September 19, 2020 at 12:31 PM

In a break with tradition, I am beginning this post with Commentary before recommending the books I’ve recently been reading. That is because the pandemic upended my usual reading habits. In fact, for a few months I was unable to read a book at all. Hence the ten months between this posting and the last one.  

Commentary: Thoughts on Reading, Learning, and Living During a Pandemic

It was unplanned. I had my usual books stacked up ready to read on my bookshelf and at my bedside table, and there they sat—untouched, for months. I could not read them. 

I’m a bookaholic; I delight in reading and hearing about new books and, then, regularly ordering through bookshop.org those that most appeal. Knowing my book purchases help support local, independent bookstores assuages my guilt and obsession for buying books. In normal times, I read several books a month, but in these uncertain times, I became a different kind of reader. I was anxious; my attention span lagged; my interests changed. I could not sustain the focus and stamina that a whole book required. I didn’t stop reading all together; I just read shorter things for shorter periods of time—blogs, recipes, magazine articles, journal articles, newspapers, online news and recipes. In particular, The New York Times daily, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic magazine, Milk Street cooking magazine plus a variety of old, favorite cooking magazines took over all my reading for several months. 

All that reading related to cooking and recipes eventually led me to the perusal and/or rereading of four favorite memoirs by well-known cooks who are also great storytellers. Each author also intersperses favorite recipes throughout this text. My all-time favorite of these books, which I’ve reread many times over the years, is Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen (1988, NY: Random House.) Whether or not you like to cook, you will delight in this unassuming book of essays that invites everyone to try, even just a little bit, to cook something easy and delicious. Colwin makes you want to cook! She puts the reader at ease with her relaxed, humble, conversational, hilariously funny, unpretentious writing. I first encountered Colwin when she wrote for Gourmet magazine many years ago, and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. She leaves you believing--if Laurie Colwin can leave the house with beans simmering on the stove, why can’t I try that too? Her book is a celebration of life and what’s possible. Her recipes are a comfort; her book is food for the soul.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg (2009, NY: Simon and Schuster) is another favorite along with At the Kitchen Table: The Craft of Cooking at Home by Greg Atkinson (2011, Seattle: Sasquatch Books.) Both are by local authors in Seattle where I live. Wizenberg is an enchanting writer and mesmerizing storyteller. A Homemade Life is personal, touching, and filled with stories about love, living, and cooking. She ends her book with the recipe for the chocolate wedding cake she baked for herself. Greg Atkinson’s At the Kitchen Table encouraged me to bake bread again. His recipe for Pumpernickel Bread, made with left over mashed potatoes, is delicious and straightforward even for those of us who don’t usually bake bread. An award winning, unpretentious chef who supports the local food movement, Atkinson’s short stories and many recipes urge us to enrich our lives through gathering around the table together with good food and people we care about.  

Finally, The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious—And Perplexing—City by David Lebovitz (2009, NY: Broadway Books), is a collection of vignettes by an American pastry chef who moves to Paris in the 1980’s and comes to appreciate Paris’ delicious offerings. Written with humor and honesty, Lebovitz details his adjustments, frustrations, joys, and love affair with living, cooking, and eating in Paris. Reading this book is like an intimate visit to Paris—with many sweet and savory recipes included. See his excellent blog at https://www.davidlebovitz.com/ for many tasty dishes and insider information on living and cooking in Paris. 

Cooking and baking, as it turns out, became my low-cost therapy which helped keep me (mostly) sane and balanced. Thinking about what I might cook and bake each day using fresh and beautiful ingredients became my healthy distraction from the many large and small daily disturbances happening in our locale, country, and across the globe.  Once in the kitchen, I did not think about anything but creating something wonderful, delicious, and eye pleasing for my husband Frank and me—and sometimes gifting some those results to friends and family as well. Time ceased to exist. I never looked at the clock or worried about how long the process was taking. I was content in that untimed zone to let everything go and to seize the creative process and enjoy what was unfolding—the possibilities, the colors, textures, the seasonings, herbs, the taste of the food, the surprise of it all. Seeking to create something delicious, tantalizing, beautiful, familiar, or original was just the balm I needed for a feeling of calmness. The kitchen became my sanctuary, my peaceful and creative space where anything—including joy--was possible. 

Reading about cooking through short essays and vignettes eased my transition back to reading full length fiction and nonfiction books again. However, with the world turned upside down with life and death issues connected to the coronavirus, racism, climate change, and social and economic justice, I leaned more towards nonfiction as a way to become better informed, educated, and more politically active with an emphasis on what I might do to become an anti-racist. One of the first books I read on returning to my regular book reading was a rereading of How to Become An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. The last book I read is Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Both of these books have been life informing in ways I never imagined. 

