Author Archives: Rebecca Moore

8th Grade Propaganda Curriculum

Posted on by
Reply

Our 8th grade social studies teacher, Sara Baquero-Garcia, is a font of knowledge when it comes to propaganda. Having been impressed by her students’ Animal Farm projects, and by helping her find resources for another part of the project, I decided to interview her about her overall propaganda coverage with the 8th grade. Her wide-ranging explanations covered many different types of propaganda, how they interlink with each other and with the modern world, some aspects of the projects, and more.

For length, I have divided the post into two, with the first covering project background and types of propaganda. Part two, coming in June, will cover her Animal Farm project, and offer a student’s insights into the project and what she learned.

Now, on to part one!

Project Purpose

Sara’s propaganda project evolved from wanting students to “explore the media around them,” the images and messages they see and hear every day. What do these images and messages mean? What do they omit? “Those things that are not said are often the most important ones,” says Sara. “And if they are said, how are they being said?” Digging deeper, she wants students to consider “how we come to believe what we believe, and how we come to assume the things we assume.” The goal is for students to “become critical thinkers, so that they can make their own conclusions.”

Project Background

Sara has been teaching propaganda for decades, starting at The American School in Japan, in the 1990s. “We were revamping our curriculum at the time, and I had the freedom to do this media literacy project,” she says. In the 1990s, “in Tokyo you could walk anywhere and it was like you were bombarded by Times Square type of visuals,” which at once brought propaganda to mind and inspired the unit. Sara used to teach it as a two-month unit, which she felt was “totally worth it,” but the kids got propaganda-ed out. That prompted her, over time, to “separate the parts of the project” and run different parts “when they are beneficial for whatever we’re talking about.” It’s a “mammoth” project, so a one-block lesson was never going to suffice!

One non-negotiable part of any project Sara does is student choice. “The kid has absolute choice within the resources that we either give them, or that they find in something that they are connected to,” she says. “That is crucial.” While assigning a broad topic, like a big news event, for an initial activity is fine, “it should never be the piece that they have to do” for the main part of the project. Says Sara, “I think it’s really important to give them agency. And as they’re looking for their favorite piece, they’re looking at so much more, and so that’s where the research can be super rewarding for them. …They’re starting to think through the lens of the researcher.” They are doing the analyzing Sara looks for, and focusing on something of interest helps them “really zero in” on not just that topic, but on propaganda in general.

Types of Propaganda

Ideally Sara addresses four types of propaganda: political, commercial, news, and entertainment. While each might have different purposes, they use similar strategies students can recognize in any situation. “I usually use twelve techniques [of propaganda], not because they’re the only techniques, but because they’re ubiquitous,” Sara says. She asks her students to “really reflect” on the common elements inside these techniques. Here is Sara’s general description of the project itself, and, here is the list of the techniques Sara uses with the students.

Political Propaganda

Political propaganda is often the natural starting point. Because of the fall election cycle, Sara tends to start the year with politics. “That’s a great time to explore the topic of political propaganda and the effect that it has on the electorate,” she says. “You’re looking at the campaign process. You’re looking at how people vote. You’re looking at the system of gerrymandering. …There’s so many things to look at when you think of campaigns,” including “how propaganda connects to our understanding of politics.”

For researching this aspect of the project, Sara relies on some resources we post on her class LibGuide, like The Living Room Candidate—”The absolute best source for presidential campaigns.” She also makes use of local advertisements and mail-delivered pamphlets. One year, Sara had her students study major initiatives on the ballot, one initiative per group. They examined pros and cons, viewpoints from either side, etc. By the end, she felt that in addition to having a “blast” doing the project, “these kids knew more about those initiatives than any adult that you would ask out in the street.” Sara liked watching how they came “to the understanding that you don’t need this flashy situation of presidential campaign in order to be engaged within the system of what’s happening in that election.”

Another way she approaches political propaganda is the historical context, which she finds vital because it shows “the power of political propaganda.” She says, “Of course, you can’t do a historical propaganda examination without looking at the Nazi propaganda of World War II, and the campaign[s] against Jews,” Communists, Romani, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, etc. “The intensity of what that meant with the eventual Holocaust.”

For students, Sara wants them to explore questions like, “How could I, a normal every day German citizen, come to believe that it’s OK for [my] Jewish neighbor to just disappear? How does one get to that? How do people get to a place of complacency with the status quo when something like that is happening around you?” She turns facile answers, like “they were evil” or “they were ignorant” or “they didn’t know,” back on the students. “How are we complacent, or how are we ignorant, or how are we unaware, or how are we being brainwashed?”

To help answer these questions, Sara recalls to students the techniques of propaganda, which include fear and scapegoating. “Did the Nazis use fear? Absolutely—they had a whole movie of connecting Jewish citizens with rats,” she reminds students. “And that film made people so afraid of even being touched by a Jewish person, so then it became OK to separate Jewish kids in Jewish schools, and to not have Jewish colleagues at your job, because they were equated by the propaganda as vermin.” “Being told again and again to believe in something can have a powerful effect on the receiver of the information, and if people in power are the ones giving the information, it can be a very powerful tool in convincing people to follow an ideology without thinking critically. That is always a dangerous result and that is a major reason for students to learn how to question what is being told to students through propaganda.”

Commercial Propaganda

Sara tends to do commercial propaganda at a time that coincides with Christmas, “because we have so commercialized that holiday. I want kids to examine what they have, what they want, what they’re asking for, how their behavior as consumers has been shaped by propaganda, by commercials, by trends, by social media.” She calls those messages out for using “the same propaganda techniques” they’ve studied before, “to get us to thinking some way.” Especially Sara pinpoints influencers telling students “what they should look like and what they should buy and what’s cool.” She wants to get the students thinking about the cycle of trends like Stanley Cups, which were cool but now are not. “Every trend requires an expenditure, and every expenditure is benefiting someone,” Sara says, “benefiting some company or some business, and there’s things attached to that.”

If her time is limited for covering commercial propaganda, Sara might have her students look at commercials through the lens of the techniques used by political propaganda. For example, the fear technique used by the Nazis to target Jews gets used by commercials through the threat of being uncool or not accepted if you don’t have, for example, a Stanley Cup. Or the technique of promised happiness as shown by, say, Coca-Cola commercials. “You look at a Coca-Cola commercial and…everything is glittery. You know it’ll be better to be happier with Coca-Cola, right?”

Sara adds, “a commercial needs to do two things: it needs to give you what you should want, but it also needs to give you why you should want it and how not having it makes you less happy, less whole, less..something. The goal is to always make you feel less, unless you purchase whatever it is the commercial wants you to have.” When Sara sets the students free to look at commercials, “they can’t believe that the teacher is OK with them looking at commercials; how fun is that?” But through the laughter and sharing, they also start to analyze and think. “So having that fun session where they’re looking at all of these fun things, it’s not a waste of time; it’s actually helping them really zero in, and where they are in that part in that culture.”

Says Sara, “for most kids, what’s really interesting,” after they start studying commercial propaganda, “is that now they have the vocabulary to speak to what is happening to them. What are the influences happening to them?” Once they have the vocabulary, and that “intricate understanding,” students can say something like, “Wow, I did not realize that they were using XYandZ to get to me.” This also gives students the tools to understand what types of propaganda work best on them personally, as well as the understanding that “most successful pieces that use propaganda use more than one technique” for that reason—to appeal to many different people.

A tie-in for this part of the project is Annie Leonard’s video The Story of Stuff, which explores the system that brings us material products. It covers the process from extraction to manufacturing to disposal, including everything and everyone affected at each point along the way. Sara points out that Leonard, being an environmentalist, approaches the topic from a negative point of view—”commercialism can be really bad because it’s killing the environment.”

Then she shows students the other side of the coin through documentaries made by a media executive from the 1960s. These show “how industry is so great for jobs,” the economy, and taxes, “and we’re civilized, and we have all these amazing things, and…everything is looking hunky-dory because we now have skyscrapers.” As Sara shows the students, this media executive shows “the power of propaganda in a very positive way… It gets us to be civilized. It gets us to make the better product. It gets us to be able to choose the better product because now we know about it.” The video is called: Advertisement, What’s it Doing to Your Life” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz_q4PxZFxA

After watching both videos, students must “choose one product that [they] have purchased….and [then] look at six of eight components that are not a part of what the commercial told them.” This work takes the students two to three weeks, because they must really dig into it. Often, “It’s really hard to find information…[for example], you know Nike isn’t going to tell you where the plastic for your shoes came from.” Sara urges the students to think laterally in those cases. “When you have plastic manufacturing, where is it usually done?”

Thus, students learn “to infer from research into industries, research into health scenes, research into…the commercial aspect of it. Research into labor issues with the company or the product or the materials, issues with resources and where they come from.” Sara adds, “There’s a variety of things you can do, and then that’s where I’m really excited about it, because kids are seeing the big picture.” They are seeing, “Oh, every time I purchase something I’m making a choice of what to support, and it’s a minute choice, but I’m not the only one making it.” As Sara says, there are “thousands, perhaps millions of people, making that same choice,” and that’s where the power of commercial propaganda comes in.

