One Crazy Ride

Hello tiny isolated portion of the world that will see this post. Not going to lie or obfuscate this has been a rough week. Multiple hospital visits and two overnight stays to boot. For those concerned, I am fine and was not the center of these medical field trips. It is time however to bridge this superficial personal drama to the literature at hand. I found one thing that did help me this week were the frequent escapes I took into Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer.

I must confess my love for Young Adult literature only grows with each novel I read. Unfortunately so do I and the looks I am sure I will when I am 35 and reading Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl for the 12th time will not be fun, but in the meantime I will enjoy the shield this institution offers me. One Crazy Summer  was one crazy ride to be sure. I found myself getting inexplicably attached to the trials and tribulations of these three girls. Just a few pages in I was almost wringing the novel out of anger when they met Cecile, their mother, and experienced the opposite of what any little girl should experience during such a homecoming. I found myself looking in this proverbially "mirror" we have spoken so much about more than once and through their journey taking a little journey of my own.

Just as Delphine found herself in an unfamiliar place, taking care of her sisters, running out to get take out in strange town, and trying to understand a situation much larger then herself, I found myself in somewhat of a "Crazy Summer" story. Perhaps this is less the mirror and more my own narcissism, but I too was running to get take out in a part of town I didn't know. I too was trying to take care of my fiance, alone, throughout her medical trials this past week, and I too found myself sleeping on a chair in the corner of her room as doctors tried to explain to me what they were doing. (For the concern of the reader I will tell that everything ended up okay, but it was most certainly a rough ride). Whether or not my image in the mirror and Delphines were similar at all I do not know, but I'd like to think those three little girls helped me get through this past week.

Wow... have to say I didn't really see this post going in that direction. Guess that's what cathartic writing gets me ehh?

Keep calm and read a good book.

Steady as she goes..

For starters Happy MLK Day!! As we roll into week three I took a moment to step back and look at everything having watched the dust settle. It is interesting that our reading of Monster coincides with this particular holiday. Perhaps this is by design, but my thoughts are brought to ideas of equality and justice. We have spoke about the many effects and results of utilizing multicultural literature. Currently one has come more into my focus than the rest. Just like in every sphere of life, things like racism, injustice, and prejudice weigh in on the literature used in education. When you think of the cannon of high school literature, many of them are written by white men. Using authors that work against that stereotype helps to balance that injustice. We see things like literature as an equalizer but the amount of exposure multicultural authors gets is far behind their white counterparts. Perhaps in some small way I can help change that.

I feel the need to end this post with a completely unrelated quote, but respect must be given to one of the greatest advocates for equality in history.

"Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty we are free at last."
Martin Luther King Jr

The Begining of the End

Greetings fellow classmates, bloggers, and random creepers who happen upon this page by fortuitous opportunity. My name is Shane Conrad, and I aspire among many things to either be the first Cross-Desert Skier, it’s very tricky and involves a lot of falling, or a teacher with a shiny master’s degree on his wall. I have an undergraduate degree to teach secondary English from Indiana University of PA. I spent a year and a half doing several long term sub tenures ranging from three weeks to 6 months, but sadly I found myself back at the bottom of the barrel. Like that last apple on the tree that was not picked I decided not to simply fall from the lowly branch I had come to rest upon but to climb to the top of the tree for all to see!

If you are still reading I am really not as much of a drone as my over exaggerated writing may present. I am actually a pretty chill guy. I teach fitness at a gym, work in an office for a bank (substitute teaching unfortunately was not a reliable source of income nor a particularly large one) I have a cute albeit overpriced apartment in Shadyside (part of the reason I can’t afford to substitute teach), and I love my Cat Maximus the Brave (he named himself, I was gunning for Clive Owen Jr).

More to the subject matter of this particular course, I love reading anything although I am particularly drawn to Young Adult literature. I was extra excited to see the reading list for this class as a number of the titles are fantastic; Monster and Part Time Diary are two of my favorite grabs. They are easy to devour and yet have a poetic depth unlike any genre I have involved myself in. My goals are to further my knowledge of literature like this and find even more ways to bring them into the classroom. Often times I find students barely surviving through the hackneyed canon of literature we have been forcing upon them for years. I want to find ways to teach the same lessons those old books offer with new literature.

That’s all for now fellow earthlings and any otherworldly beings peeking in. Have a happy Tuesday.