Kim's comments (member since Mar 02, 2008)

Kim's comments from the Educator Book Club group.

I agree...words and music...and all of our senses, I guess. I just taught a workshop on sensory detail in Marin County, CA last Friday for fourth graders and one of them asked me about why he can remember things when he smells things. It's the same sort of idea. I asked him for an example and he told me that at school he sometimes smells something that seems like cotton candy and now he always thinks about school when he smells that smell - gotta love the senses for rooting us in our memories!

I LOVE your story, Angela. And boy do I remember tapes... :-) I actually love that song...have some of my own memories around it. Funny memory that came out of this...I was in the gym and her song "Building a mystery" came on over the gym speakers and I remember stopping to listen to it...I just stood there on the treadmill listening...the guy next to me was like "um, are you okay?" And I said "this is a great song..." I think I sort of scared him a little :-)

I LOVE teaching House on Mango Street with multi-level ninth graders as it's also a great way to have them do a project about them, very memoir based and you get to know your students really well that way. I have that project if you ever want me to send it to you. Also, my school that I teach at just taught my young adult novel Songs for a Teenage Nomad and did the song journal project with the ninth graders and it was really amazing - I got to come in and they read parts of them to me...it was a great day. All the curriculum for the book is available free on my website at www.kimculbertson.com. I have taught high school for ten years and I tried really hard to put in some user-friendly stuff together as a writer (as I will always, always be a teacher first).

I love to see anything with INQUIRY in the title - I'll sure check that one out!

I just finished reading "Quick as a Cricket" to my three year old (one of her favorites). I also love Weslandia. It's especially good for a child following his or her own path :-) The Russell the Sheep books are great too.

I love Possible Lives by Mike Rose, anything by Ted Sizer (but especially The Students are Watching) and my parents (both educators) raised me on The Open Classroom by Herbert Kohl and The Sabertooth Curriculum (which is really hard to find now). In my Masters program I read Revolutionizing America's Schools by Carl Glickman, which I still find myself referring back to from time to time and I revisit Dewey often (especially around inquiry-based education). Hooray for the Jonathan Kozol referral from Rebecca above - he rocks.

The other day, someone asked me: Why is so much "good" literature so depressing and have so many dark themes in it? After a LONG talk about the nature of the human being and what we're drawn to and the need for human connection about universal things, I found myself exhausted. As a teacher, I know how important it is to read and discuss all this darkness. But since my daughter was born three and a half years ago, I find myself wanting lighter, happier reads as well. And I think they are JUST as important as the dark stuff. So, as a writer, I'm at work on my second novel and determined to write a FUN book - something that's just fun to read, a little literary, but mostly just something to ENJOY. And as a reader, I am trying to read books right now that make me happy, but that are really well-written and funny and hopeful. So much of the "happy" stuff gets tossed aside as being "fluff" or being "cheesy" and I'm having trouble wading through all that. I'm wondering if people have suggestions for really well-written, good books that are just FUN and make you HAPPY while reading them. Suggestions?

SONGS FOR A TEENAGE NOMAD by Kim Culbertson 5 stars - teensreadtoo.com. In the novel, Calle (my main character) keeps a song journal. She writes down the memories she gets from songs (some people keep photo books...she keeps songs). I've been touring in schools and working on the song journal with students and it's been really fun. I've also had people writing me and letting me know what songs make a memory for them and it's been really cool to hear different stories. Anyone care to share a song that always brings back the same memory? I"ll give an example: Whenever I hear "If You Leave" by OMD I am immediately back in middle school in a lime-green Bongo mini skirt, hoping, hoping that the boy with his locker above mine would ask me to dance. ;-)