News Propaganda

“With news,” Sara teaches, it’s “really important to differentiate between fake news and media bias, because fake news is fake news…it’s not true. But media bias is that much more powerful because it is ‘true,’ but it is also biased.” Think of how someone like [Dan Rather] on CBS would report on the Gulf War differently than someone like Wolf Blitzer on CNN. [Rather] might report, “At such and such time, this happened.” Whereas Blitzer might report “with the visuals, and the drama of the droppings, and…precise hits.” From this, Sara says, the viewer knows “this is terrible,” and now he’s adding “a lot more information that is or isn’t validated, but it’s what CNN is telling you.” She wants students to think, “OK, what in that is factual, and what is interpretation of what’s happening?”

This is the struggle, she says, “with all media right now….There’s so much of a blur between what is…news factual versus interpretation.” And once interpretation is involved, so is bias, “because we’re all interpreting in some way…leaving some things behind and highlighting others.” Sara wants students to explore the question of, “why do we do that?” Also questions like, “Who is behind that interpretation? Is there a company that doesn’t want you to highlight one thing or another? Is there a government telling you to highlight this? Is there a boss that has interest in XYZ and doesn’t want those interests to be harmed by the [news] piece?” She adds, “Or maybe it’s just bad reporting” by people who “have no idea what they’re doing, or maybe it’s an AI bot…the news has become such a mire…” Students getting their news from social media is a case in point. Says Sara, that’s even more biased, and the algorithms set your news on repeat “so you’re totally missing these other parts.”

When Sara addresses media propaganda, students work with the same propaganda techniques, “but now it’s really important to look at different media outlets, and how they’re reporting the same event.” She assigns students to choose a current news story and explore the ways different media outlets report the same story. “What is common and what is different?” One visual she’s appreciated using is the [Fontes] Media Bias Chart, “which is a fantastic visual.” Once students understand how much bias exists in media, they “explore how the reporting of that affected the outcomes politically, and/or, at the moment. So it’s all connected.”

Entertainment Propaganda

Entertainment propaganda, Sara says, may be “the most powerful type when it comes to culture. What kind of culture do we create? What kind of community do we build, and how does that community of that culture get built?” It’s about “why we do the things we do as people.” As an example, she mentions teen slang, like the now-ubiquitous “bro.” “Where did that come from?” she asks. “Who started that?” And why? The same goes for the “67” phenomenon. “Kids went crazy, and nobody knows what it means, but everybody’s having fun…so it becomes a part of that cultural trend.”

As Sara says, we live through trends like the “ice challenge” without ascertaining “how that came to us and why we follow it.” She wants her students to examine past entertainment and trends that derived from books or songs, and now social media. “Where do kids get [the idea] they should… eat Tide Pods?” she asks. “How does a kid get to choose to do that?” The students might say, “Oh, it’s fun,” but “why was it fun? …What made you think that that was fun?” The entertainment realm is particularly prone to people posting and reposting pieces, because they think the pieces are fun or funny, or they “wanted to be part of the fun.”

Moving on from trends, Sara looks at the multiplicity of messages in films and songs, like Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education…” or the Beatles “Imagine all the people.” What do those songs mean? Or, what is a movie like The Matrix telling us to “think about ourselves, the future, the place of technology, what to fear, what to not fear?” Every song, movie, book, etc. “has a message.” Sara wants kids “to explore critically, what are those messages? How do they affect you?”

Despite its importance, though, Sara often “sadly” lacks the time to cover entertainment propaganda as fully as it deserves.

Librarian’s Note

Our library team has long had the privilege of supporting Sara’s work by helping curate resources for her project LibGuide and collaborating on source evaluation strategies with her students. These kinds of partnerships—between teachers and librarians—strengthen students’ ability to think critically about the information landscape they navigate every day.

Stay tuned in June for information about Sara’s Animal Farm project, and student insights!

Note: I used Flint for light copy-editing, drafting the transition between the two parts, and the conclusion in part two. Everything else is human-written, and it’s all human-edited!

Book Club Starter Activities

Posted on by
2

As librarians, we all have things at which we excel, and things that make others say, “Well, bless their heart, they tried!” For me, my kryptonite is book clubs. Over the decades I’ve been a school librarian, I’ve run many book clubs in many formats, with only intermittent success. What I’ve finally settled on, though, is a monthly, no-commitment lunchtime session, in which students who love reading can talk about books while they eat their lunches. We also eat cookies, trade recommendations, and I pass around a box of sixty-plus questions for when the discussion lags.

We always start our meetings with a brief, brain-warm-up activity that I’ve either devised or borrowed. Most of the time, students have to solve a puzzle of some kind to “earn” the cookies I bring to club, but sometimes we play a game or do a craft instead. Below is a list of as many of my activities as I can remember—please feel free to try them out!

Crafts

Crafts that don’t require a lot of prep or a lot of time to complete are best for book club openers. I advise against anything that needs glue!

  • Author’s Crafts—If you are reading a specific book, sometimes you can find activities on the author’s website, such as Keeper of the Lost cities “stickers” we turned into buttons.
  • Coloring Pages—Find coloring pages related to the book you are reading, such as dragons for a Wings of Fire book.
  • Button Quotes—Print out reading and writing quotes in fancy fonts for button-making, or have students write the quotes out themselves with art supplies (or both!).
  • Gift Boxes—Turn old greeting cards or book covers printed on cardstock into small gift boxes.

Codes/Clues

If you have some basic locks and boxes, you can create an endless number of clues to lead students to the solution, whether it’s a series of clues or a single one. Here are a few that I have tried.

  • Haikus—I created a series of haiku puzzles to solve related to The Trials of Apollo, including music notes to translate to letters that create words, Bananagrams tiles to rearrange, and a song to play from a flash drive.
  • Rebus Puzzles—Endlessly useful! Sometimes I’ll do a rebus that leads to a key, sometimes I’ll do a chapter title or book title rebus to solve, etc.
  • Invisible Ink—Always a favorite. Often this forms part of a two step puzzle; the first puzzle leads them to a locked box with a blacklight, and they use the blacklight to read the final clue—usually, where to find the cookies.
  • Foreign Languages—Clues that include foreign languages. For instance, when we read The Lightning Thief, I created a clue with key words written in Greek letters.
  • Book-Specific Clues—Clues akin to puzzles or incidents in the book you’re reading. For instance, when we read The City of Ember, I wrote the clue on paper that I crumpled and ripped up; the students had to put it back together to read it.
  • Directional Clues—For instance, I found book titles that had a direction in them (north, south, up, down, etc.), and wrote out clues to help students find those titles in our catalog. The direction in each title told the students how to solve a directional lock. You could also use a map from a book with a narrative describing a journey in various directions.
  • Book-Title Clues—I borrowed this idea from a friend: I gave students a grid of twelve books, with one book numbered to show them how to count. The code to the letters in the clue sentence were three digits in sequence, joined by dash marks. The first letter indicates which book, the second letter indicates which word in the title, and the third indicates which letter in that word.
  • Word-Puzzle Clues—For example, I wrote sentences in which some letters at the end of the first word combined with letters at the start of the second word spelled a number to help open a number lock. A sample sentence might start: “Teachers ix-nayed…” and the rest of the sentence is a red herring. Note: This one was really hard—too hard without lots of hints!

Matching Games

These are fairly quick and easy to put together.

  • First Line/Last Line—Match first or last lines of books to the appropriate title.
  • International Covers—Match international covers for same book with the nationality of their publication.
  • Globe-Trotting Covers—Match ten books set in different countries with the country in which they take place.
  • Teacher Childhood Favorites—Match faculty childhood photos with their favorite childhood book; this obviously requires some faculty participation!
  • Book Summaries—Match covers of new books to their summaries.

Writing Activities

The story-writing activities run a bit longer than I would usually allow for a starting activity; I mostly used these first two with club iterations that only shared a glancing relationship with books (writing, book games, literary smackdowns, etc.).

  • Write-a-Line Stories—Write the first two lines of a story or choose two lines from a book, then fold the page down so only the second line shows. (You could also create small booklets and write a sentence per sheet and fold it back, as folding a letter-sized page over and over gets hard!) The next person sees the second line or book sentence, and either writes the next two lines based on that, or finds two lines from a different book that could continue the story. Repeat until you run out of paper, and read the story aloud!
  • Round Robin Stories—Start a story, and pass it along to the next person to continue.
  • Review Haiku—Write reviews of books in haiku form.
  • Post-it Reviews—Create a post-it sized form with room for some stars, author and title, and a small space to write why someone should read this book. Display those books in the library, along with the recommendation. Borrowed idea from (I think) Travis Jonker.

Book Games—General

Some of these games take longer than others; play them just as long as they hold students’ interest!

