I thought I’d start the school year off a bit differently this year by telling you some of my unpopular opinions about teaching.
I’m going to call this my Teacher Karen post because absolutely nobody has asked for my opinion on these topics, and I’m bound to make myself even more unpopular in this process, but here goes nothing.
Teachers don’t have to spend their own money for their classroom.
Teacher Amazon Wish Lists are well-intentioned but often cringey. (I said it. Don’t hate me.)
Candy shouldn’t be given as incentives/rewards. (This goes hand in hand with number one.)
Teachers don’t have to come to work when they’re sick.
Teachers need to stop judging other teachers who don’t come to work when they’re sick.
If teachers have a sub and have to take a sick day, teachers don’t have to teach from home while taking that sick day.
Teachers don’t have to be available to their students after the school day ends.
The Remind app is overkill.
Teachers don’t have to hold their bladders all day.
Teacher-made assignments don’t have to look fancy.
Teachers can get their union involved.
Teachers should be grading everything based on performance bands not based on outdated percentage grading scales.
Teachers can make mistakes and still be PHENOMENAL teachers.
Why start the school year off with this kind of post? Because maybe you needed to be reminded about just one of them. Because maybe we need to rethink why we’re doing things the way we’ve been doing them.
I’ve done the exact opposite of most of the things on my list, and that doesn’t make me a hypocrite but a human who is questioning how capitalism and teacher tropes and toxic groupthink have infiltrated education.
I also understand why my fellow teachers spend their own money for their classrooms. If it brings you joy to decorate your classroom with self-purchased decor, go for it! If you’re buying pre-sharpened Ticonderogasfor kids who don’t have pencils, I totally get it. If you’re bringing food from home to give to students who need it, I totally get it.
I understand why teachers come to school when they’re sick.
I understand why teachers make their assignments and their rooms fancy. But I also understand that makes more work and might be taking time away from more meaningful work. I also understand that often it is us, ourselves, who make our already complicated job even more complicated.
And if you do any of those things on this list, I am not judging you. At all. I’m just out here, thinking differently and exposing my inner Teacher Karen sans judgement.
Okay, I might be judging you for number 5 and seriously be questioning how often you get a UTI if you frequently do number 9, but other than that, you do you teacher friends.
(I’d love to hear which one on the list you’d like to see as a full-blown post. I have lots of feelings about number 2 and number 3. Also teacher friends, I’d love to hear your unpopular opinions about teaching too!)
Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive #3) by Brandon Sanderson—published 2017—1,246 pages—high fantasy—four stars: Curls into a little ball and covers her head out of fear for what she’s about to say—this isn’t nearly as good as the first two. Oathbringer starts slowly, focusing on Dalinar and flashbacks to flesh out the wife that he can’t remember. Shallan doesn’t appear until around the 70 page mark. Bridge Four isn’t featured enough, and because of this, Oathbringer lacks major comic relief to break up the monotony of the drawn out storyline and the focus on so many characters. Wit and Lift, who also add humor, barely grace the pages. Even though I thought the Szeth narrative was over, he made quite a dent in the book, as did his sword (who DID offer some funny bits). Three angry emojis, huffing puffs of air out, light up over my head every time I think of Moash. He broke my heart. Why hasn’t he been exiled to Shadesmar yet? I feel like a different major character should have died. Is Sanderson, unlike George R. R. Martin, afraid of killing off major characters? Teft’s character arc was also surprising, but beyond welcome. I’m looking to become a Radiant myself. Can I bond a winespren? The book’s last twenty percent picked up the pace, alternating between characters’ POVs more quickly building suspense, but the narrative had gaps because of it. I often read a passage and then had to reread it immediately because it wasn’t clear to me what had happened. AND I AM NOT OKAY WITH HOW THE LOVE TRIANGLE ENDED UP. Where was the ending cliffhanger? Book two’s cliffhanger made me want to start Oathbringer right away. And you knew I was going to say it—it’s too long. But only by about 300 pages—you know, like enough to fill a whole other book.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave—published 2021—320 pages–thriller—three stars: I understand if you adored this story; it has mass appeal, and Reese’s stamp of approval. And there are houseboats (fun!). A Theranos-esque tech scandal! A perfect husband who has a secret past! But, y’all. I know I’ll never be a novelist nor a professional writer, and I write yawn-worthy book reviews and teacher blog posts peppered with run-ons and incoherent rants, but I could not with Dave’s writing style. The Last Thing He Told Me told me nothing. The sentences lacked panache and complexity. Sticky words ran amok. Amok I tell you! Amok! I copied and pasted a sample of the first chapter into an online tool that checks grade level, and that sample came back on a fourth grade reading level. While I realize that section was a small piece, Dave constructs the rest of the book similarly. Comparatively, I ran a sample of Oathbringer through the same checker, and it’s written on an 8th grade level. This review you’re reading now is on a 7th grade level. According to multiple websites, the average popular novel clocks in on a seventh grade level. I need some lively writing anymore, and this was dead on the page.