standards & Common Core State Standards Crosswalk contains a number of connections that can provide a basis for collaboration with your school librarian. The crosswalk…
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I am excited about the learning that can happen on mobile devices (mLearning). In this post, I’ve included a few thoughts about using mLearning in schools, as well as a useful chart for choosing appropriate mLearning tools and a brief description of an activity that will engage even our youngest students in meaningful mLearning. There…
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“Reading Summer” at our house is that brief time of year when we have the opportunity to read whatever we want, without the distraction of assigned reading. I enjoy reading. I actually find my textbooks engaging. There is something, though, about having an entire three weeks to binge on my own reading choices that makes…
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This summer, I took a Youth Services in Library Environments course that included a one-week residency at Syracuse University. In the class were the usual mix I’ve come to expect in my library & information science classes at the iSchool–a wonderful mix of students from around the country who represent a wide variety ages, backgrounds,…
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I’m so glad you found me! I am currently working to make sure that my old blog has migrated to my new blog address in a readable sort of way. I have a few drafts in the queue about literacy, the digital divide, collaboration, and our upcoming move to Georgia. That move won’t happen for…
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School librarians can serve an important role in supporting teachers and students as they adjust to new expectations. While I still have a number of questions about the best way to assist teachers as they integrate Informational Text into their lessons, I see a number of opportunities that these authentic texts offer. Check out my Goodreads…
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The following is an actual question, posed by an actual school librarian: You can’t use citation generators–why?? That is awful–we need to prepare kids for the real world. In the real world we use the generators. The original post that inspired this “question from an actual school librarian” was by a school media specialist asking…
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In Flanders Fields by John McCrae (1872-1918) In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset…
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This post is inspired by a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University. I’ve included a number of links to articles and video clips about games and gamification throughout the post so that you can explore this topic further. At left: My team’s game creation, a spin-off of CandyLand to facilitate learning about the resources…
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A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving at the destination. -Lao Tzu Most of the time this blog is about library land, today it is about military life. The fluid geography that comes with our military lifestyle has provided me with opportunities and experiences that I would not have…
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School Librarians can provide important in-house opportunities for professional development, especially in the arena of the integration of technical tools that support 21st Century Learning in the classroom. Teaching teachers is clearly different from teaching younger students. In spite of the differences, the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, which focuses on the four motivational elements of attention, relevance,…
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In this post, I explore some of the challenges new school librarians face in collaborating with educators who are already strapped for time and stressed out about the pressures of their ongoing transition to implement the Common Core Standards. Collaboration takes time, and if teacher librarians want to be included in learning partnerships with classroom…
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American Phychological Theorist David McClelland had a theory about motivation that you are probably familiar with, even if you didn’t know exactly what it was called. The Achievement Motivation Theory is one of those so-simple-yet-so-complex ideas that is easily grasped and multilayered. Simply put, it is the idea that we find intrinsic motivation through three…
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At our house, we love the Mythbusters. As soon as we saw the “Larry’s Lawn Chair Balloon” episode we were hooked. We love the Mythbuster’s enthusiasm for investigation, their willingness to look at things from different perspectives, and we especially love their willingness to fail, and fail, and fail again to prove or disprove a…
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This post is an edited, enhanced, and otherwise reworked version of an internal class blog post from a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University. I am posting a series of these because the topics are close to my heart, they illustrate part of my library school journey, and I believe will get…
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This post is an edited, enhanced, and otherwise reworked version of an internal class blog post from a class called Motivating 21st Century Learners at Syracuse University. I am posting a series of these because the topics are close to my heart, they illustrate part of my library school journey, and I believe will get…
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I had the pleasure last weekend of participating in a story time for military families on Fort Drum. Tell Me a Story is a program hosted by the Military Child Education Coalition and is intended to promote literacy and, according to the MCEC website, to “empower Military Children by using literature and their own stories in…
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I am greeted as the “Lego Lady” when I enter my library and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’m not the first library Lego Lady, and I won’t be the last, but I’m glad I am one for the moment. A few weeks ago, I met with the library director and she mentioned that she…
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So there we were…with the majority of our Reference Services and Information Literacy class behind us, and with two major projects ahead, one of them a Library Pathfinder. A pathfinder is essentially a topic guide that contains carefully chosen resources that provide a launching point for research. While I looked forward to the assignment itself,…
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The crying started with a visit to the university library. It was the middle of our residency week, and we had spent the previous few days discussing the importance of keeping our focus as librarians on community, innovation, collaboration, and creation. I had embraced the concepts of roving and embedded librarians, empowering people through their very…
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Our Title, My Friend, Was Blowin’ In the Wind One of the great pleasures of my summer 2011 gateway week in Syracuse was working with so many equally invested, passionate, and fun fellow students. Of the many group projects we did, our grand finale took the form of presenting at a poster session. I was…
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Effective instructors are in tune with their students and able to shift gears with them. And they know when to pass out the mints.
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My post about Ace the Library Dog led to some great questions and to a few friends sharing their experiences with similar programs. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some a few interesting links regarding library dog programs. After exhaustive research (okay, after typing “library dog” into google), I struck gold in the…
Dog-eared & Overdue 