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No educator I know actually takes a full summer off. Many, justifiably, use part of the break to recover from a demanding school year, but most of us continue to hone our craft from June to August. My husband and I are both educators, and I cannot remember ever using the entire holiday just for fun. The summer we got married, I took six graduate credits and did an out-of-town International Baccalaureate workshop for counselors. The summer after our baby was born, my husband and I completed a cumulative eighteen graduate credits while living, with our infant, in a college dorm. Summers off – ha!
If you’re traveling this summer, catching up on reading is a flexible means of professional development and mental stimulation that fits in your carry-on. Lest we fall into our own summer slump. Here’s what I’ve got in my Amazon Smile[1] cart at the moment, divided into three categories: Professional, Parenting (in my role as a school counselor I often suggest literature to parents), and Pleasure.
{Professional}
Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools
By Elizabeth J. Meyer
Meyer contributed a solid chapter to Queering Straight Teachers: Discourse and Identity in Education by Nelson Rodrigues and William Pinar (Eds.), so I anticipate that her book will be excellent as well.
LGBTQ Issues in Education: Advancing a Research Agenda
By George Wimberly
I keep waiting for this one to be required for my doctoral work so that I can justify the hefty price tag, but nobody has put it on a syllabus thus far, so I may just need to splurge.
Solution Focused Practice in Asia
By Debbie Hogan, Dave Hogan, Jane Tuomola, & Alan K. L. Yeo (Eds.)
Full disclosure: I contributed a chapter to this book. I am eager to read the other chapters, though, as my counseling practice is heavily influenced by a solution-focused approach.
{Parenting}
The Talk: Helping Your Kids Navigate Sex in the Real World
By Alice Dreger
Who doesn’t need more help with how to do this gracefully? I am a fan of Dreger’s work, and my work as a counsellor has put me in touch with more than a few parents who would like guidance on talking to their kids about sex. The audio version for this book is less than 3 hours long, so it promises be a quick read.
Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising Kids With the Freedom to be Themselves
By Paige Lucas-Stannard
The Kindle version of this mini-book is free!
Teaching Overseas: An Insider’s Perspective
By Kent M. Blakeney
I also contributed excerpts to this book, and ought to get around to reading my copy.
{Pleasure}
En Finir avec Eddy Bellegueulle (The End of Eddy)
By Edouard Louis (Translator: Michael Lucey)
This novel (by a 23-year old author!) earned rave reviews in France, and has already been translated into twenty languages, including English. The story promises to shine a light on gender stereotypes and the experience of growing up gay in a traditional, working-class community.
Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)
By David Sedaris
I relish pretty much everything this satirist publishes, and look forward to a peek into the diaries he has been keeping, daily, for the past forty years.
The Handmaid’s Tale
By Margaret Atwood
I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never read this classic, but the recent publicity makes it an irresistible addition to my list.
Push
By Tommy Caldwell
Tommy is a local hero in our summer home of Estes Park for being one of the best rock climbers in the world (you may remember his Dawn Wall accomplishment in 2015). Now he is also a New York Times best-selling author.
This summer, I will be hiking in the Swiss Alps, and visiting friends and family in Colorado and Michigan. I am also enrolled in two graduate courses, and will attend a residency on LGBT health policy and practice at George Washington University. I hope to get through as many of these books[2] as time allows (and do feel fortunate to have summers “off”).
How do you make the most of your summer as an educator?
What’s on your reading list?
[1] Amazon Smile is exactly like regular Amazon (and Amazon Prime), except that they donate 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the charitable organization of your choice.
[2] Fellow TIE bloggers, David Penberg and Daniel Kerr, have also shared their reading lists.