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Other Black Girlby Zakiya Dalila Harris—published 2021—357 pages—thriller—four stars: Wowza. How do I even describe this book? It’s a thriller, but also possesses a light tippity-tap of sci-fi. It’s been described as “Get Out meets The Stepford Wives” and has drawn comparisons to The Devil Wears Prada. I felt it’s more The Firm adjacent (at least I think. It’s been years since I’ve read the novel or watched the movie) except featuring Black women working in New York publishing. Hazel, the antagonist, reminded me of Candace Owens. For once in a thriller, the ending twist surprised the hell out of me. I enjoyed Harris’s writing style. But, I warn you, you might not like this book. The beginning is a little confusing when the different plot lines are still being fleshed out. I thought some of it was satire until the sci-fi element revealed itself. The conspiracy part was uneven. But overall, I enjoyed this read.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz—published 2021—336 pages—thriller—four stars: Two four star thrillers in a row? I’m, wait for it, thrilled! A has-been novelist, now third-rate MFA writing instructor named Jacob writes his former student’s bestselling book idea after finding out that his student is dead. Then the plagiarism accusations slide into Jacob’s inbox after the novel does indeed hit it big, and he realizes that maybe the plot that he thought was fiction actually was a real life thriller. I didn’t even hate the book within the book here y’all.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
This Is Not the Jess Show (This Is Not the Jess Show #1) by Anna Carey—published 2021—304 pages—YA thriller—four stars: Three four star thrillers in a row? I’m questioning life. Even though this novel rips off The Truman Show, I think teens would find it appealing because they’re probably not familiar with the famous film. (Does Gen Z even know who Jim Carrey is? Alrighty then; I’m old.)
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
The Comfort Book by Matt Haig—published 2021—272 pages—nonfiction/mental health—three stars: I want to like this nugget of a book more because who doesn’t love Haig? He’s always so candid about his mental health, and his novels are fantastic. Haig composed this book of lists and snippets and words of encouragement that he wrote when going through dark patches in his life and published it. And while some passages and sentences are beautiful, I couldn’t get it out of my head while reading that this book only got published because it’s Haig. A book like this wouldn’t get published by a no-name author.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix—published 2016—337 pages—horror—three stars: I’m a mixed cassette tape of conflicting emotions here. This 80s-set horror story should tickle my I-grew-up-with-mall-bangs fancy, but the more Hendrix novels I read, the more I get upset that his protagonists are female. I’ve only read two of his novels, but he hyper-sexualizes those women and puts them in rape and unwanted touching situations with demons, and I can’t help but let out “ewwwwwwwwww” and mutter “is this necessary?” every time I see it on the page. And then he sets the stories in the past and is satirizing some aspects of the plot and it comes off to me like he thinks he can just write women that way because “that’s the way it was back then” but if he’s making fun of some parts, then it just comes off as white guy icky to me. I’ve got his newest sitting in my Libby queue, and I don’t know if I’ll be reading it.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Talk Bookish to Me by Kate Bromley—published 2021—317 pages—romance—three stars: Kara writes romance novels for a living. The first draft of her next novel is due almost yesterday, and she barely has anything on the page. Her best friend’s wedding is coupled with her looming deadline. When her ex-boyfriend from college (the one who got away) shows up as a groomsman in the wedding, she has plenty of inspiration for her book, but will her heart get broken again in the process? This book is meh. There’s a book within a book here too, and it’s pretty meh as well.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses—published 2021—256 pages—nonfiction/writing—five stars: Very obviously this book is only going to appeal to a very specific audience, but I loved this book. I’ll never look at a novel the same way again, and I took away great tips for narrative writing and teaching narrative writing from this book. It makes me want to get my MFA in creative writing.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Survive the Night by Riley Sager—published 2021—324 pages—thriller—two stars: Finally! A terrible thriller! Is the writing decent? Yes. Are there pretty surprising twists? Yes. But this book took me over six days to finish and suffers from a man writing the female protagonist’s perspective. Charlie’s roommate was murdered, and Charlie, who isn’t coping well, drops out of school and hitches a ride back to Ohio with a man who she found on a bulletin board. Something seems off about him, but Charlie assures herself that it’s all in her head. She sees “movies in her mind” which seem real but aren’t further confusing her. She finally becomes convinced that the man driving her is the serial killer, and she decides she has to avenge her friend’s death. Charlie is an idiot. The end.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Exciting Timesby Naoise Dolan—published 2020—243 pages—contemporary fiction/LBGTQ+–four stars: Bends toward the literary and doesn’t have a conventional plot—so I understand why this is only rated 3.35 stars on Goodreads—but I quite enjoyed Ava’s love triangle with Julian and Edith.