Summer Reading, with Purpose

            The last three months have challenged us in ways we never could have imagined, and we know that the work is not done. Our public health crisis is still with us, as is the social crisis of race relations in America. Many educators, students and citizens are taking time this summer to read books about race. We read these books not simply to know more, but to have the knowledge and perspective needed to influence our actions in pursuit of a more just world.

            There are a lot of books to read, and here are a few I’ve read that are well worth recommending. So many more are out there beyond this list, and I hope you find time to read and continue the dialogue.

            Nonfiction for the Moment

            The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

            Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

            The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

            The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

            Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

            Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

            How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

            White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

            The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

            Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

            The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

            These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness by Jennifer Berry Hawes

            Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

            Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude M. Steele

            Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

            Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
            Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi

            The journalism of Nikole Hannah-Jones, including The 1619 Project, her New York Times Magazine and This American Life pieces on school integration & segregation, and her story in this week’s New York Times Magazine

            “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

            “The History that James Baldwin Wanted America to See,” by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

            The social commentary inside the arts criticism of Wesley Morris, including this piece

           

            Fiction

            The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

            The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

            The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

            Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

So many works by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, August Wilson, James McBride, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker, to name a few

Books on My Summer Reading List

Waking up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

Begin Again : James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson
            Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life by Howard Steven Friedman

Decorating the Office

            I’ve never had an office before. Cubicles and classrooms defined the first 25 years of my working life, which was just fine, thank you. But as a school administrator, I get an office. It’s tiny, with most of the floor space taken up by a large desk, file cabinets and a bookcase. But there’s also plenty of wall space, and that’s where I had to make choices upon entering the room.

            What would I hang on the walls of my office? And what would that say about my values as an assistant principal? As students began entering the office during this first week of school, I happily gave them a tour.

            One wall was reserved for a series of Apple “Think Different” posters that my wife gave me during my first year of teaching, 19 years ago. I’ve had them up every year since, so there was no doubt that they would make their way into the room. They feature black-and-white photos of famous innovators, from Mahatma Gandhi to Amelia Earhart to Jim Henson to Pablo Picasso. The “Think Different” slogan has always fit into my core values as an educator, so I want students to see those words as often as possible.

            There are no diplomas on the walls, but there is a teacher award plaque and photos of my students, one of them a framed photo of a journalism class given to me last year by the students themselves. Another photo was sent to me from a just-graduated senior, who is studying abroad in her first semester of college and wanted me to see her enjoying a rugby game in New Zealand. Another photo shows students from the community service club I’ve advised, posing with a patient from Children’s Specialized Hospital during a dance marathon fund-raiser. With these snapshots from my teaching life, I hope to show students how much I care about their lives.

            There is a small, three-tiered table in a corner, which features an old-school typewriter on the top level, a reporter’s notebook and recorder on the second level, and a newspaper drawing on the bottom. The table reminds me of the journalism that serves as the foundation of my work experience, work ethic and work philosophy.

            The bookshelf features texts that support my work in education and adolescent development (from Carol Dweck’s Mindset to Susan Cain’s Quiet to Angela Duckworth’s Grit to Frank Bruni’s Where You Go is Not Who You’ll Be), as well as books that encourage dialogue on social justice and community engagement (Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, James McBride’s The Color of Water). There are also books that remind me of how I grew into my role as an educator and thinker, from authors such as Jonathan Kozol, Anna Quindlen, Fred Rogers and Ralph Ellison.

            Outside my door, there are two dry-erase boards: One for students who need to leave me messages, and one featuring an inspirational quote of the day. On the first day of school, I posted a quote from the writer Rainer Maria Rilke: “And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”

            Beyond the innovators, snapshots, mementoes, books and words, there’s another piece to this room that serves as perhaps the most visible part of my office décor. On three of the walls, I have hung photos and drawings of bridges. Many of them depict the Brooklyn Bridge, which has long been my favorite New York City landmark. From poster-sized photos to New Yorker covers to a painting by my daughter, I surround myself with the 135-year-old architectural beauty that spans the East River because I find it incredibly inspiring.

