Perhaps you can already guess that my week has been a bit topsy-turvy based on this post going up on a Sunday instead of on Friday! As we get deeper into the Spring term, I’m juggling finishing the year well with planning for the 23-24 school year and this week required quite the circus act.

Books:

Some Shall Break by Ellie Marney (out June 6, 2023): Last week I reviewed the first book in this series (None Shall Sleep) and I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the sequel! Just like the first, I devoured it. The second book in the series felt more YA to me than the first, perhaps because Marney chooses to explore some of the romantic relationships between her characters. For me, this element was a miss. The characters are 19 and seem to be navigating adult relationships more awkwardly than my 13-year old students. Overall though, the book was a solid addition and I look forward to reading the third book!

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith (out April 11, 2023): How does one describe a book that is memoir, poetry, diary, and narrative all in one? Maggie Smith reflects on the dissolution of her marriage in a way that only a poet can. The memoir is beautiful and difficult to read at the same time. I found myself bookmarking pages and highlighting lines with wild abandon. Near the end of the book she has a brilliant chapter titled, “A Kind of Cento, Collaged from Pieces of the Whole,” wherein she manages to bring together all of the stories in the memoir in a prose-cento that brought me to tears. I highly recommend you pick this one up ASAP! 

Research articles:

Girls Gone Greek – Last week I suggested Yellowjackets, this week I share a JSTOR article about the Dionysian references in the show!! One of my favorite things is when fandoms go a little bit nerdy and become tangled up in scholar culture. I couldn’t put my finger on why Yellowjackets felt a little like The Secret History to me and this article illuminated why – bacchanalian rituals! 

Scaffolding the Development of Self-Regulated  Learning in Mathematics Classrooms and SEQUENCING COMPONENTS OF MATHEMATICS LESSONS TO MAXIMIZE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-REGULATION  – I love when readings I’m assigned for graduate school directly align with work I’m doing at the Academy!  As educators navigate what it means to work with students who are fundamentally different than any who have been in our classrooms (due to COVID + our shifting landscape), it’s more important than ever to explicitly model the behaviors we want students to adopt. These two articles provide an overview of what self-regulation looks like in the math classroom.