  • Book Title Balderdash—Pick titles of several new books that won’t be familiar to the students. They will all write fake summaries, hoping to fool the other players when all of the summaries are read aloud, including the real one. This can be played with a Balderdash game board, or just for fun without counting points.
  • Book Title Pictionary—Pretty self-explanatory. Can be played in teams or as a group.
  • Book Title Telestrations—Based on the Telestrations game. A student takes a book title or character, and tries to draw it well enough for the second student to guess. That student writes down their guess and passes it on, without the drawing. The next student has to draw something based on that guess, and so it goes.
  • Name that book—Inspired by Name That Tune. Students “bet” on how many words from the first sentence(s) it will take for them to name a book, omitting identifying words like names. The kids found this one pretty hard, so adding a genre or using the summary instead of the first line(s) might help.
  • Trivia/Jeopardy—This takes a lot of time to put together, so would be for a special event, probably when you are all reading the same book. Alternately, if, like me, you have several hundred Battle of the Books questions hanging around, you could grab a few from the most popular books and just have at it.
  • Names in a Hat—In this game, everyone writes down a book title or character and throws it in an ersatz “hat.” On the first round, the person who is “it” draws one slip after the other, and can say anything (except what’s on the slip) to get the other players to guess what it is. They have one minute to get through as many as they can. At the end of round one, all the slips go back in the hat. For round two, the active player draws the slips again, but can say only one word to try to get the other players to guess the answer. For round three, they can only charade it.

Book Title Games

In these games, students must figure out book titles or words in book titles from the clues given.

  • Food Titles—Find clip art of food found in titles, and students use the catalog to find title(s) including that food. This could also work with other things, like animals, plants, etc.
  • Changed Titles—Give a description of books that would result if one word were removed from the real title/series title, and a hint. Students must identify the real title. Example: __ __ __ __     __ __ __ __ __ __  Ben Ripley attends an academy that focuses on being agile and flexible. (Series title, one letter added)
  • Emoji Titles—You can devise these yourself, or you can find some online. Line up some emojis that represent a popular book title. It can be straightforward, or use homonyms (like a peace sign representing the word “piece”). Here are the ones I used:

I love games and codes and crafts, so it’s always fun to come up with or hear about new, short activities I can use to combat my book-club kryptonite! I hope some of these prove useful to you.

FunJungle Escape Room

Posted on by
4

I’ve been running escape rooms twice a year for a while, and always try to create or borrow one that has some connection to middle school literature. This time, I decided to go with Stuart Gibbs’ FunJungle series of humorous mysteries involving a zoo/wildlife park in Texas. Gibbs, author of the Spy School series, is one of the most popular authors in my library, so I figured his series was a good choice.

When I’m designing escape rooms, I generally go with a single-path design, in that students can’t open boxes out of order because the clues in one box lead to another. I look at the locks I have and figure out which ones will work best, and design puzzles around them. Since FunJungle has an extensive map available online, I chose to start with a directional lock—actually a Breakout.edu multilock that can be set to work with letters, colors, or symbols.

(Note of caution: With a multilock, if you are using symbols/colors, it’s not enough to write down the combination you chose. You also need to note how to hold the lock while opening, and if the combination reads left to right or right to left. If not, you, like me, might have the embarrassing experience of a lock not working because you forgot the proper lock orientation!)

Below is my escape room in the order of unlocking, and I’m happy to share any details or documents if you’d like to run it yourself. I usually include two clues in each box, with one clue leading to the next box, and the second clue being for a box further down the line.

  1. Map Clue Box—Directional lock

I printed and laminated a large map of FunJungle with starting text saying where Teddy went to search for Cappuccino, an escaped capuchin monkey. The order of Teddy’s search gives the directions for the directional lock.

  • Tasks: Print and laminate map
    • Create and print starting clue
    • Program multilock and detailed instructions for unlocking
    • Print and laminate URL for inclusion

In this box: Cutout cardstock for second box, laminated URL for third box: https://www.google.com/search?q=animal+sounds

  • Cutout Clue Box—Four digit number lock.

I found a page from a FunJungle book that included letters I could use to spell out numbers, in the proper order for this four digit lock. I also copied several other FunJungle pages as red herrings, but kept the actual page slightly bigger—it was only one that fit the cutout.

To create the cutout, I first mapped where my desired letters were on tracing paper. Then I laid the tracing paper on my cardstock and used an X-Acto knife to cut out the squares, so that laying the cardstock over the page revealed the letters. This took some fine-tuning to make sure the correct letters were visible.

  • Tasks: Find a page containing the appropriate words/lettersTo spell out the requisite numbers
    • Create cutout cardstock
    • Print out multiple pages of FunJungle books
      • One for the clue and others as red herrings
    • Program number lock
      • (Or just keep whatever it’s programmed to—the kids never remember!)

Components found in previous boxes: 1: Cutout cardstock

In this box: Flash drive, red film

  • Animal sound clue Box—Five-letter word lock

I went to Google and searched “animal sounds,” then used my phone’s voice recorder to record five of them whose names corresponded to the word I chose for this word lock (HIPPO). I used the free Audacity program to combine the sounds into one track in the proper order, and saved the track on a flash drive as “Super secret clue.”

https://www.google.com/search?q=animal+sounds

I used Flint AI to create a template of zoo-type animal labels, then added photos of ten animals, five of which are correct and five of which are red herrings. I printed and laminated them.

  • Tasks: Create a template for zoo animal information sheets
    • Find photos of ten animals and add them to the template
    • Print and laminate
    • Create a recording of animal sounds in order
      • The first letters of their species name create the word to open the word lock
    • Store recording on flash drive
    • Have a laptop available to play the file
    • Program word lock

Components found in previous boxes: 2: Laminated URL, Flash drive

In this box: Red-film-clue-obscured equation, blacklight

  • Red Film Clue Box—Four digit number lock.

With Flint AI’s help, I created a complicated but simple-to-solve mathematical equation that led to four digit answer. I turned this into a red-film clue by writing it in pencil, then used a red ball-point pen to scribble over it until it was illegible. Holding red film over the clue makes the underlying pencil legible again.

((50 + 10) x (200 ÷ 2)) + ((4 + 4) x (100 ÷ 2)) + ((20 – 4) x (10 ÷2)) + ((15 – 6) – (4 – 2))

  • Tasks: Create a suitably complicated equation
    • Turn it into a red-film clue
    • Source some red film, perhaps from theater or art department
    • Program number lock, if necessary

Components found in previous boxes: 2: Red film; disguised equation

In this box: Puzzle, laminated cryptowheel clue XBCECPOANIIW

  • Puzzle Clue Box—Key lock.

I created a collage of FunJungle book covers, and wrote a limerick on the back to identify where the key was hidden, using an invisible ink pen. Then I laminated and cut up the collage (Note: 5-6 pieces at most!!).

FunJungle has all kinds of these,

Found in donkeys and monkeys who seize

The one thing I need

To trap them indeed;

Find it where you get help for skinned knees.

(I hid my key in the first aid kit)

  • Tasks: Source an invisible ink pen and blacklight, plus batteries
    • Create a collage of FunJungle book covers
    • Create a limerick or other clue to identify where the key is hidden
    • Write it on the back of the collage BEFORE laminating
    • Laminate collage
    • Cut collage into 5-6 pieces
    • Hide key

Components found in previous boxes: 2: Puzzle, Blacklight

In this box: Cryptowheel

  • Cryptowheel Clue Box—Five letter word lock

I happen to have a wooden cryptowheel, so decided to make use of it. The way it works is that you turn the dials until you have legible words in one line (“Use word lucky”), then look at a different line and write down those letters as your clue. When students align the clue letters, they then turn the wheel until they spot the actual words.

I had my clue, XBCECPOANIIW, written on a document lying around, and in a box. The document I used was a school field-trip scavenger hunt form, created with the help of Flint AI, and filled out by my quietly hilarious colleague. I used the clue in one of the “name” fields, as if some smart-aleck thought it was funny.

  • Tasks: Source and program a cryptowheel
    • Program word lock
    • Create a field-trip scavenger hunt form
    • Fill out, with the code letters written on it somewhere
    • Create some other scavenger hunt forms as decoys
    • Cut out and laminate the clue
    • Print and laminate a photo of the “escaped” animal

Components found in boxes: 1: Cryptowheel clue (laminated)

In this box: Cookies & laminated capuchin monkey photo

Décor and red herrings:

You can do almost anything with décor and red herrings, going as detailed or minimal as you want. I’d do fewer red herrings for younger students, though—they do get off track! Here’s what I used in my room:

  • Scavenger Hunt, printed and filled out humorously and including Cryptowheel clue
  • FunJungle books
  • Animal stuffies borrowed from colleagues
  • Safari hat & binoculars borrowed from the theater department
  • “Missing animal” posters with template created by Flint AI, filled out by me

Conclusion

Escape rooms do take time to create and set up, but the kids love them and it’s a fun way to connect them with books and exercise their brains. Let me know if you would like to see any of the escape rooms I have created or borrowed!

Not Broken: An Aromantic/Asexual Spectrum Booklist

Posted on by
1

The other day, I was (re)watching the Netflix show Heartstopper, based on the Webtoon/ graphic novel series by Alice Oseman. I was glad the plot put some focus on the character Isaac, who comes to understand he’s aroace (aromantic/asexual). Aromantic means he feels no romantic attraction to anyone, and asexual means he feels no sexual attraction to anyone.