So, what does my recent reading experience mean for teaching and learning? I learned I was not alone in being unable to read books for a number of months. Several book loving friends had a similar experience. Our daily uncertainty, stress and worry caused by the pandemic undermined the stamina we needed to stay with a whole book. Our families and students are experiencing a similar mix of worries and concerns as they do their best to live their lives, take on new challenges, and stay emotionally and mentally healthy. We all need to give them and ourselves permission to trust what we are feeling without guilt and to not worry so much about “messing up,” fulfilling our usual expectations, deadlines, quantity of books read, standards, and mandated curriculum. Favor flexibility, building close relationships, and what’s most important and authentic right now for literacy and content learning. Rethink testing, assignments, and homework so they do not create unnecessary hardships for students and their families. Consider more short nonfiction texts from the news, websites, or wherever you can find them.  Focus on affirming and building upon students’ strengths and interests and provide them—as best we can-- the reading materials, tools, challenges, and support they need and want to move forward. If we can somehow manage to provide students meaningful learning opportunities, conversations, texts, and choices that expand their thinking and also keep them feeling “whole,” safe, and cared for as learners and human beings, we will have gone a long way in advancing not just their learning but, also, their social-emotional well-being.

Here are the books I’ve read and especially admired in recent months, November 2019–September 2020.  As previously noted, while the total number of books listed is typical for my postings every six months or so, this posting comprises ten months of reading.

• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, fiction
• Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom by Lindsay Portnoy, professional
• Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, economics research and application to social issues and life
• Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow, nonfiction
• New Life, No Instructions by Gail Caldwell, memoir (rereading)
• Greta Thunberg: No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg, speeches on the climate crisis
• Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living by Elizabeth Kuble-Ross and David Kessler, guide: practical, spiritual
• Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, fiction
• Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, fiction
• Writing Redefined: Broadening Our Ideas of What It Means to Compose by Shawn Coppola, professional 
• The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer, spiritual advice
• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, exploration of sleep
• Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives by Daniel J. Levitin, advice, research, and insights
• Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon, advice
• Bread and Other Miracles by Lynn Ungar, poems
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, fiction
• This is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home by Lauren Sandler, nonfiction—poverty and homelessness
• Had I Known by Barbara Ehrenreich, essays
• Writers and Lovers by Lily King, fiction
• Amnesty by Aravind Adiga, fiction
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X, Kendi, nonfiction, racial justice, call to action (rereading)
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, memoir, (rereading)
• Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, business advice 
• Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives, K-3 by Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau and others, professional
• One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle, “spiritual” essays
• Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros with Katie Novak, professional
• Our Time is Now by Stacey Abrams, voter suppression, call to action
• Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Learning by David Perkins, professional
• Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age by Bruce Feiler, advice
• Women in the Kitchen: Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat, from 1661 to Today by Ann Willan, origins of American cooking, with recipes
• Made for Learning: How the Conditions of Learning Guide Teaching Decisions by Debra Crouch and Brian Cambourne, professional
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, nonfiction, how caste systems have shaped history and justice
  

While I highly recommend all the books on the list-- including some wonderful fiction--for this post and these uncertain times, I want to call out three remarkable nonfiction books. These books have made a profound impression, inspiring me to become a more informed, activist citizen and a more compassionate human being. All three of these texts deal explicitly with issues of inequity and injustice as experienced by people of color and marginalized groups, and the last one focuses on the role of castes in societies--historically and today.

All three texts are a call to action, none more so than How to Be an Antiracist by award-winning author, Ibram X, Kendi. I had read this extraordinary book about a year ago, but I was not yet acknowledging my white privilege and my responsibility to not just talk against racism but to stand up to it by taking specific actions, to do what I can to fight inequities between Blacks and Whites and to work for educational and social justice, to provide equitable opportunities for all students. My heightened awareness was prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement, the unwarranted and brutal deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, and the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic--especially on communities of poverty and color.

So my second reading of How to Be an Antiracist book was different and eye-opening. As Kendi writes, “The only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it—and then dismantle it.” That is, each of us needs to actively work to become anti-racist by standing up against all forms of bigotry. I now constantly ask myself, “What am I doing—and what can I do-- to create a more equitable community and anti-racist society?”  See also Kendi’s “The End of Denial”, the excellent cover story in The Atlantic’s September 2020 issue. https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2020/08/ibram-x-kendi-on-the-end-of-denial/614962/  Related, I also highly recommend reading “What is Owed” by Nikole Hannah-Jones on how, what, and why we owe Black Americans. Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark “1619 Project. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html 

Another eye-opening book dealing with economic and social justice is This is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home, a riveting story of one year in the life of a homeless woman in New York City as observed and reported up close by journalist Lauren Sandler. It is a story of poverty and homelessness in America that I believe most of us have not heard. A few years back, I read the powerful ethnography Evicted: Poverty and Profit in The American City by Matthew Desmond, which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The book opened my eyes to how families in extreme poverty in Milwaukee, WI are often forced into substandard housing in dangerous neighborhoods. I learned how common and shattering eviction is, especially, to women and their families and how difficult it is to escape the vicious cycle of eviction when you are very poor.