But as a writer and English teacher, I also see a metaphor here. Adolescence is, in many ways, a bridge between childhood and adulthood. And administrators are often bridge-keepers who help connect students, faculty, parents and the overall community with one another. Finally, schools themselves are bridges, designed to help learners connect with one another, with academic disciplines, and with their own individual thoughts. We’re constantly building bridges for students as they share information, and also within students as they connect the dots between prior knowledge and new discoveries, between assumptions and reality, and between fact and fiction. In so many ways, educators are the engineers of personal growth, and it is our job to keep the pathways clear for students to make important crossings and to take the risk of reaching for the other side.

There are a lot of quotes out there supporting this metaphor, but I’ll leave you with one. During a lecture 55 years ago, Ralph Ellison said, “Education is all a matter of building bridges.” This seems as true to me today as it was to Ellison in 1963.

So yes, I have an office now. But the essence of my work remains the same as it ever was. In case I forget that, I’ve got the bridges to remind me.

Through Troubled Times

            We’re living through a moment in which all of us around the nation and world are in desperate need of ways to come together. When leaders are not focused on finding ways to deepen our understanding and acceptance, we cannot wait for them to decide that these things matter. We must step forward and take the lead in whatever ways we can.

            In my job as a teacher, I teamed up this fall with an inspiring colleague to host a “one read” program in which we invited students, parents, staff and community members to read and discuss the book Outcasts United, written by Warren St. John. The book chronicles a soccer team near Atlanta made up of refugee teens and the extraordinary coach who helps them grow and find their place in a new land. At our book discussions, we invited Syrian and Iraqi refugee families to talk at the school, and also heard from one of our school’s teachers who fled the war in Bosnia more than two decades ago. These conversations provided a depth of awareness that many of us did not have. We left one session inspired by with the words of 16-year-old Abdullah, who has been in America for a year after fleeing both Iraq and Syria: “I have something to fight for,” he said, “and that is my future.”

            As adviser of my school’s community service club, I’ve worked with students in volunteering at an extraordinary refugee assistance program hosted in a Jewish temple in town. I’ve also helped my students rake leaves and sell candy to raise money for hurricane relief in Puerto Rico and Texas (our donations to Puerto Rico support a nonprofit that provides solar energy to residents, and it was founded by a 15-year-old). And I’ve joined with these amazing teens on Friday nights as they make lunches and deliver meals to homeless and other low-income individuals in Manhattan.

            As co-coordinator of a peer-mentoring club, I’ve helped train juniors and seniors to lead freshman discussion groups on issues such as friendships, bullying and stereotypes. In their last discussion, the freshmen and upperclassmen discussed the “bystander effect,” and pondered the reasons why we often fail to step in when others are in need. We compared stories of people who have not stepped in with the story of Wesley Autrey, who more than a decade ago dove onto a subway track to cover a man who was having a seizure as a subway car passed above them. The students read and asked themselves: What does it take to find the strength to help someone in need?

            As a journalism teacher and adviser, I’ve steered my students toward a close study of how the words “fake news” have evolved over the past year, and what this issue has meant to our own sense of media literacy. I’ve also advised ambitious student reporters who have taken on meaty issues such as mental illness, gun control, political involvement and sexual harassment for their stories in our student-run newspaper.

            At our annual state teachers’ convention, I attended workshops on Islam, opioid abuse, sexual orientation, gender identity and culturally responsive classrooms. At my church, I’ve joined an anti-racism committee formed by one of our church pastors. At home, I’ve read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power to consider the ways in which America’s outlook toward race changed throughout the previous presidency. I’ve started reading Isabel Wilkerson‘s The Warmth of Other Suns to better understand the impact of the Great Migration on our country. And I’ve continued reading Nikole Hannah-Jones’ New York Times Magazine stories on school segregation, to gain a clearer view of how this issue has deepened instead of lessened over the past half-century.

            I know I’m just a teacher, writer and citizen with a few areas of influence, and I can’t change the world. But I can do my part to help. And I’m ready for more. After years of considering it, my wife and I are finally looking into solar energy. I want to read the new John Green novel that delves deeply into mental health. I have a student reporter who wants to do a story in which she gives $10 to a few people with the requirement that they find unique ways to give the money away, inspired by a New York Times story we read. And those service club kids are still raising money for hurricane relief, and they want to spend some time with senior citizens at an assisted-living center before the holidays.