Often the A in LGBTQIA+ feels as much of an outlier as students struggling to understand what’s different about them; trying to define a personality trait by an absence rather than a presence of something. Though everyone on the ace spectrum experiences it differently, it can be common for kids to feel that they are “broken” or lacking in some way. Also common is worrying, quite realistically, about their future: being alone, not being anyone’s priority, not being “enough” as just themselves, and dealing with the aphobia of people trying to “fix” them or make them “normal.” Many may also mourn the loss of a future they assumed they would have, in our geared-for-pairs adult society.

For these students, knowing they are not alone in feeling the way they do can be a huge relief, as can reading about how other aro/ace people have handled their own challenges. Knowing that relationships and futures don’t need to follow set courses to provide satisfying lives is the first step on the path to building those futures. And fortunately, there are more resources and representation available to students on the ace spectrum than there have been in the past. Below is a lengthy list of books with middle school, high school, and college level protagonists on the aro/ace spectrum. Check them out!

For more information about the ace spectrum, check out AVEN, The Asexual Visibility and Education Network.

Middle School

Some of these have high-school-age protagonists, but are appropriate for 7th-8th grade.

Just Lizzie by Karen Wilfrid.

Eighth grader Lizzie’s study of asexuality in science class leads her to understand her own asexual identity as she embarks on a journey toward self-discovery and self-advocacy.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger.

Elatsoe lives in a slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry.

Rick by Alex Gino.

At 11, Rick is growing uncomfortable with his best friend’s explicit talk about sex and his father’s jokes about girls, then he discovers the Rainbow Spectrum club at school, where he can explore his identity and learn that maybe he is asexual.

Clariel: the lost Abhorsen by Garth  Nix.

In the Old Kingdom, Clariel has blood relations to the Abhorsen and the King. She dreams of a simple life but discovers this is hard to achieve when a dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city, her parents want to marry her off to a killer, and there is a plot brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan.

A-okay by Jarad Greene.

“When Jay starts eighth grade with a few pimples he doesn’t think much of it. But when his acne goes from bad to worse, Jay’s prescribed a powerful medication that comes with some serious side effects. Meanwhile, school isn’t going exactly as planned. All of Jay’s friends are in different classes; he has no one to sit with at lunch; his best friend, Brace, is avoiding him.” –Publisher.

Hazel’s theory of evolution by Lisa Bigelow.

Hazel loves reading encyclopedias, but has no answers for the questions of eighth grade. How can she make friends when no one understands her? What’s going to happen to one of her moms who’s pregnant again? Why does everything have to change?

Every bird a prince by Jenn Reese.

After she saves the life of a bird prince and becomes their champion, seventh grader Eren Evers must defend a forest kingdom, save her mom, and keep the friendships she holds dear–if she is brave enough to embrace her inner truths.

High School

The lady’s guide to petticoats and piracy by Mackenzi Lee.

“Felicity Montague must use all her womanly wits and wiles to achieve her dreams of becoming a doctor–even if she has to scheme her way across Europe to do it.” –Amazon.com.

Arden Grey by Ray Stoeve.

“Sixteen-year-old Arden Grey finds escape in her love of film photography as she navigates toxic relationships and how they influence her identity.” –OCLC.

All out: the no-longer-secret stories of queer teens throughout the ages edited by Saundra Mitchell.

“And they don’t kiss at the end” by Nilah Magruder. Maryland, 1976. Dee loves roller-skating but has been avoiding the rink ever since she broke up with Vince. No one can understand why she did it, and she does not know how to explain it. It’s just that she does not understand why people like kissing and dating, and she has no words to express that.

“Walking after midnight” by Kody Keplinger. Upstate New York, 1952. At 18, Betsy is a washed-up movie actress stranded in a small NY town, at midnight, having missed a train. While looking for a hotel, she encounters a diner waitress named Laura. Even though Betsy has never felt any urge to do anything even remotely intimate with anyone, maybe Laura will be different. 

Vanilla by Billy Merrell.

Told in a series of blank verse poems, two boys Van (called Vanilla) and Hunter tell of their relationship which began before they were teenagers, but foundered in high school, mostly because Hunter thinks they should be having sex and Vanilla is not so sure.

Radio silence by Alice Oseman.

When Frances and Aled spend the summer collaborating on her favorite podcast, they realize they understand each other in a way no one else does.

Is love the answer? By Uta Isaki.

Manga. “A poignant coming-of-age story about a young woman coming into her own as she discovers her identity as aromantic asexual.”

Here goes nothing by Emma K. Ohland 

When eighteen-year-old Beatrice comes in frequent contact with neighbor Bennie, she starts to question her asexual identity, her place in her friend group, and her plans for the future. Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Planning perfect by Haley Neil 

Summer vacation quickly becomes complicated for Felicity Becker as she tries to plan a perfect wedding for her mom, figure out her feelings for her friend Nancy, and wonder what dating will look like for her as an asexual person.

Aces wild : a heistby Amanda DeWitt

After recruiting his closest friends—the asexual support group he met through fandom forums—all Jack has to do is infiltrate a high-stakes gambling club and dodge dark family secrets, while hopelessly navigating what it means to be in love while asexual. Easy, right?

Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See

Joy starts to wonder if she has missed out on a quintessential high school experience. She is asexual, but that’s no reason she can’t experience first love, right? She writes to Caldwell Cupid to help her, and finds herself falling for the mysterious voice behind the letters. 

Paper planes by Jenni Wood

Graphic novel. After a life altering incident, Dylan and Leighton are sent to a summer camp for troubled youth. They both need a good evaluation at the camp. Otherwise, they’ll be sent away, unable to attend high school with their friends. 

Love points to you by Alice Lin

“When Angela Wu offers Lynda Fan the chance to design characters for her Otome game, Lynda discovers things she never knew about herself or her heart.” — Publisher.

Immoral code by Lillian Clark

Told from five viewpoints, high school friends Bellamy, Nari, Reese [aroace], Keagan, and Santiago team up to hack into Bellamy’s absentee billionaire father’s business accounts to skim enough money for her MIT tuition

The rhythm of my soul by Elin Dyer

Taryn Foster has her eyes set on becoming the first aro-ace ballerina in Roseheart Ballet Academy’s company of professional dancers, and all she needs to do is graduate. But she’s haunted by the ghost of her dead sister-and now she’s living for the two of them. 

Tash hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee

Fame and success come at a cost for Natasha “Tash” Zelenka when she creates the web series “Unhappy Families,” a modern adaptation of Anna Karenina—written by Tash’s eternal love Leo Tolstoy.

Beyond the black door by AdriAnne Strickland

Soulwalkers—like Kamai—can journey into other people’s souls while they sleep. But no matter where Kamai visits, she sees the black door. It follows her into every soul, and her mother has told her to never, ever open it…

College

Loveless by Alice Oseman.

Georgia has never kissed someone or particularly even wanted to; at the prom afterparty she is surrounded by couples making out, and she really does not know what is wrong—but in college she comes to understand herself as asexual/aromantic, and to capture the part of her identity that has always eluded her.

Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie.

Aisha Un-Haad, seventeen, and Key Tanaka, eighteen, have risked everything for new lives as mechanically enhanced soldiers, and when an insurrection forces dark secrets to surface, the fate of humanity is in their hands.


Being ace : an anthology of queer, trans, femme, and disabled stories of asexual love and connection edited by Madeline Dyer.

Discover the infinite realms of asexual love across sci-fi, fantasy, and contemporary stories. Whether adventuring through space, outsmarting a vengeful water spirit, or surviving haunted cemeteries, no two aces are the same in these 14 unique works that highlight asexual romance, aromantic love, and identities across the asexual spectrum.

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao.

Aromantic and asexual students Sophie and Jo, engaged in an online feud as the creators of popular relationship advice accounts “Dear Wendy” and “Sincerely Wanda,” unwittingly become real-life friends and navigate their shared aroace identities as they face the challenges of college life.

Tell me how it ends by Quinton Li.

Iris can predict the future and uncover secrets with her tarot cards. Marin comes to her for help to rescue a falsely imprisoned witch. Marin is aromantic, asexual, nonbinary, and has ADHD.

Until the last petal falls: a queerplatonic retelling of Beauty and the beast by Viano Oniomoh.

When Eru was eleven years old, he met an unforgettable boy, and then forgot him. Ten years later, after his parents’ sudden deaths, Eru uncovers some truths and finds that the fate of the village, and that of the boy he’d been made to forget, could lie in his hands.

Let’s talk about love by Claire Kann

Alice, who is asexual, is done with dating. But then she meets Takumi and she can’t stop thinking about him or the rom com-grade romance feels she did not ask for. Is she willing to risk their friendship for a love that might not be reciprocated—or understood?

Ace of hearts by Lucy Mason

When a sports injury loses Felix his scholarship, bestie Hesper proposes a year-long marriage of convenience for free tuition at the college where she works. When Hesper reveals her asexuality, Felix must reassess everything he thinks about love and sacrifice.

Process, Not Product: 7th Grade Research Projects

Posted on by
2

By Rebecca Moore and Connor Middleton

I have been fortunate to work with many, many social studies teachers who put together thoughtful research projects for their students. I love helping teachers find resources to give the students a good, reliable start to their research, and I love that teachers then let me work with the students on citations for the project. Assessing citations through NoodleTools lets me help the students asynchronously one on one, and I can also spot unreliable sources and help the students understand why they need to find better sources—and help them find those sources if necessary.