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) by J. K. Rowling—published 2005—652 pages—YA fantasy—five stars: In earlier mini book reviews I didn’t write reviews of Harry Potter rereads because 1. I’ve read every single one a gazillion times and 2. Just saying J. K. Rowling’s name has been as bad as saying Voldemort aloud recently. I was worried if I typed Rowling’s name, Death Eaters would show up at my door. She’s as flawed as Snape, James, and Umbridge, and I don’t agree with her politics, but I love these books. And the reason I’m rereading right now is because I’ve been reading them aloud to Little Thing (before the controversy started), and she’s hooked. The books ARE magic. Watching her reactions to what happens in each book are gifts I will never forget. I’ll never forget how we had to stop reading when Harry used Sectumsempra because she thought Harry was infallible and he devastated her. How she giggled uncontrollably when Ginny and Harry kissed. I’ll never forget her anger at Dumbledore’s fate at the book’s end. I can’t cancel these books.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix—published 2021—352 pages—horror—two stars: So, I read it anyway. And I hated it. That bloody foldable chair on the book jacket? It’s the best part of the book. I’ll never read another Hendrix book again. Again there’s a female protagonist that’s written in the first person who’s a victim and is fighting to be the last one standing in a group of victims, and Hendrix just needs to stop writing female leads. Much like the last Hendrix novel I read, he tortures women throughout the entire book and then tries to correct all the mayhem and harm in three sentences at the book’s end. So is there something symbolic about that? Maybe? But ugh.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Refugee by Alan Gratz—published 2017—352 pages—middle grade historical fiction—five stars: I read this book for the first time last year while I was hospitalized during a U.C. flare and rated it four stars. I am not in the habit of rereading and rating a book higher than my initial reaction (And I reread it because I chose it as a new summer reading book for our 8th graders.) but. This. Damn. Book. Y’all. THIS DAMN BOOK. It’s so well done. Gratz tells the harrowing stories of three different children who are refugees. Isabel is escaping from Castro’s Cuba. Josef is escaping from the Nazis. And Mahmoud is escaping from Syria. And by the book’s end, all three stories come together. This is the kind of book that builds empathy in young minds and should be required reading.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin—published 2021—256 pages—contemporary fiction/LGBTQ+–four stars: Gilda, a lesbian atheist fixated on death, accidentally becomes a secretary at a Catholic church. Ohhhhhhhhh, this one. I love it. Gilda also accidentally dates a man because she’s too nice to turn him down. This book is FUNNY while being awfully serious about mental health. If you like books by Jenny Lawson, T. J. Klune, or Fredrik Backman, you’ll love this book.
On Friday, Louisiana’s governor recommended that all individuals, vaccinated or unvaccinated, mask up indoors due to the surge of COVID 19 cases caused by the Delta variant in our state. Two-thirds of people from the state are unvaccinated.
And as of right now, there is no mask mandate for schools.
This vaccinated teacher is tired. This vaccinated teacher is terrified of what’s going to start happening in classrooms if the state doesn’t require students and staff to mask up.
I say this for selfish and unselfish reasons. But isn’t it ridiculous that saying it’s for selfish reasons directly relates to my own health? How can making sure that I do everything to prevent serious illness for myself be considered selfish? That’s some bullshit that society is feeding you and me both, sis.
I’m going to be walking into a middle school classroom in two weeks and asked to teach in a room full of children who are vaccine-eligible who are more than likely unvaccinated. Only 25 percent of kids ages 12-15 are fully vaccinated in the U.S. (I couldn’t find any specific info about that rate in Louisiana.). I’m on a biologic called Entyvio that makes me more likely to catch contagious diseases. It also reduces my ability to fight infections. I need this medicine (though I wish I could get off it) to control my ulcerative colitis, which made me lose so much blood last year that I had to have a blood transfusion. I also have a few other autoimmune conditions. I refuse to apologize for being concerned about my safety in the classroom with this more contagious variant that’s rampaging across our state right now.
Sidebar: And before you say you can just quit your job if you feel unsafe, just because a person has chronic illness doesn’t mean that person should have to give up their job. That’s ableism, sis. Straight up ableism. According to the CDC, “In 2018, 51.8% of US adults had at least 1 chronic condition, and 27.2% had multiple chronic conditions.” I’m not one for widespread generalizations usually, but I’m pretty sure a lot of you would have a lot to say if 52 percent of Americans were unemployed because of chronic illness during a pandemic because a lot of you already have a lot to say about the labor shortage. End sidebar.
I was so looking forward to not being held captive by my desk and to handing out paper-based assignments this year, but I hate to break it to you and to me that that’s not going to happen.
I will be teaching from my desk again.
My students will be doing everything on their devices again.
I will not be walking around the classroom.
