Summer Reading/Viewing/Listening 2015
Not in the spirit of disconnect or the hammock, but out of the urge/need to replenish and invigorate, I offer the following eclectic selection (very) as a kind of kindling wood to spark the fire.
Sonia Nieto: Nice Is Not Enough: Defining Caring for Students of Color
Parker Palmer: A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited
John Dewey: My Pedagogic Creed Say what you will about his thorny and onerous prose. This piece penned in 1897 is visionary and accessible, and has as much pertinence in the educational arena as any thinker or writer.
Maxine Greene: Wide Awakeness and the Moral Life Just so we never fall asleep at the wheel. This is an article from 1978 laden with ideals worth having; a preventative to disillusion, burn out demoralization, and anything else that threatens passion and commitment.
Alfred North Whitehead: The Aim of Education. “There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.” Read on, written in 1916, every word resonates today.
Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms
Listen and learn. Words of one of the world’s great advocates of learning, innovation and creativity, sans jargon or eduspeak.
Ken Robinson: Bring on the Learning Revolution
Ken Robinson: How to Escape Educations Death Valley
David Foster Wallace: This is Water A powerful commencement address delivered at Kenyon College by this most eloquent of writers. Even though it is for a college audience it resonates with our work.
Neil Postman: “My Graduation Speech “One of America’s great iconoclastic thinkers and leaders of progressive education.
Pablo Neruda: Ode to Common Things
Yes a dollop of poetry to keep mediocrity away. A work that celebrates the awe and wonder of the mundane. Because most education writing is like an overheated classroom, where no air circulates but the myopic need to control. This takes spoons, dogs, peaches, locks and elevates them to the domain of the resplendent and sacred.
Charles Mingus: Piano Improvisations Because everyone needs time beside a still lake at dusk. Better Git it in Your Soul: Rousing celebration of praising ancestors and influences
Eric Dolphy: God Bless the Child
As lyrical and sensual a full of soulfulness as music can be
Billy Holiday: God Bless the Child, Strange Fruit,
Two compositions that should be national anthems
Neil Young: Rocking in the Free World Turn up the volume, roll down the windows, and drive.
Bob Dylan: May You Stay Forever Young The acoustic and electric version
Appalachian Spring:Early morning, when the sun rises, the birds scat, and the universe is a perennial state of Spring
Hi David. I was scanning TIE online and saw your face – a blast from the past. You may not remember me – but I taught Elem Music at ASF in Mexico City while you were there. My husband, Don and our 2 children (Gr 4 and 7 at the time) were with me and we spent a very interesting 2 years there 2003 – 5).
We have been back in Calgary, Alberta since then – we have our own business Culture Connect that keeps us busy. We have decided to do a little ‘professional development’ this fall, though and are heading to China for 3 months for a little explore. I read, with interest, your recommended reading list – I may have to add a few of those to the tablet for the long train/plane/bus rides. 🙂
I see you are still in New York. Hope all is well!