              One grade I work with throughout the year is 7th grade social studies, as those students complete several yearly research activities. Past undertakings include studying endangered languages and researching Middle-Eastern locations and professions to create a Moth-inspired story “from” a fictional resident. The 7th grade’s current teacher, Connor Middleton, is no exception in creating interesting, thoughtful, and thought-provoking projects; projects that not only improve students’ research skills, but improve their understanding of how the world works and why they should care about it. Because I so admire his research activities, I thought I would interview Connor about them. With the help of Flint AI, I turned my interests into focused questions for him. Connor’s reflective answers are below, with minor edits from me.

Topic: Coming Up With Projects

Question: What’s your process for designing a new research project? Where do you start?

Connor:I usually start with a concept or question that I want students to delve into. For African Geography I ask students: “How do we justify buying products that we know come from exploitation?” The related concepts include globalization, economic interdependence, and geographical based exploitation. This leads me to building an assignment in which students learn about the history of the rubber trade in the Congo under King Leopold, and compare it to modern companies’ involvement in the country as they seek the cobalt needed for smart phones and electric cars. We engage in research, discussions, and projects from there. The starting point is always asking: “What is the bigger meaning? Why does this matter?” I always aim to make my projects feel meaningful in that way. I want them to be the kind of lessons you remember as mind-blowing moments during your growing up that helped you see the world in a new light. 

LibGuide for Connor’s Africa project.

Question: How do you know when a topic will work well as a research project versus other types of assignments?

Connor: Research projects usually lend themselves to topics with multiple viewpoints. Finding quotes, reviewing claims, evaluating sources for credibility, and seeing multiple perspectives to an issue are often key in researching these topics. While sometimes a topic does not produce as great a project as I’d hoped, when it does, it usually contains one or more essential questions that lend themselves to finding the answer, rather than being told the answer through lecture. 

Topic: Research Topic Selection

Question: What criteria do you use when choosing research topics for 7th graders?

Connor: Personally, I see most global issues as suitable for 7th grade. This is a time of life when students test boundaries, explore new freedoms, and want to share their opinions on the world and be heard. So my usual criteria involve finding topics that are somewhat high level and hold high expectations for students to meet. My criteria is often: “Is this something I would have been interested to learn about in 7th grade?” 

Question: How do you incorporate current events or relevant issues into your research projects?

Connor: As we complete regional studies, we often study the current issues of each place covered. In some shorter research assignments students evaluate a current event, with our most recent being the bombing of boats outside Venezuela, as part of our South America unit. We always take some time in each regional unit to explore events happening in the area today, and do research to better understand particular issues. On the other side, I usually identify some key concepts for each region that serve as the spine of each unit. For example, European key concepts include expansion and supranational organizations with the EU, and Latin American key concepts highlight globalization and economic interdependence. 

Topic: Essential Research Skills

Question: What are the most important research skills you want 7th graders to walk away with?

Connor: Identifying AI, identifying bias, evaluating multiple perspectives, and finding reliable sources they can use for their own continued learning of the world.

Question: What do you see as the biggest challenges students face when learning to research, and how do you address them?

Connor: AI and mis/disinformation. This is a monumental challenge, one that I as their single social studies teacher in one lone school year cannot entirely fix. The world is only worsening with the flood of ever-increasing content and misleading “news,” to the point at which I worry how students will grow into their adult lives with a sense of common truth or reality. While this is all a little doom and gloom, the true effects of what is currently happening are hard to accurately gauge in terms of potential negative impacts. I try to address this by showing students the inaccuracies of AI, the business models of news corporations, and the bias of algorithms. 

Topic: Balancing Process and Content

Question: How do you balance teaching research methodology with ensuring students learn the historical/social studies content? Do you find that one reinforces the other, or do you sometimes have to make trade-offs?

Connor: I often feel they serve one another. Students tend to dislike “stand and deliver” instruction. Giving them the task of taking on their own learning often provides a good step in increasing their knowledge of historical or social studies content, within the guidelines, expectations, and skills we give them regarding research. I also would rank research skills, or skills in general, in a higher category of importance than content knowledge. Especially with middle school, students can forget much of the content we teach, but repeated skills and habits stick much more strongly. It is there I want to invest more of my time. 

Topic: Reflection and Impact

Question: What’s been your most successful research project, and what made it work so well?

Connor: The Human Rights Portfolio. I partner with my English 7 colleague and we have students pick a particular human rights issue and compile multiple projects in a portfolio to end the year. We combine skills in each class and work together to help our students actively choose a topic and become an expert (of sorts) on it. It works so well because we collaborate on the different skills we want students to exhibit, and the extra class time and student choice allows for more buy-in and less stress. 

Question: How have your research projects evolved over the years?

Connor: They have mostly evolved in the ways I try to limit unnecessary work for students, such as work that overvalues product over process. Students have different amounts of time, help, resources, etc. available to them, and I want to help make it a more equitable process; a process in which students focus more on learning and less on producing a product to achieve a high grade. This can be somewhat difficult. Creating awesome projects is part of the fun, but I also try to balance that with my rubrics, to focus more deeply on the real skills at hand and less the on the “flashy project.”

Question: How do you see these research skills serving students beyond 7th grade?

Connor: I hope students take their research skills and feel confident moving into the world with their own claims and opinions. I want students to be open minded, to learn from others and not jump to judgement, but also to hold the line on what they value. I want them to use their skills to question what they hear, and get to know the world around them through their own work and process, instead of simply accepting what others tell them.

Conclusion

Many thanks to Connor for taking the time to write such detailed, well-thought-out responses!

Digital Citizenship Jeopardy

Posted on by
2

I’m showing my age here, but I sometimes feel as though the “I have many skills” tagline of Xena, Warrior Princess, needs to apply to every school librarian. However, I think we all have skills at which we excel more than we do at others. My kryptonite? Goal setting. I have no objection to having goals, but for some reason, trying to articulate them turns off the creativity switch in my brain. So, since I needed to familiarize myself with our subscription classroom AI, Flint, I asked it to help me. After some manipulation, it actually came up with a long list of goals I really liked—but the list was much too long! With the help of a colleague I narrowed it down to a couple of solid goals, including improving students’ digital citizenship knowledge. I then asked Flint to divide the goal into fortnightly goals, which it did.

And…that’s where things kind of went off the rails.

For the first fortnightly goal, Flint suggested creating one fifteen-minute lesson for teachers that they could run during homerooms. Great! But when I started thinking about it, I thought, one lesson? To cover all aspects of digital citizenship for grades 5-8 in fifteen minutes? And I had to complete it in two weeks? Umm… Something had to give. As to what that was, I’ll just say that I set up the goals in October, and am still working on the first fortnightly goal!

First, I decided not to reinvent the wheel. CommonSense Media recently came out with an updated series of lesson plans covering six aspects of “Digital Literacy & Wellbeing”:

  • Digital Footprint & Identity
  • Cyberbullying & Online Harms
  • Privacy & Safety
  • Relationships & Communication
  • Information & Media Literacy
  • Healthy Habits

They divided the lesson plans into eighteen individual lessons for each grade, three per aspect. I thought that gave me a good framework for what to cover in the overview lesson I hoped to create. Fortunately, CSM does allow adapting and modifying their lessons under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International). Adapters must credit CSM for the original lessons, and must share any adapted/modified lessons under the same license.

Since I like gamifying lessons, I decided to create a Jeopardy for each grade that would give a brief overview of the first five aspects of digital literacy noted above (I decided “Healthy Habits” didn’t fit the remit). Most of the CSM lessons include scenarios for discussion and I adapted these to fit into a Jeopardy board. Using three scenarios for each aspect, I created a board of fifteen squares for each grade. Each scenario question has four possible answers, and most include multiple correct answers. After viewing correct answers, students see an additional slide summing up the topic, mostly copied from the CSM lesson’s sum-up slide.

Currently, I have finished grades 5-7, and am working on grade 8. I created the Jeopardies in PowerPoint, and to use them, teachers will download the file from the library website. Fair warning, THESE HAVE NOT BEEN PLAYTESTED. I haven’t had much luck in getting teachers to try this out during their homeroom slots, despite a bribe of homeroom cookies! I will get to test it with 6th grade later this week, though, and will report back as to success or changes needed. I hope that homerooms or classes will divide into teams to play, earning “Green and Gold” points for their school “team,” which might increase interest. They may play as many or as few of the squares as they want.

Obviously, at best this is only an overview, but it’s a start I hope will increase interest in delving more deeply into these important topics. One of the personal counselors and I have also spent a lot of time creating a series of fifteen minute lessons for seventh grade on this and related issues, and my favorite is the video several teachers (including our video teacher) helped us create, about privacy levels in social media. We’re still working on getting the curriculum completed and integrated, though.

If you would like to test out these Jeopardies, please do, and report back to me on what works and what doesn’t!

