The summer is upon us and many students are breathing a sigh of relief. Final exams are over. They can take a break for tedious homework assignments. Best of all, they don’t have to sit in those hard desks for a couple months.

However, there is one thing every student should be doing regardless if they are attending school or not – Reading Books!

Our goals are to encourage students to become life-long readers who read critically, insightfully, and enjoyably; to unify our students around a common connection to literature, and to give our faculty and staff an opportunity to model the behavior of life-long readers.

Reading is the one area that will affect an adolescent the most. His or her ability to read fluently will help

• Increase vocabulary
• Allow you to glimpse into different cultures
• Improve concentration and focus
• Improve memory
• Improve writing skills (you you begin to mimic good writing by reading good writing)
• Reduce stress
• Improve creativity
• Improve social sklills by learning how decisions affect others
• Improve reasoning skills by reading how characters overcome problems
• Builds your expertise in subjects
• change your life (the written word can have a profound effect)

On top of that, the summer is the number one reason for skill loss. Students forget over 50% of what they learned over the long summer months.

According to Scholastic Instructor, an online teacher publication, “the best predictor of summer loss or summer gain is whether or not a child reads during the summer. Young readers who don’t continue to read over the summer — especially those who are reluctant or at-risk — are likely to lose crucial ground. One summer off can sometimes mean a whole school year of struggling academic performance.”

So, to combat summer loss, the incoming 10th grade Advanced English class will read three novels and complete a few assignments for each.

The summer break is three months long, so we shall tackle one book a month. The completion of the book and the assignments are due at the end of the month.

The novels are listed below with links for parents to check out the book contents on CommonSenseMedia and links to Amazon.com. The novels were chosen after thorough research and teacher collaboration. I wanted to choose novels that are completely different types (genres) of books  that offer different challenges, but all revolve around teenagers and the issues teens deal with growing up.

After reading about each novel and clicking on their links, choose one novel from each section.

Novels

Choose ONE from NON-FICTION

RED SCARF GIRL – Non-Fiction – CHECK IT OUT HERE! – Teacher supplied or purchase online for around $2.00 on Amazon.com

In her memoir of growing up in Shanghai during China’s Cultural Revolution, Ji-Li Jiang paints a clear and devastating portrait of a brutal political movement that ruined many lives — and had a deep impact on her own family. The engaging story makes young readers want to know more about the subject.

OR

MY FORBIDDEN FACE – Non-Fiction - CHECK IT OUT HERE! – Purchase online for around $1.00 on Amazon.com.

Latifa was only 16 when the Taliban overran Kabul, changing her life dramatically. On the morning of September 26, 1996–the day the Taliban took Kabul–Latifa, her sister, Soraya, and their father drove to Aryana Square and saw the body of the murdered former president, Najibullah. The Taliban began issuing edicts, forbidding women to leave their houses without a close male relative to escort them; forcing them to wear chadris, which cover their entire bodies; and refusing to allow them to work. Latifa, Soraya, and their mother suffered greatly, falling into depression. Their mother, a doctor, continued to see patients secretly, and Latifa eventually started an underground school for girls, an action that put both her and her students at great risk. Latifa and her parents left Afghanistan to be interviewed by the French magazine Elle, but when they tried to return, they discovered that the Taliban had declared them enemies of the state. A moving firsthand account with a real sense of immediacy.

__________

Choose one from SCIENCE-FICTION/FANTASY

DIVERGENT – Fiction, Fantasy – CHECK IT OUT HERE! – Purchase on Amazon.com for around $10.00

In the Chicago of the distant future, society has willingly segregated itself into five “factions:” Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the kind), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), and Erudite (the intelligent). All 16-year-olds take an aptitude test revealing their true faction and then choose one to join — regardless of which one they were born into. When Abnegation-born Beatrice Prior’s results are inconclusive, her tester informs her she’s a “divergent” and should never mention her results to anyone. Believing herself too selfish to be any good in Abnegation, she chooses Dauntless, where she rechristens herself Tris. During the dangerous bloody Dauntless initiation process, she develops feelings for her handsome, mysterious instructor Four, who never fails to challenge her to perform her best, even as others grow jealous of her unexpected skills. And Tris begins to realize being a Divergent has both advantages and disadvantages.

OR

UNWIND – Fiction, Science-Fiction, Mystery – CHECK IT OUT HERE! – Purchase for around $3.50 from Amazon.com.

Choose one FICTION – DRAMA – COMING-OF-AGE

TEN MILES PAST NORMAL – Fiction, Coming-of-age – CHECK IT OUT HERE! - Purchase for around $5.00 on Amazon.com

In elementary school, living on a farm was a social boon for Janie Gorman. But now that she’s a high school freshman, being Farm Girl means she’s different. Weird different. She’s the girl who comes to school smelling like goat poop, or with hay in her hair. She desperately wants to feel she’s “living large,” as her best friend Sarah’s older sister advocates. Janie and Sarah join the Jam Band, hoping to find a way to fit in and meet cute boys, and work together on an intriguing project about unsung heroes of the civil rights movement living in their community. What she learns helps put her embarrassment in perspective, and realize that normal is overrated.