I will not sit down with a small group of kids or individual students who are unmasked to help them work. I’ll have to do it digitally again or stand six feet away from them and shout instructions, I guess? I’ll make whatever work, but it won’t be as effective as one on one.
I will ask unmasked students who stand too close to me to back up.
I will ask unmasked colleagues who stand too close to me to back up.
I will not eat in the teacher’s lounge.
In the past two weeks, I’ve known four fully vaccinated people test positive for coronavirus.
I hate to break it to you again, sis, that this will not be a normal school year even if the kids are maskless.
There will still be contact tracing (from what I understand), sis.
Your child will be quarantined (from what I understand), sis.
Your child will have to learn from home again if that happens (from what I understand), sis.
Your children’s teachers might miss school for weeks because they and their families are sick. That teacher might be so sick that they can’t even teach from home, sis. (And heaven knows that some will try even when they’re super sick because of teacher guilt and ridiculous expectations for teachers.)
But I really hope that the governor puts the mandate back in place before school starts because just recommending it isn’t going to cut it.
I’m sick of masking too, but if it means that it keeps more people safe and keeps kids in school instead of at home and helps prevent illness, I just don’t understand why you’re so against it, sis.
And I’m going to take one for the team and say it, sis, and believe me, I know an argument has never been won by insulting the other person, and I’m going to say this in the kindest way I know how to, but you can say you’re for an individual’s rights but to my ears that sounds like being selfish when we should all be more selfless when the entire world is facing a public health crisis.
So, I’m going to wear my mask to school, sis, and I hope you make the decision to send your kids to school in masks too. Because there’s no “I” or “me” in together.
Alert Alert Alert: This list contains two “it” books that were huge misses for me, two fantastic LGBTQ+ books, and a Bill Gates-does-not-understand-farmers tangent.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman—published 2017—368 pages—chick lit—two stars: Lilian, a widow of four years, isn’t ready to look for love again, but her family keeps encouraging Lilian to date. When Lilian’s boss forces Lilian to attend a beginning gardening class, her attraction to the class’s instructor blindsides her. Gah. That’s not a good gah. I love Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, and The Garden of Small Beginnings just doesn’t compare to how good Nina Hill is. The Garden of Small Beginnings is a garden that was planted without a plan. Waxman cultivates sprouts of funny writing in between the storyline’s confusing bramble of weeds though.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown—published 2018—185 pages—nonfiction—four stars: Another important, enlightening social injustice read, but this time through Channing Brown’s eyes as a Black Christian working for evangelical nonprofits.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty by Lauren Weisberger—published 2021—368 pages—chick lit/contemporary fiction—three stars: Not my favorite Weisberger novel? Weisberger stole the plotline right from the college admissions scandal, but instead of a Desperate Housewife as the protagonist, there’s a female morning news anchor, a terrible mash-up of Felicity Huffman and Matt Lauer. When I think of Weisberger novels, I think of overindulgent New York City glitz and glam, snappy dialogue, and subtle critiques of the upper echelons, melding together for a guilty pleasure read. Weisberger attempted all three here again, but the book tripped over its six-inch, red-soled Louboutins and fell flat on its botoxed/lip-fillered face on a sidewalk. The only highlight was me screeching “Take. Me. Home. Yeah-e-yeah” off-key and on repeat while reading.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid—published 2021—369 pages—historical fiction—three stars: Unpopular opinion alert. This book didn’t impress me. It’s The Great Gatsby but set in the 80s and on the opposite coast with California surfers and Hollywood A-listers. I wanted to face punch every character, except for Tarine—because she DOES face punch a chauvinistic cop, my favorite part. The entire story was overdone and underdone simultaneously. All the familial revelations unravel on the same night at a cocaine-fueled party. Overdone. Chandelier swinging. Overdone. Mick. Overdone and predictable. And the underdone part? I guess that boils down to the third person omniscient narrator. Don’t get me wrong, Reid nails it, but she covers too many characters over too long of a time frame. It made the story feel underdone to me? Too sweeping without enough development. Definitely my year’s biggest reading disappointment. Will it be some people’s jam? Sure, but not a Mrs. Ram’s jam. Sidebar: Am I the only person who throws up a little in her mouth every time she thinks about how books set in the 80s fall under historical fiction now??????