Playtest Update: I was able to run the 6th grade Jeopardy with all sections of 6th grade, and it went quite well once I’d ironed out a few technical difficulties (aka “user error”). I divided the class in two, and we went through a few scenarios pretty casually, without keeping track of points. I was not able to complete the jeopardy in fifteen minutes; it would probably take two sessions to cover everything. The “summary” slides were a bit long to read aloud, so I summarized the summary. That’s not ideal, but I do think the information is important to cover. Overall, I was pleased, and the kids seemed to enjoy it! They had good instincts for the correct answers, which is heartening as well.

Short Story Summaries

Posted on by
4

Some years ago, I got annoyed by the lack of summaries in short story collections. Teachers often asked for recommendations of stories featuring a particular theme, but most short story collection reviews or summaries did not detail the plots of each story. While asking AISL colleagues was a good work-around, I decided that I needed to start summarizing and reviewing every short story I read in a collection, and post my reviews on GoodReads. So I did. While it certainly takes more time to stop after each story (whether read in print or listened to in audio) and write up a summary/review, I’ve now amassed a decent if somewhat eclectic collection of short story summaries that I can share with teachers.

Then it occurred to me that I could share my summaries more broadly by posting them on a LibGuides page. I cobbled that together a few days ago, though I don’t think the organization or layout is the best. Perhaps someone reading this will offer some good advice? I ended up posting the books in a tabbed box, with tabs for different genres, and a table of contents on the side. I wish the lengthy texts didn’t sprawl all over the page, impeding browsing, but the two options for hiding text remove all of the line breaks differentiating the stories. For ease of reading, I capitulated to the text-on-page option. In addition, middle school and YA titles share space in some genres, so I put the middle school titles at the top.

As an example, here’s the text of my reviews for “You are here: connecting flights” by Ellen Oh.

**********

“Paul: Something to declare” / by Christina Soontornvat. Paul and his family are flying to Thailand, his parents’ and his grandmother’s home country. Paul is very close to his grandmother, who does not speak English. She has something unusual in her carry-on that she doesn’t want Paul’s mother to know about. That will change when they get to security. I liked this one. It was affecting and touching, to see the close relationship between Paul and his grandmother, and the way he wonders about his own connection to a place that he’s only ever visited. And, of course, the microaggressions, always, and always—but also those who understand.

“Jae: Ground rules” / by Linda Sue Park. Jae’s mother works at the airport, and when his babysitter fell through, she had to take him to work with her. Her supervisor is mean about it, but Jae promises to stay in the break room. While he is watching the airport monitors, though, he sees a toddler wander away from her family at security, and they don’t notice. He decides he has to rescue her. I liked how this one showed how different people regarded Jae, so totally differently in such a short period of time. It really illustrates the stereotyping and racism people in his position face every day. It’s also a good story to talk about when is it a good decision to break the rules?

“Mindy: Standing up” / by Meredith Ireland. Mindy was adopted from Korea as a baby by her two dads. Now they are in the airport on their way to Korea so she can “reconnect with her culture.” Problem is, she really doesn’t want to because she feels no connection with it at all. After a racist incident on the concourse, in which her fathers stand up to the racist and make Mindy feel uncomfortable because she is just not the stand up and be noticed type, she runs off to be by herself. And she’ll learn something about herself. I liked this one too. I liked the tension between what Mindy thought she should be like and what she really was like, and how she found a way to understand that and still do something about it, I also thought that her feelings about being either too Asian or not Asian enough were poignant and understandable.

“Lee: Jam session” / by Mike Chen. Lee is 12, it is flying by himself to see his uncle. Lee has his Stratocaster guitar with him, and two security guards hassle him because “of course” no Asian kids play guitar. This was a painful one to read. I hate it that some adults in positions of authority can be so mean to children and so racist at the same time. I really liked Lee’s perspective, which I think will resonate with a lot of kids. I also thought the details were really well done.

“Ari: Guidelines” / Susan Tan. Ari is traveling with her six year old brother. When their flight is diverted because of weather, she is stuck with trying to entertain her brother, and also stuck with someone from the airline as a chaperone, who, like, seemingly everyone else, is totally confused how Ari can be both Asian and Jewish. In the Food Court, something happens that makes Ari realize that maybe she is ready for her bat mitzvah after all. I liked the plot of this one, and can see how frustrating it is when people stereotype you, and think that there’s no way you can be something you are. What I found irritating, in terms of the writing, were the endless numbered lists. I realize that was a representation of how the main character thought, but I found it annoying—though that’s only personal taste!

“AJ: A kind of noble” / Randy Ribay. AJ’s mind always lingers on ways that he has failed. Now he’s at the airport with his basketball team, thinking about how badly he played in the last game. Then he stands in line behind two of his meaner teammates, and hears them being racist and trash-talking the only other Filipino kid on the team, who could not come to the international tournament with them. That kid also happens to be AJ’s best friend. Will AJ be strong enough to stand up and say something? I liked how this showed how small acts, both negative and positive, can affect you, and how you can build on the positive acts and change the highlight reel in your mind.

“Natalie: Costumes” / by Traci Chee. Japanese American Natalie is going on vacation with her white best friend Beth, and Beth’s family. While at the airport, Natalie has a lot of uncomfortable feelings with some of the comments Beth’s parents make, as well as comments that Beth makes. Can she get Beth to understand why it’s not OK to say things like that? I like this one as well, with its vivid ways of describing the different feelings that Natalie has in different situations. I also liked the up to date knowledge about Manga and anime. This is another situation that I’m sure happens all the time in friendships among kids, and it is good to see a representation of it, and a representation of how Natalie decides to deal with it. One of the most memorable quotes from the book, for me, was: “My face is not a costume.”

“Henry: Grounded” / Mike Jung. Henry is with his dad in the airport. They are both Korean, American, and autistic. Henry wishes there were any books about characters like him, because both he and his dad, who is a librarian, love books. Henry has an idea about what his book character would be like, and that serves him well when a bully tries to mess with him. This was a quiet story, with a lovely relationship between father and son, understanding each other. I liked the intersectionality of it, because Henry is right.

“Camilla: Big day suitcase” / by Erin Entrada Kelly. Camilla‘s mother is Filipino, and her father is white. Camilla and her sister Greta, are in the airport with her mother, on their way to the Philippines, so they can see where they came from. Camilla does not feel Filipino, since she is white-passing, as she learns when her best friend says that she looks “normal.“ Then Greta tells Camilla about always having to be “it” when kids at her school play Chinese tag about Covid. It gets Camilla thinking. This was another fairly quiet story about family relationships and those microaggressions that kids like Greta face every day, and Camilla realizing what is happening. This is a good one for kids who don’t feel part of their genetic heritage.

“Jane: Questions and answers” / by Grace Lin. Jane is Taiwanese American, and she is in the airport with her mother, her little sister, and her grandfather, who was injured in what he and Jane’s mother insist on calling in “accident.” Jane knows it was not an accident because she was there, and she wonders if it really is the right thing, not to call attention to themselves and to the bigger issue at hand. Jane’s family is reflective of many of the other families described in this anthology, in not wanting to draw attention to the anti-Asian microaggressions and hate. I liked Jane really thinking about it and making her own decision.

“Khoi: Lost in translation” / by Minh Le. Khoi is Vietnamese American, and he is at the airport with his parents, getting ready for his first trip ever to Vietnam. He’s worried that he will be a disappointment to everyone, but a strange dream helps him sort some things out. This was a short one, and the only one so far without any microaggressions or bullying. I think a lot of kids in Khoi’s situation probably have this same feeling, so they can sympathize with him, and hopefully also come to feel as he does about his trip.

“Soojin: You are here” / by Ellen Oh. Soojin and her parents live in New York, but after a hate crime destroys their business, Soojin’s mother insists on moving back to Korea, while her father insists on staying. Soojin desperately wants to stay in New York, but her mother is dragging her to Korea. When they get stuck in the Chicago airport for a while, they encounter all the other characters from all the other stories, and Soojin’s mother begins to see that perhaps there are more reasons to stay and then go. I liked this one for all the people who stood up to the bullies, and for the hope that there’s still enough good in America to make it worthwhile. I thought the author incorporated all the other characters really well, and it was fun to remember their stories as well.

“A note from the editor” / by Ellen Oh. The author talks about why she decided to put this anthology together, the origins of the term “Asian American,” and why it’s so non-descriptive of all the people from that part of the world.

*********

Feel free to explore my reviews if you are in search of stories with specific themes for your teachers or students!

Teaching Technology Guidelines to Fifth Grade

Posted on by
Reply

At the start of the year, the library/technology team (ILT) introduces our fifth graders to the technology they will use throughout the year. This includes Canvas, Veracross, PaperCut, Microsoft 365, and all its related apps. One thing that we and the teachers felt was missing, though, was more about Overlake’s philosophy around technology.

One of our fifth grade’s overarching goals is instilling a set of values called “Citizen Owl.” These tailor Overlake’s values for our youngest students: Compassion, Community, Curiosity, Integrity, Respect, and Independence. The fifth grade teachers work hard to integrate these values into their curricula and SEL lessons throughout the year. Likewise, the ILT team, instead of an acceptable use policy, hasGuiding Questions for Responsible Use of Technology.

So with both of those things in mind, we designed a lesson to get the kids thinking about how we can use technology to support Overlake’s mission and values. We started with a basic PowerPoint to share the values, and the guiding questions that connect them to technology:

Compassion: How will we use technology to show compassion, care, and kindness to others?