            In his song “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” Nick Lowe asked questions more than 40 years ago that seem more than relevant today:

As I walk on

Through troubled times

My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes

So where are the strong?

And who are the trusted?

And where is the harmony?

Sweet harmony

I don’t know all the answers to Lowe’s questions. But I do know that I’m not giving up. 

Bring on the Books

            One of the best things about summer for an English teacher is having the time to read. A perfect summer afternoon for me involves a few hours of uninterrupted reading on the beach, with the book of my choice in hand. After two years of educational leadership classes, having the time to read whatever I want has been most welcome this summer.

            When I read a summer book, my primary concern is not whether or not this will be a good fit for the classroom. I may find a text that I’d like to teach once in awhile, but that’s not my priority. I choose summer texts that I’m genuinely curious about, because that’s what readers do. And then as I’m reading, I think about the ways in which that text might help me in some way through my work as a teacher.

            After all, the whole point of reading in school is to help us develop our own outlook on the world and ourselves. In addition, positive school-reading experiences can help students develop into adult readers. I’m living proof of that, and I read over the summer in the hopes that I can help inspire my students to be independent agents of personal growth through their own reading choices.

            Earlier this summer, I read two young-adult books, Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Both have been runaway bestsellers, and I read them so that I can discuss the books with students who have also read them. I don’t teach the age group that would read these texts in school, but I teach students who may wish to connect their own learning to them in some way. And now I can help them do that, and we can discuss the text-to-life connections we see in both novels.

            I also read James Baldwin’s classic The Fire Next Time, because its discussion of race was clearly an inspiration for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Many students are now reading Coates’ award-winning book, which like Baldwin’s is written in the form of a letter to a loved one and is designed to address race in America with complete honesty. Baldwin’s book helps me put Coates’ modern classic in historical and literary context.

            I checked out Sherman Alexie’s new memoir, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, as well as George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo and Dave Eggers’ novel Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? All three of these authors dare to write in ways that are radically different from traditional prose – Alexie by mixing poetry and prose, Saunders and Eggers by relying heavily on dialogue and dark humor, and Saunders by also mixing in excerpts of historical texts with his own fiction. I seek out authors who choose to write differently because so many of my students are doing the same today. For them, a day’s writing consists of Snapchat captions, Instagram posts, text messages, emails and traditional homework, both printed out and submitted online. There is no single path for them today, so why should their reading consist solely of traditional sentences and paragraphs? In addition, they take on so many different voices depending on the media they’re using and the audience they’re speaking to. I see value in helping them discuss the different ways great writers do this.

            I read Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air because a memoir by a doctor who is dying of cancer just seemed fascinating to me. And why do we read if not to quench our own thirst for specific knowledge? The same applied to my reading of Harvey Araton’s Driving Mr. Yogi, a book about New York Yankees Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry, and the deep friendship they forged. I like reading and writing about baseball and life, and this one fit the bill. When I assign independent-reading projects to my students and encourage them to choose something they want to learn more about, I can bring up the choices I’ve made to model that process for them.

            I have read more during this past month than I usually do during a summer month, as the list of things to read had built up a lot over those two years. As the summer progresses, I’ve got more on my list – two longer novels, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I anticipate both books will help me view the direction literature is taking at its most influential level. I’d also like to read a nonfiction book by my favorite New York Times reporter, Dan Barry, and an autobiography that addresses baseball and race, written by former player, broadcaster and National League president Bill White. I find it really helpful to lean my humanities-oriented mind into the sciences as well, so I’m eyeing the book I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. After that, we’ll see how much time is left and what I can fit into the summer.

            When September begins, and I step back into the classroom, these texts will most assuredly be in my mental backpack, and will help me find ways to connect with my students and colleagues. Books help us deepen our understanding of the world and ourselves, and that’s kind of the point of education as well. So yes, I am an English teacher. And yes, I read a lot over the summer. As far as I see it, this is part of the job – and part of a fulfilling life.