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Darkfever (Fever #1) by Karen Marie Moning—published 2006—309 pages—urban fantasy—three stars: After Mac’s sister is murdered while studying abroad in Dublin, Mac hops on a plane to investigate her sister’s death against her parents’ wishes. At first she doesn’t uncover many answers, but she soon finds herself in over her head when she discovers monsters lurking beneath human exteriors. When a hyper-masculine, dangerous man named Jericho learns Mac is poking her head around Fae matters and that Mac possesses special powers of her own, Jericho shelters her and makes her help him seek Fae objects of power. So real talk, I could easily rate this a four because it’s super engrossing and Jericho and Mac have ample chemistry, but 1. This urban fantasy didn’t age well—Jericho, when trying to warn Mac off, essentially tries to scare her off by using physical force, bruising her ribs, but also there’s sexual chemistry there? Did this type of thing really work in 2006? It sure as hell doesn’t work now, but also, I liked it? So? What does that say about me? And 2. Moning frequently describes parts of the story before she identifies what’s happening in the story. Does that make sense? I know it makes little sense, but it should.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser—published 2021—448 pages—romance—two stars: Thea’s world is shattered. She’s been sacked from her job. Her husband of nearly twenty years has been cheating on her with one of her friends. Forced out of her own home, she rents a flat and is about to move when she inherits a handsome sum of money and a house from a distant relative in Scotland. After Thea and her friend drive there to sort through Thea’s inheritance, she stays for the summer to sort through the mess of her life, too. She takes a job at a bookstore despite the boss, Edward, being a grump and normally unwilling to hire women—because he either falls in love with them or they fall in love with him. (Like, for real before he hired her he had a sign posted on the door that was basically the Little Rascal equivalent of the “He-man Womun Hater’s Club” sign.) She assures him that neither of those scenarios will happen—but guess what, it’s a romance so it does. I wish I could be glowy about this book, but it’s so terribly bland. I didn’t laugh once or find a sentence that I found endearing. Edward is estranged from his duke brother because Edward slept with every single one of his brother’s girlfriends and both of his wives for revenge for a teenage slight. TF? There are pages of literally nothing happening with lots of tiny words making up sentences—which I guess is why it’s a whopping 448 pages? This book is easily 150 pages too long.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Guncle by Steven Rowley—published 2021—336 pages—LGBTQ+ fiction—four stars: When his best friend/sister-in-law passes away, Patrick, aka GUP which stands for Gay Uncle Patrick, takes in his niece and nephew while his brother sobers up at at rehab center not too far from Patrick’s Palm Springs home. This book is adorable and hilarious. It has a The House in the Cerulean Sea vibe sans the fantastical elements. Ultimately it’s a novel about overcoming grief. It made me sob in three different places. Also, I will now forever be stealing and quoting this line from the book: You can’t spell nemesis without me sis. I need this on a T-shirt, stat! Who’s got a Cricut?
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Real Life by Brandon Taylor—published 2020—329 pages—LGBTQ+ fiction—four stars: Literary. Beautifully written. Doesn’t have a conventional plot, as in there’s one, and it’s vague, but it works. My eyes glazed over every time the scientific experiment descriptions happened. There’s hard-to-read gritty, graphic violence. Be prepared to be uncomfortable, but that’s real life, and the book’s point.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston—published 2021—422 pages—LGBTQ+ romance—three stars: (And at this point it will become obvious that I forgot I was supposed to write book reviews. Whoops. Taking that blog hiatus made me forget my process.) I feel like a lot of rotten tomatoes are about to be thrown my way, but I’m not a huge fan of McQuiston’s latest. August moves to New York City to finish her education and escape her wannabe private detective mother. A girl, all beat up leather jacket and 70s retro cool, snags August’s eye on the train, and the girl, Jane, magically is on every single train that August catches for her commute to school. After Jane turns August down for a date, August finds a picture of Jane from decades earlier, looking exactly the same as she does now, at August’s own workplace (hello happenstance!). Then August races against the clock to save Jane from being stuck in time. The writing charms and shines just like in McQuiston’s earlier novel, but the witty writing hides a whole lot of fluff. And I know I write this ad nauseam, but it was too long. And the plot was overly tied together. (I know, #brokenrecordstatus with this point, too.)
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Bloodfever (Fever #2) by Karen Marie Moning—published 2007—303 pages—urban fantasy—four stars: What is wrong with me? I like book two better than book one. I texted a friend, who has read the series, and told her I felt deep book shame for compulsively reading this terrible series. Gah. On to book three?
