on savoring summer like you’re 10 again…

Happy summer, all!

This post comes to you a few days late because, honestly, I was in serious need of a month to not think about school, the library, or librarianship and my blog post date came and went without me realizing it.

I think I might have shared this in this space before so apologies if it’s a repeat, but as a kid school was really hard for me. I struggled to learn to read and I was a very late reader. Much to my elementary teachers’ (and my mom’s) credit I always loved school and liked learning. Still, the “work” of school was hard and I was a 10-year old boy. Back in the day when we had, like, 3 over-the-air TV stations through our rabbit ear antennas, the local TV station that my family usually watched for news played this jingle before the news broadcast aired.

On Sunday nights, this jingle always gave me a stomach ache because, invariably, I had lied to my parents and told them that I’d finished all of my homework and calcuations in my head inicated that there was no way I was going to finish all of that homework before the 8:15 start of school on Monday morning. Anyway, 44 years later, all that’s old is new again and that’s my way of saying, “My homework is late because I was too busy having summer vacation fun…” I initially got really stressed about it, but I got a Coke Zero, sat down on the sofa, and watched a great Peruvian movie on Netflix until the feeling went away. Hahaha!!!

Anyway, now that I have started diving into our Academic Chairs’ read, Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, and I finally find myself coming to grips with the end of the gloriousness that is summer vacation, I find myself slowly but surely starting to think about ways to move our students along on the information literacy continuum that don’t make them sigh and role their eyes in my presence

Tip for new HS librarians: I always fail. My high school kids always sigh and role their eyes at me, but I just laugh and tell them, “Hey, do that behind my back! It’s called manners!” and they laugh and play along with the rest of the lesson we’re doing…

While not thinking about school, the library, or librarianship, I seem to spend a lot of time following viral social media mysteries like how a perfectly preserved In-n-Out burger ended up on the streets of NYC; browsing Buzzfeed listicles for 21 items that will change my life for under $15; following the adventures of Barley the golden retriever on his adventures with his parents in Amsterdam; and discovering that people recutting movie trailers depiciting Elf as a horror movie or Harry Potter as a teen comedy is an actual thing!

I found these trailers fascinating! Sometimes the weirdest things bring inspiration, but I have a number of teachers working with students on understanding and employing ethos, logos, and pathos in media and in students’ own work and I’m thinking that it’ll be really interesting have students compare and contrast the original and recut versions of the trailers, then have them deconstruct ads or news segments of their choosing.

That’s, literally, as far as I’ve gotten with this. What would you do with these? Are you teaching ethos, logos, and pathos as part of information literacy instruction? If yes, what are you doing?

Savor the remaining wonderful days of summer, all!

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