Monica Edinger's Blog, page 51
February 6, 2014
In the Classroom: Some Questions About Some Common Core Lessons
As a teacher in a private school I am not currently required to follow the Common Core State Standards. That said, because I am a teacher, I am following closely the discussion about them, their implementation, issues, and so forth. One resource I’ve come across is the Achieve the Core websitecreated by Student Achievement Partners, who describe themselves as ”….a non-profit organization working to support teachers across the country in their efforts to realize the promise of the Common Core...
February 4, 2014
Tolerating Ambiguity: Endings
Long ago I remember being delighted when someone at a teaching history conference spoke about tolerating ambiguity, the idea that as we develop we learn to do this more and more. This speaker noted that learning to do history was learning to tolerate ambiguity, to manage to live with no one answer, to appreciate that there were multiple reasons (some conflicting) for behaviors and actions in the past. I was reminded of this recently when participating ina conversation about a forthcoming book...
February 3, 2014
Against Certainty
I am not a scientist and I’m definitely not one who tends to feel particular certain about very much. After all, you just never can know how people will behave. (What happened in Sierra Leone convinces me of that.) All this is because of a powerful essay in today’s New York Times by philosopher Simon Critchley, “The Dangers of Certainty: A Lesson from Auschwitz” featuring an old BBC series called “The Ascent of Man” hosted by oneJacob Bronowski. Below is an tiny piece of the show, but I recom...
January 30, 2014
Thoughts on Newbery: This Year
I’ve been deeply involved with the Newbery award for years, mostly by reading and speculating during a given year and once as a member of the Committee itself. I’ve enjoyed tremendously advocating for my favorites on this blog, participating in the Heavy Medal discussion, making my own goodreads list of possibilities, and so forth. Because being on the committee itself gave me a better sense of things, last year I wrote a post for the Nerdy Book Club to help others better understand the proce...
January 29, 2014
January 24, 2014
The Little Prince, Peter Sis, and the Morgan Library
I recently received an advance copy of Peter Sis’s forthcoming The Pilot and the Little Prince and will have more to say about it closer to its publication date. (That said, it is gorgeous.) And for those who can’t get enough of everything to do withAntoine de Saint-Exupéry and hiswell-known book, the Morgan Library’s fascinating-sounding new exhibit, “The Little Prince: A New York Story,” has just received a very favorable New York Times review. The two will come together onApril 22ndwhen Pe...
January 22, 2014
Adam Gopnick Considers Travers and Disney (and the Cohns and Dave Van Ronk)
On another front, I have never enjoyed a film that I disapproved of so much as “Saving Mr. Banks.” It is, so to speak, the “Birth of a Nation” of family movies: it presents so skewed and fundamentally vile a view of the essential matter at hand that you are all the more astounded by how well it’s done.
From Behind Two Good Movies, Two Great Books.
January 20, 2014
My Father and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1922, my fatherLewis J. Edinger, who passed away in 2008,fled with his mother to America at the age of fourteen; his father chose to stay, hoping to ride things out, but was deported and killed. Years later, as a newly minted PhD, my father took whatever jobs he could find; one of those was in Montgomery, Alabama at the time of the bus boycott where, among other things, he met Martin Luther King, Jr. Hereare some excerpts from his memoir about that time in his li...
January 15, 2014
ALSC Notable Children’s Books Discussion List is Here
Notable Children’s Books – 2014 Discussion List
I love to sit in, but will have to be more selective about when I do this year. That is, I do not plan on being there when my book is discussed.