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by C.M. Waggoner—published 2021—371 pages—LGBTQ+ fantasy/historical fiction—three stars: The title? Badass. The cover? Same. Delly the protagonist? Hilarious, unassuming, and brilliant. She calls her mouth a gin hole and another character a foot cramp and makes up words that sound fancy and thinks things like: Not that she didn’t say worse six dozen times a day herself, but she’d always been under the impression that young ladies weren’t supposed to know what knickers were, even while they were putting them on in the morning. And Buttons the skeleton mouse that’s really an old wizard? He’s legit. But the storyline though? Bizarre, which sucks because it breaks the book.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Faefever (Fever #3)by Karen Marie Moning—published 2008—327 pages—urban fantasy—three stars: Well, I’m taking a pause from the series after reading book three. The ending twisted unexpectedly and graphically.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates—published 2021—272 pages—nonfiction/science—three stars: Bottom line—I learned some startling information about climate change (like, I really had no idea about cement), but the. Writing. Was. Drier. Than. A. California. Drought. (Is this an inappropriate comparison to draw when reading a book describing an impending climate disaster? Yikes.) Also Mrs. Ram grew up on a farm, not because she is a ram, but because her family raises Angus beef cattle and performs other agricultural magic, and I (I’ll stop talking in the third person now thanks) thought while Gates tried to be nice about farmers and farming, he missed the mark when he says this: Imagine you’re a prosperous young farmer raising corn, soybeans, and cattle in Nebraska in 2050. (Excuse me while I transform into a battering Ram here.) I realize many prosperous farmers exist in America, but I know a cow-manure ton of farmers, and the humble, hard-working farmers I know would never describe themselves as something as pompous sounding as prosperous. Furthermore, many small farms have been struggling for decades, the antithesis of prosperity. And young and prosperous together? Where does he think these speculative young farmers are getting this land required for farming prosperity??? And I hate to break it to him and I know he set his hypothetical in 2050, but according to salary.com, the average Cornhusker farmer’s salary in 2021 is $40,033. What a prosperous sum to live on!!!!!! (Disclaimers: 1. I’m not attacking his sound argument that he’s making in the book about how to avoid a climate disaster. I’m just aggravated over this one sentence and needed to vent about it. Even if it is a hypothetical. 2. I also have never claimed to know anything about farming or cattle. I leave that to my dad, my siblings, and nephews. If anything, I’m farmer-adjacent and bovine-avoidant and always have been.)
Earlier this week, a colleague of mine, whose son I taught, Facebook messaged me about a TikTok of my cat that I posted to my story. She said that my TikTok account horrified her son (because old people can’t be on trendy apps?). But that’s not the real reason I’m explaining this. She also said in the message that her son liked me as a teacher and that he said he couldn’t understand why so many people in the class that I had him in didn’t.
Did this revelation sting my teacher pride? Just enough for me to say “ouch” and move on. It didn’t even leave a tiny welt, but it left me thinking about why students may dislike me.
This is just a personal observation, but some students equate subjects they dislike with disliking the person who’s teaching it. It’s flawed logic, but have you met middle schoolers? I ask them to do hard things like write essays and make them read difficult texts on their own (and so many of them despise reading and writing). Then, I have high expectations and ask them to rewrite and rewrite again. In some of their minds I don’t like to read and write and redo assignments I’ve already done adds up to I don’t like the teacher who makes me do it.
I hold them accountable for the school rules and their behavior in my classroom. I try to be consistent, and I know I don’t catch everything, but I will not let them just “do what they want,” particularly when it prevents them from getting their work done, inhibits others from getting work done, or makes for an uncomfortable learning environment because of racist/sexist/anti-LGBTQ+ comments. They’re middle schoolers. Of course they dislike being fussed at and written up, and guess what—they’re going to dislike the person who does it too.
I make them uncomfortable—Part A: I am not a Southerner’s glass of sweet tea. I’m from Illinois where we drink our tea unsweetened. I do not lay on an outer layer of charm. I’m blunt and logical and do not hide behind layers of fluff. You cannot butter me up like a delicious cast iron-made, golden biscuit. This can be shocking to my Louisiana students if they’ve never had a teacher from somewhere else. Parents called me “That Damn Yankee Teacher” at my first teaching job in rural Louisiana. It’s good for the students to be exposed to people from different areas than their own. I’ll forever be offered as tribute and be disliked for this very reason because I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. This Midwesterner can handle your child’s dislike of me just because I’m different from what they know. (Sidebar: I know I’m not alone in this. I know several teachers who have moved from other places to teach in Louisiana, and they’ve told me the same thing.)
I make them uncomfortable—Part B: We also talk about difficult topics in class, and that makes them uncomfortable. It’s not just diagramming sentences and asking comprehension questions about Romeo and Juliet in English class anymore. Heck, the canon is no longer comprised of only dead white guys. If you haven’t been in a middle school or an English classroom in a decade or two, it looks completely different, and we barely teach what teachers taught twenty years ago. We talk about questioning traditions and gender roles throughout history. We talk about racism and the Holocaust. We talk about suicide. We talk about war. We talk about religion. And then I ask them to write about those topics through the lens of literature. They might balk against these topics because they’re exposed to different ways of thinking and different cultures and that makes them uncomfortable. And guess what, them being uncomfortable in my classroom might translate into them disliking me.
I’m a woman. There. I said it. You might be thinking, she can’t possibly be serious when most teachers are female. But, y’all. It’s real. It’s a thing. Some students yeet dislike my way simply because I exist as a woman in a classroom, a woman who doesn’t fit into this nicely-shaped-ridiculously-tiny-preconceived-notion box of what a female teacher should be.