In This is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home, the homelessness story is a personal one. We follow Camilla--an appealing, highly intelligent, determined young woman-- through the ups and downs in her daily life struggles. Camilla is savvy and knowledgeable on all legal issues related to housing and human rights, and she is determined to go to college. Despite meticulously following all Federal and local rules and regulations to obtain stable housing, she is continually thwarted in her quest to create a secure life for herself and her child. Our broken system keeps her trapped, unable to move forward to fulfill her goals despite her herculean efforts. It’s a heartbreaking story but one we must not ignore. For students, homelessness contributes to ongoing absenteeism, failure to graduate, and depression. Without proper housing, a quality life is not possible. And yet the chances of finding suitable and sustainable housing following an eviction are mostly slim to non-existent. See the book review “Locked Out” for more about this book: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/books/review/this-is-all-i-got-lauren-sandler.html  See also “The Children in the Shadows” by Samantha M. Shapiro for a current and comprehensive report on the distressing consequences of homelessness for 100,000 public school students and their families in the largest city in America.  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/09/magazine/homeless-students.html

Finally, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is one of the most impactful and important books I’ve ever read. This remarkable new book is by Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the highly acclaimed, award-winning The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. In Caste, Wilkerson once again applies her beautifully crafted style, meticulously researched history, and gift for storytelling to transform our understanding—through this text, in this moment--of the origins, practices, and intersections of caste in America, Nazi Germany, and India. She describes “caste” as a more precise and comprehensive term than “racism.” She notes, “Caste is more than rank, it is a state of mind that holds everyone captive. . . , p. 290. (For Wilkerson’s fuller explanation of the term “caste”, see link to National Public Radio interview below.)

The stories in Caste are mesmerizing and chilling; the humiliation, brutality and systematic dehumanizing of men, women, and children considered to be in a subordinate caste are so disturbing, I had to set the book aside-- sometimes for a few days. Nonetheless, we cannot afford to look away at the horrific culture of cruelty in our history and present day. The heartbreaking stories of how a dominant caste, those who “presume superiority”, wields its power and status over a subordinate caste, those who are presumed to be inferior, are so much a part of world history and American history. To look away is to remain complicit in the cruel injustices still so much a part of everyday life.

Caste is required reading for helping us understand our history, assumptions, unconscious bias, and behaviors related to the daily degrading and demeaning of the rights and lives of Blacks, marginalized groups, and those we look down upon—and to do better, to speak out, to take action, to not be complicit in perpetuating this unjust and inhumane system. In the book’s Epilogue, Wilkerson urges us to “. . . resist the box others force upon us”, to recognize we “. . . pay a steep price for an enduring caste system that runs counter to the country’s stated ideals”, to open ourselves to “radical empathy,” and take actions that welcome “one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity.” Related, see the outstanding review of Caste in The New York Times Book Review https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/books/review/caste-isabel-wilkerson.html. See also “America’s Enduring Racial Caste System” by Isabel Wilkerson  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/magazine/isabel-wilkerson-caste.html. Listen to the interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross where Wilkerson discusses the difference between racism and a caste system. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898574852/its-more-than-racism-isabel-wilkerson-explains-america-s-caste-system

Additionally, a new professional book deserves special mention and attention. Made for Learning: How the Conditions of Learning Guide Teaching Decisions by Debra Crouch and Brian Cambourne is a must-read for all educators. I happily endorsed this master work after reading the manuscript in advance of publication. My full endorsement follows:

“Once in a great while a book comes along that upends our thinking--challenging us to critically examine the effects of our literacy beliefs, practices, and processes around teaching and learning. Made for Learning is that breakthrough book. Renowned educators Brian Cambourne and Debra Crouch have teamed up to write an inspiring, research-based text brimming with fresh thinking and practical ideas. Thirty years ago, I encountered and embraced Brian Cambourne’s groundbreaking Conditions of Learning as foundational to responsive and responsible teaching and learning. Now, happily for all of us, Cambourne and Crouch have revisited, revised, and expanded that cohesive theory of learning in their thoughtful, wise, and much needed text. 

Made for Learning, above all, honors and supports the dignity, potential, and intelligence of learners. Through explicit demonstrations and discourse in collaborative classrooms—along with vivid vignettes--the authors expertly guide us to engage and immerse all learners in rich language and content, purposeful discussion, and whole relevant learning contexts--not lessons broken up into bits and pieces. We learn the necessity and actions for intentionally crafting instructional decisions that ensure learners have opportunities to try and apply what’s been taught. We come to understand and prioritize that learners must take on the role of active meaning-makers and problem solvers—what Cambourne and Crouch call “doers.” These doers come to confidently interpret, evaluate, and transform their learning worlds. What could be better than that! Made for Learning brilliantly illuminates and makes possible a joyful literacy and language path for all learners.”

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For additional book recommendations with accompanying Commentaries, see archived “What I’m Reading” blog posts, which date back to 2007.