Curiosity: How will we use technology to explore, research, and find out about the world?

Integrity: How will we use technology honestly?

Inclusion & Equity: How will we use technology to create environments that include everyone equally?

Respect: How will we use technology to show respect for ourselves and our community?  

From there, we broke the kids into five groups, and assigned each one a specific guideline. We gave each group a list of possible technology uses/scenarios, with the instruction that the group should decide which ones applied to their guideline. Each group had a poster-sized post-it with the value on it, and two columns: Yes and No. They also got a pad of small post-its, and if the group decided a use/scenario qualified as something that people SHOULD do, they wrote it up and put it in the “yes” column. If the use/scenario qualified as something people should NOT do, it went on a post-it in the “no” column. We also asked the groups to come up with their own examples for each column.

On the screen, we showed examples for each guideline:

Compassion: For example, communicate electronically with the same care and caution as you would in person, recognizing that electronic communication has limitations.

Curiosity: For example, learn and inquire within school-appropriate boundaries, exploring relevant topics safely and responsibly.

Integrity: For example, represent yourself and your work honestly, giving credit where it is due.  

Inclusion & Equity: For example, help everyone feel welcome and included when communicating online. For example, avoid assuming everyone has access to the same technology.

Respect: For example, consider the appropriate time, space, and tools for each class, audience, etc. For example, demonstrate responsible use of technology when you are on your own. 

Here are the scenarios we gave the students:

•            Eating or drinking next to laptop

•            Searching for Taylor Swift tickets while I’m supposed to be researching the US Constitution

•            Spamming a chat group with silly (appropriate) gifs and memes

•            Walking across campus with my laptop open

•            Having Flint (AI) quiz me on science topics before a test

•            Playing a bloody first-person shooter game

•            Sending emails during class

•            Using someone else’s Veracross id number to print 

•            Creating a meme from an embarrassing pic I took of my brother

•            Sending a message to my teacher that is all emojis and says “’sup?”

•            Interacting with people on my Discord server during class

•            Sending messages to my parents during class

•            Playing games on my Apple Watch

•            Listening to a podcast on my AirPods during class

•            Listening to a podcast at home 

•            Surfing YouTube or TikTok for funny videos

•            Taking pictures of people and posting without permission

•            Using my friend’s computer to send a message as them to a teacher or student

•            Sharing my password with a friend

•            Sleeping with my laptop in my bed

•            Having ChatGPT write my report on Ancient Mesopotamia for me

•            Using my laptop in the bathroom/restroom

•            Doing research for class

•            Using Canva AI to create images for a PowerPoint

•            Sending a nice message to someone who is having a bad day

•            Emailing a teacher to ask for help on an assignment

•            Storing my laptop safely

•            Working with a teacher to set up a virtual author visit

•            Setting up a group chat on Teams for an assignment

•            Having Flint (AI) help me brainstorm story ideas

So, how did it go? We thought it went reasonably well. Clearly the kids thought about the questions, and in the end maybe that’s all you can ask of fifth graders! We will definitely make some changes next year, though. First, we had all 33 kids together due to scheduling complications, and that didn’t work so well—the rooms are not designed for that number of kids, and it got rather chaotic. Splitting into two groups would have worked better. Also, we thought that it would work better to offer the kids scenarios specific to their guideline as well as the general scenarios; they had trouble applying specific scenarios to their guidelines, though they had less trouble identifying negative and positive uses of technology in general.

Library School Connections

Posted on by
4

I studied for my MSLS degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1990s, and loved my time there. It’s where I met my forever-friends (we Zoom weekly and gather annually), where I learned how to rent an apartment and pay state income tax (who knew that was a thing? Everyone else but me? Ok, then…), and where I earned the degree that started me off on a 30+ year career in school libraries.

My roommate and me in front of UNC’s library school during our first year. I’m in the hat and blue turtleneck (which I still own!)

My library school forever-friends and me in front of the same building a couple of years ago, when we were all visiting North Carolina.

When I was looking at schools, UNC was the obvious choice. The campus looked gorgeous, the town was small, and the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) offered me not just a graduate assistantship in the art library, but tuition remission to in-state level. Because I have always felt so indebted to the school, I have been a regular if small-potatoes donor ever since graduation.

Nevertheless, I was surprised to be contacted in January by the Assistant Director of Development at SILS, wanting to set up a Zoom call so she could thank me personally for all my years of donations, and “find out more about why you have given to SILS so consistently.” While I suspected she might want to ask for more money—I’ve worked in independent schools for 30+ years; I know what a development office does!—I did feel that a Zoom call was a small thing to ask.

I quite enjoyed the call. The young woman who interviewed me did not ask for money; she really did ask why I donated consistently, and asked for details about my time at SILS. So I talked about the professors, including the one that drove us all so crazy I actually turned into one of those kids who acted up in class for the first time in my life, and the classes, and life at UNC in the early 1990s. It was fun to reminisce, even if to someone who probably wasn’t born until at least 2000!

Some weeks after that, the Assistant Director for SILS let me know that the Assistant Director for the Graduate School at UNC would be in Seattle and would love to get together with me. This assistant director told me: “I am particularly interested in hearing about how your time at Carolina prepared you for your career as a librarian.” At that point, I felt I had to let her know that if she was after a big donation, a school librarian was the wrong person to ask!

She kindly responded: “We truly value our alumni and enjoy hearing about their experiences, particularly learning how their degrees have influenced their lives and careers. We’re always looking for alumni to be advocates for Carolina. There are numerous opportunities for engagement (networking and mentorship, for example) and many ways to support our efforts aside from donating.”

As getting away for coffee during the day is awkward, as you all know (plus I hate coffee), I invited her to visit the school. She did, bringing me a bag of Carolina swag, which I thought was nice of her. I showed her around the school and around the library, then we sat in the back room for an hour and talked. We chatted about how libraries have changed in the years I’ve been a librarian, advice I would give new librarians, and much more that I now forget because my brain is like the metaphorical iceberg with penguins and a few of those penguins got pushed off.

I do know I appreciated the opportunity to reflect on all I’ve done and all I’ve learned since I left grad school. I also appreciated that someone really was willing to travel 3,000 miles to talk to me and other Carolina grads about our careers! Since then, they recently contacted me to ask if I’d be willing to talk to SILS students interested in school libraries. I said if the students are willing to talk to someone at the far end of their career, of course I’d be happy to.

Probably many of you are already involved with your own colleges or graduate schools, but if not, it might be worth checking out what you could do for them as an alum, if you enjoyed/appreciated your time there. No matter where you are in your career, you are probably in a position to offer advice to nascent school librarians, and goodness knows, these days they need all the help they can get!

Webtoons Redux

Posted on by
Reply

In September of 2023, I did a blog post about Webtoons. While I don’t want to repeat all the details, I did want to update a couple of my lists.

First, more Webtoons that are now available as traditional graphic novels. This is not an exhaustive list, just the ones I’ve personally read. Though these are mostly aimed at YA and adult audiences, Raven Saga, Cursed Princess Club, Punderworld, and Froggy are fine for middle school.

Nothing Special by Katie Cook. Fantasy, Humor, Drama, Coming of Age

“In the grand scheme of the worlds at large, Callie thinks she’s nothing special. Sure, she’s friends with the ghost of a radish and her dad owns a magical antique shop–but she’s spent her life in the human world. Her dad won’t let her join him on his collection trips in the magical realm “for her own protection”, so she’s only caught glimpses of that world through the gates of the town where her father’s store is. On her seventeenth birthday, Callie goes home with her friend Declan to find her home in disarray and her dad missing. Signs of a struggle point to the portal to the magical realm and when there are signs, you follow them. Now it’s up to Callie, Declan, and Radish to band together and bring him home. As they face creatures good and bad, and all sorts of adventure, Callie and Declan may just find out that they are both special in their own ways after all.” –GoodReads.com.

Acception by Coco Ouwerkerk. Coming of Age, School Story, Humor, Drama, LGBTQ+

“It’s the start of a new school year at Apollo High and Arcus just moved from England to the Netherlands. With his rainbow-colored hair and love of all things fashion, Arcus is anything but your average teenager. He’s an upbeat independent thinker, proud fashionista, and like the rest of us, is looking for a few friends to call his own. This won’t be easy for Arcus, because his best options for friends are prickly goth Maud and self-centered queen bee Iris.” –GoodReads.com.

The Remarried Empress by Rachid Ridouane. Drama, Fantasy, Romance

“Navier Ellie Trovi was an empress perfect in every way — intelligent, courageous, and socially adept. She was kind to her subjects and devoted to her husband. Navier was perfectly content to live the rest of her days as the wise empress of the Eastern Empire. That is, until her husband brought home a mistress and demanded a divorce. “I accept this divorce… And I request an approval of my remarriage.” In a shocking twist, Navier remarries another emperor and retains her title and childhood dream as empress. But just how did everything unfold?” –GoodReads.com.