OR

ZEN AND THE ART OF FAKING IT – Fiction, Coming-of-age – CHECK IT OUT HERE! - Purchase for around $.01 (yes, a penny) on Amazon.com

Eighth grader San Lee moves to Pennsylvania with his mother and starts yet another new school. His father is serving time for some cons performed across the country, dragging the family along each time. Being the new kid, San is trying to figure out who to pretend to be to fit in with his peers. He impresses his teacher and classmates with his answers on Zen so he becomes San, the Zen kid at school. He sits on a rock meditating before school, wears socks with sandals in winter, and professes not to need any “earthly attachments.” Except he has a big crush on a female classmate. They work on a project together, share details about their lives (his are all lies), but he thinks the attraction is largely based on him being an expert on Zen. They volunteer together at a soup kitchen and teach the B level school basketball team how to use Zen in the game. San’s new life is going well, but of course eventually his lies will have to catch up with him.

__________

So, you chose the books, now what?

1. NON-FICTION – 5 entries – Read book and all entries completed and turned in by June 30, 2011
2. SCIENCE-FICTION – 5 entries – Read book and all entries completed and turned in by July 31, 2011
3. COMING-OF-AGE – 5 entries – Read book and all entries completed and turned in by August 26, 2011

The first few weeks of class revolve around the summer books. We will be taking a test on the novels, discussing literary elements found in the texts, and writing comparison essays on the novels.

I find it crazy how the universe will suddenly send you a message when you need it most. My brother posted this TedTalk on Facebook today, so I decided to check it out. I have, in the past, watched and discussed many of these talks with my students, but have been recently side-tracked (heavily) by the state-mandated tests that I spent way too long preparing my students for. Anyway, I watched it and found many of the issues I struggled with my kids in class (and at home)  answered in this twenty minute video.

Many of the students I have consider themselves disabled. They feel disabled in life; they come from poor backgrounds and have “checked out”. Their parents and teachers have told them they are worthless and will not amount to anything.  Many times I become frustrated with the mentality of the students. They see the world in such a restricted light that they cannot see the beauty in much of anything or feel empathy towards another human being. We read a poem in class today called, Incident, by Countee Cullen.

It reads

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Some of the students couldn’t make it through the poem without bursting out in laughter. Needlesstosay, I was mortified at the insensitivity of the students. The reality of these students is one that is so obscured and filled with hate that they could not feel empathy towards this character, but, instead, found the event humorous.

We were discussing theme and author’s purpose in this lesson and many students understood that words can hurt and often disable a person for life, but it was difficult to have this conversation while those few students snickered. I felt bad, at the time, for the students who could see passed the character’s race. Now, after reflecting, I feel bad for the students who laughed and found the poem funny because they have been told things that are untrue – hurtful things and lies.

We are defined by words and the language we choose to use. Too often we become what we are labeled by those around us. Aimee proves this by telling a story of a school in Britain that secretly conducted a social experiment on the teenagers in a high school by putting the top students into lower-level classes and telling the teachers that they have little ability and taking the students that would have been in the lower-level classes and placing them into the higher-level classes. Since the teachers were told the students were of a certain ability, they treated the students accordingly. Suddenly, the lower-level kids, who were placed in higher-level classes, started performing at the higher level because the teachers told them they were smart and the administrators told them they had potential. Unfortunately, the opposite occurred in the higher-level kids in the lower-level classes. Since everyone treated them like they were lower-level students, they began to act like it; many even dropped out of high school.

Words and language are the most powerful thing on the planet!

Aimee was told at an early age that she would not walk or live a normal life. Well, Aimee has done more by 35 than many of us will do in a lifetime.

Check out her site – here!

I found it fascinating that if she could go back and choose between having flesh and blood legs or prosthetic legs, she may choose the prosthetic legs. She feels that the adversity she encountered and the conflicts she overcame as a result of having the prosthetic legs shaped her into the person she is today.

A singular truth arose in her words: The potential of the human will to overcome adversity determines the quality of life.

Lives are not shaped by the perks and the spoils of life; we become who we are based on the conflicts we overcome. And, we should welcome conflict instead of hide from it.

Aimee found that the more she overcame and the more she fought, the more doors opened for her and her quality of life amplified. (I can use a thesaurus, too!)

Is conflict, truly, the genesis of survival as Aimee claims? Do those who refuse to fight drift away into the dark shadows of the world?

One thing is perfectly clear: to be disabled means to have a crushed spirit; to feel hopeless; an inability to see beauty or to use imagination.

It is the job of, not only the teachers, but of every parent to make sure their student or child does not feel disabled because once a child is verbally shattered, it is harder (not impossible) to raise them from the shadows.

And every child needs to understand that the obstacles you encounter as you live are the greatest gift you could ever receive. Overcome adversity and evolve to reach your maximum potential as a human being.

Here is the poem Aimee concluded her talk with.

The God Who Only Knows Four Words by Hafiz

Every Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird,

But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”

Come
Dance.

Here a couple more TedTalks by Aimee Mullins:

On Running – 12 Pairs of Legs