Is the takeaway from this that your child would walk into my classroom and hate me? No. As far as I know, I haven’t heard that the 8th grade tea’s flavor is that all-students-hate-Mrs.-Ram-Jam. I’ve heard mostly positive feedback about myself from students and their parents, but I’ve never won and will probably never win any popularity contests.
I think the takeaway from this is that when your student tells you they don’t like a teacher, don’t just take it at face value. Ask them to vocalize why they don’t like a particular teacher and try to get them to elaborate. That dislike might just be flawed reasoning, unwillingness to take responsibility for their own actions, discomfort, or society talking.
It's Saturday morning in the burbs,
and I've got nothing to do.
The kids don't have soccer or baseball.
It's too early to barbecue.
I cut the grass yesterday.
I already own everything from Lowe's.
There's no College GameDay until the fall.
I know! I can hook the pressure washer up to the hose!
I'll stand in my driveway
in a muscle tank and backwards cap
and whiten the concrete
while I listen to rap!
And before I know it,
two hours will have flown by.
I'll crack open my second beer of the day to combat the ten a.m. heat
and think to myself: It's only June. What the hell am I going to do in July?
Because of my temporary blog hiatus during the end of the school year, I shut down ALL writing, so I have no mini book reviews for April and May. But, that doesn’t mean I can’t share with y’all what I read and how I rated each book.
I had six five-star reads, which I know seems a little excessive on the five-star ratings, but you can fight me on those ratings. I’m fully prepared for fisticuffs.
And one of those five-star ratings is more than likely my favorite fiction read published in 2021.
There are two solid beach reads on this list, too.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Fable (Fable #1) by Adrienne Young—published 2020—357 pages—YA fantasy-ish—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Later by Stephen King—published 2021—248 pages—horror—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros—published 1983—110 pages—YA—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive #2) by Brandon Sanderson—published 2014—1,087 pages—high fantasy—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant—published 2021—307 pages—nonfiction—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Broken by Jenny Lawson—published 2021—285 pages—humor/memoir—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo—published 2020—304 pages—nonfiction feminism/race—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain—published 2021—415 pages, mystery—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke—published 1989—356 pages—poetry—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archives #2.5) by Brandon Sanderson—published 2017—272 pages—high fantasy–four stars.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Dial A For Aunties by Jesse Q. Suntanto—published 2021—320 pages—romance—two stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed—published 2021—336 pages—YA retelling—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas—published 2021—384 pages—YA retelling—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan—published 1989—288 pages—historical fiction—four stars.
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Arsenic and Adobo (Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery #1) by Mia P. Manasala—published 2021—336 pages—mystery—two stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Namesake by Adrienne Young—published 2021—360 pages—fantasy-ish—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds—published 2019—204 pages—middle-grade fiction—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost—published 2020—336 pages—memoir/humor—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry—published 2021—384 pages—romance—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Teacher Misery: Helicopter Parents, Special Snowflakes & Other Bullshit by Jane Morris—published 2016—245 pages—nonfiction/education—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir—published 2021—476 pages—science fiction—five stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
That Summer by Jennifer Weiner—published 2021—432 pages—contemporary fiction—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams—published 2021—384 pages—legal thriller—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley—published 2021—368 pages—romance—three stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand—published 2020—432 pages—romance—four stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis—published 2003—243 pages—historical fiction—four stars.
So the key takeaways? Any of those nonfiction reads that are five stars are outstanding, but fiction-wise, GO READ PROJECT HAIL MARY RIGHT NOW. I guarantee it’s one of the “it” books this year.
Looking for the best beach read? Check out People We Meet on Vacation.
Mini book reviews will be back next month!
(Also, know how I mentioned fisticuffs earlier? Yeah, well I’m about to duke it out with WordPress right now. I apologize for all the weird formatting going on with this post. Get it together WordPress!)
endless cups of home-percolated coffee or your favorite Starbies concoction!
trips to the beach and/or camping!
books!
playing with your children! (if you have them!)
soaking up the sunshine!
soaking up the twilight while avoiding mosquitos!
hazy craft IPAs, Trulys, and/or chilled glasses of Sauvignon blanc!
NOT TEACHING DURING A PANDEMIC!
I’m a week into summer break, and guess what? I’VE BEEN USELESS. Like literally the wastiest of spaciest possible. And I’m to the zillionth power okay with it because 1. This past school year was a doozy and 2. I’m two days away from a quarterly iron infusion (no iron equals being exhausted).
But despite my uselessness, I do have goals. I think? These are goals, right?
Continue my wastiest of spaciest mindset.
Lounge by the community pool and control the urge to fuss at the unsupervised-middle-school-aged children (who, when they aren’t diving in the five feet, are trying their best to drown one another).
Succumb to the urge to fuss at the unsupervised-middle-school-aged children (because it’s my job to fuss at other people’s children) at the community pool and in my scariest teacher voice tell them I’m writing them up! I mean, reporting them to the HOA!