The Cursed Princess Club by LambCat. Fantasy, Humor, Drama, Romance

In the Pastel Kingdom, Princess Maria is so beautiful that birds and animals regularly help her get ready. Princess Lorena is so beautiful that she always wakes up surrounded by flowers. Prince Jamie is so beautiful that he radiates light and sparkles. And Princess Gwen, her family’s beloved treasure, always wakes up with an opossum chewing on her green hair. She looks nothing like anyone else in her family, but because their father is so restrictive (but warm and loving—he adores his children), and because her siblings and her father adore her, the kind-hearted and generous Gwen has no idea there’s anything different about her. That is, not until their father decides to betroth all his daughters to the sons of his crony, the king of the Plaid Kingdom. And his sons are so hot that Maria and Lorena—who have never been allowed to date—are frothing at the mouth to be married. The prince intended for Gwen is equally hot, but when they meet, he’s not as thrilled as his brothers, to say the least. When Gwen finally learns that some people—like Frederick—think she’s ugly, she flees to the forest, and accidentally encounters the Cursed Princess Club. Even though she doesn’t have a curse, they take her in, and her life starts to change.

Raven Saga by Chihiro Howe (expected 1/26) Fantasy, Adventure, Drama, Romance

“Once upon a time, in a land of fairy tales, lived a girl and her grandmother, protected and secluded from the rest of the world. When her grandmother is taken by a mysterious boy, Wen must travel to the outside world to save her, but the world isn’t as magical as she once thought, and danger lurks around every corner. With the help of her friends, will Wen be able to solve the mystery of the boy with the ravens? And more importantly, will she be able to solve the mystery of her past?” –Webtoons.com

Morgana and Oz by Miyuli. Fantasy, Adventure, Drama, Romance

“What happens when a struggling witch meets an angsty vampire? Either love or war. Morgana belongs to a long line of witches, and Oz to the rival vampire clan. After a chance encounter . . . and maybe a few stray spells . . . these two need to find a way to work together, or risk all-out war between coven and clan. It’s a Romeo and Juliet story where a boy and a girl from two rival clans, one a vampire and one a witch, meet cute, like each other, but then the girl makes a serious mistake and turns the boy into a cute kitty.” –GoodReads.com.

Punderworld by Linda Šejić. Fantasy, Adventure, Drama, Romance

“The classic tale of Greek mythology, but 100% more awkwardly relatable. Hades is the officious, antisocial ruler of the Underworld; Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is an earth goddess of growth and renewal—they’ve been crushing on each other for the past two centuries. But when a festival (and a little liquid courage) present an opportunity to put an end to their Olympian will-they-won’t-they, a meddlesome pantheon and several titanic misassumptions threaten to give every god in the sky the wrong impression… and leave their romance dead before it can bloom.” –GoodReads.com.

Castle Swimmer by Wendy Martin. Fantasy, Adventure, Drama, Romance, LGBTQ+

“From the moment Kappa tumbles into existence on the ocean floor, his life’s purpose is already decided for him: He is the Beacon, a light to all sea creatures, and destined to fulfill their many prophesies. In high demand and under immense pressure, Kappa quickly realizes that fame and glory are small compensation for a life of predetermined self-sacrifice. Unable to resist the call of destiny due to a magical yellow cord that appears from his chest and pulls him inexorably to any sea creatures he swims by, Kappa ultimately finds himself drawn to the Shark kingdom, where he is immediately imprisoned. The Sharks’ prophecy states that the curse maiming their people will only be lifted once their prince, Siren, kills the Beacon. But when Prince Siren decides to defy fate and help Kappa escape, Kappa realizes that there might be more to life than fulfilling endless prophesies, leading to a raucous adventure as big and unpredictable as the ocean itself—and a romance that nobody could have predicted.” –GoodReads.com.

Float by Katie Marchant. Drama, Romance, Coming of Age

YA. “Waverly Lyons has been caught in the middle of her parents’ divorce for as long as she can remember. This summer, the battle rages over who she’ll spend her vacation with, and when Waverly’s options are shot down, it’s bye-bye Fairbanks, Alaska and hello Holden, Florida to stay with her aunt. Coming from the tundra of the north, the beach culture isn’t exactly Waverly’s forte. The sun may just be her mortal enemy, and her vibe is decidedly not chill. To top it off? Her ability to swim? Nonexistent. Enter Blake, the (superhot) boy next door. Charming and sweet, he welcomes Waverly into his circle. For the first time in her life, Waverly has friends, a social life, and soon enough, feelings . . . for Blake. As the two grow closer, Waverly’s fortunes begin to look up. But every summer must come to an end, and letting go is hardest when you’ve finally found where you belong.” –GoodReads.com.

Froggy by Paige Walshe (expected 8/25) Fantasy, Humor, Drama, Adventure

Froggy has hilarious and sometimes touching or annoying adventures with friends and frenemies around his pond. This looks like a book for kids, and it would be fine for kids, but there’s a lot of humor and found family and character quirks that will appeal to any age. I’ve been reading this on Webtoons, and if I see there’s a new episode of Froggy up, I save it for the last of the Webtoons I read that day so I end my reading on a cheerful, comforting note.

I have updated my extensive list of favorite Webtoons, and to add to my 2023 top ten list, here are an additional ten that I have recently loved.

Rooftops & Roommates by Zaanart. Fantasy, Supernatural, Drama, Adventure, Friendship.

YA. Architecture major Jeb rooms with his best friend Todd. There’s just one problem… Jeb’s secretly a gargoyle! Between studying, partying, and a bad ghost problem, will Jeb be able to keep his true identity a secret? [Completed]

Note: This is hilarious, and also features a delightful platonic bro-mance between Jeb and Todd, who is the best roomie ever!

Realta by Rachel Eaton. Fantasy, Drama, Adventure, Romance, LGBTQ+.

YA. Hidden from the world for centuries that seemed like years, nonbinary Virgo Elowen learns that magic is illegal, the Fae are stronger, and star-sign-blessed Realta have been forgotten—or have they? [On hiatus]

Note: This has its roots in Celtic as well as Zodiac mythology, and has great LGBTQ+ representation.

The Remarried Empress. by Alphatart. Fantasy, Drama, Romance.

YA. Navier was the wise empress of the Eastern Empire, until her husband brought home a mistress and demanded a divorce. In a shocking twist, Navier remarries another emperor after the divorce. [In progress]

Note: This is a highly popular Webtoon, and includes violence that could bother some readers, and fanservice that can get a little spicy!

Lady Liar by Maripaz Villar. Historical, Humor, Drama, Romance.

YA. Adara, a lower class girl whose only love is money, comes up with the perfect plan to get her dream job: she’ll pretend to be a refined lady to be hired as a companion for a wealthy family. [Completed]

Note: This is laugh-out-loud funny, and the romances are sweet and only mildly spicy.

To the Stars and Back by Peglo. Romance, Drama, LGBTQ+.

YA. Introverted and grumpy, college student Kang Dae spends most of his time alone, and prefers it this way. Then he gets a friendly and bubbly neighbor named Bo Seon. Suddenly, his life takes a different turn. [Complete]

Note: This is a sweet, mildly spicy, slow-burn romance. There is some trauma in some characters’ pasts.

The D!ckheads by GummiBunny. Drama, Romance.

YA. New girl Eliana befriends Football Captain and most popular boy at school, Levi, as well as lone-wolf and outcast, Marco. She’s finally got the friends she always wanted, but what will she do when she finds out they hate each other? [In progress]

Note: This is high school drama to the max, and includes some serious depression storylines that might trouble some readers. While commenters are urging a throuple, it hasn’t quite happened…yet?

All Colors of Snow by Ah Ai Maria. Historical, Drama, Romance, Adventure.

YA. Balls, operas, beautiful ladies in silk and muslin, footmen, cadets, love, champagne, Parisian sunsets, alleys, funny pranks and walks, Schubert’s waltzes, Indian tea aroma, poems in thick volumes and the sparkle of unfamiliar eyes… [In progress]

Note: This was originally on Canvas, but has rebooted to Webtoon Originals and so only a few episodes are available, but it is a much longer story. The artwork is incredibly beautiful!

A Spell for a Smith by ArtSasquatch. Fantasy, Drama, Romance.

YA. A shy witch in her quiet forest cottage. A surly dwarf in his blacksmith’s forge. Both seeking solace in their respective refuge, but both aching for more. [On hiatus]

Note: This is a heartwarming story about recovering from trauma through a loving relationship. Ivy is more than shy—she has PTSD from her past.

Not So Silent by ROSEOAK. Romance, Drama, LGBTQ+.

YA. Lewis has perfect grades and a packed schedule—but no time for himself. Then he meets Fern, a deaf new student who captures his attention and challenges his routine. As feelings grow, Lewis begins to question his people-pleasing ways and may finally learn to love himself. [On hiatus]

Note: It’s unusual to have any disability representation in Webtoons, so this one is welcome!

Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story by Lemon Frog, A-Jin, DOYOSAY. Fantasy, Drama, Romance, Adventure.

YA. Reborn as a villain in her favorite novel, Suna—now Edith—vows to live kindly and rewrite her fate. But her marriage to Killian, who loves another and distrusts her family, threatens her hopes for a happy ending amid rivalries and romance. [Complete]

Note: This was recommended to me by a 6th grader! It’s fairly spicy, and does include some violence.