Read. Read. Read. I want to eat books for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Convince my husband that since I’ve only been eating books, he needs to take me for tacos and happy hour margaritas every Friday night. And Tuesday night. Because Tuesdays are for tacos. And books aren’t technically sustenance. So summer sustenance looks a lot like Taco Tuesday.
Not think about school.
Take Little Thing on adventures. We’ve got Illinois and Florida on our July docket.
While being the wastiest of spaciest, also try to be active which gets hard because–fibromyalgia. (Here’s an example of why fibromyalgia sucks: I did a ten minute arm workout with weights two days ago. Bad idea. Very very bad idea. I’m unsure how the arm workout made my legs stop working correctly, but that’s the fibromyalgia magic for ya!).
I’d put “write more” on here, but I’ve felt so uninspired lately. Maybe as the previous school year leaks out of my pores and my iron infusion kicks in, wording will get easier again.
Force Little Thing to read everyday by blackmailing her with popsicles and pool time.
Figure out how to convince the cat to stop bullying my two-houses-down-terrified-of-cats neighbor. Currently, the two-houses-down-terrified-of-cats neighbor is attempting to fend the cat off with garage and windowsill mothballs. And I’m pretty sure mothballs are terrible for cats. But the cat needs to know that it’s not polite to stand in a little old lady’s garage, hiss at her, and hold her captive in her home. How do I get my cat to stop performing acts of domestic feline terrorism? How???????
Not freak out that I’m going back to two preps next year.
Get the best tan I’ve had in a decade. But responsibly. With hourly sunscreen reapplication.
Pass all my blood tests. Wow. That sounds bad. But like from a medical standpoint? Not a drug standpoint? That didn’t sound reassuring either. Like fibromyalgia? Ulcerative colitis? Anemia? That kind of thing. Like a normal level of ferritin! And a normal level of hemoglobin! And a normal ANA reading! Not a Mrs. Ram Jam is opioid–free kind of test! Oh, god. I’m not on drugs. I’ll stop typing now.
Figure out how to get the cat to stop terrorizing me.
Sounds doable, right? Except for 6,11, 12, and 15. But a teacher/cat owner can dream.
I’m sorry you didn’t get the best version of me this year. I wasn’t the best teacher I could be. Normally I’m vibrant, goofy, and scatterbrained. But my vibrant dulled to lackluster. I lost the goof in goofy and all that was left was “why?” The scatter of my brain didn’t matter because it was scrambled. By the pandemic. By the daunting task of being expected to do everything that I normally do but with less time. By the daunting task of being expected to do everything that I normally do but teach virtually at the same time. By the daunting task of digitizing every single lesson.
I’m so sorry I was terrified of going back into the classroom because I have autoimmune diseases and am on medicine that makes me more likely to contract contagious diseases.
So I’m sorry I kept my distance. Keeping my distance goes against the very nature of my classroom during a regular year. It’s already hard work to differentiate and pull students out for small groups. It’s nearly impossible to do when I wasn’t supposed to be near you.
And to my home-based learners, a special apology goes out to you. Sometimes I had to ignore you in order to get through lessons. Sometimes you were an open tab while I worked in other tabs trying to grade or make the next day’s lesson. So I apologize from the bottom of my heart for not giving you 100 percent all of the time.
I’m so sorry that I asked so much from all of you, but you’ve got to understand that so much was asked of me, was asked of all your teachers. Some handled it better than others, and I’m still not quite sure which side I’ve landed on.
I’m so sorry that you were expected to grow when your world was turned upside down last year, and instead of making sure that you were right side up, that you were whole and nurtured, we had to pretend that it was a normal year.
I’m so sorry that I had to pretend it was a normal year.
I’m so sorry that the state decided that you still had to take end of the year tests. In a year that started late, you still had to sit through three weeks of testing. Three weeks of testing is ridiculous in a normal year, but the higher-ups were so good at pretending that everything was normal this year, that I’m not really sure why I’m so surprised that they made you take those tests. And even though it didn’t count for most students, it ended up counting for you, my eighth-graders taking a high school English class, because you had to pass the test to pass the course.
I’m so sorry for so many more things, but I’m end-of-the-year teacher tired.
I’m sorry that you didn’t get the best version of me, but I gave what I could–and that’s all that I could give.
Please forgive me.
I’m done pretending it was a normal year.
I’m done pretending, period.
But you know what’s real? You. You all were phenomenal despite it all. And I’m so very proud of you and all you accomplished throughout the year. That’s real, and that’s what matters.
This blog is closed for the remainder of the school year. I’ve got nothing y’all. Nothing. Teaching during a pandemic has left my brain even mushier than it was before. See you again in June! ✌️
(Feel free to follow me on TikTok, where I’ve started to share the ridiculous things students say in class, in the meantime! @mrsramjam)
Mrs. Ram's Jams 