Category: Uncategorized

• A Poem: Timeworn

  Posted at 12:42 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on July 13, 2019

  

  Don’t blink.
  Clichéd lip sync.
  The pitter-patter of little feet.
  Buckle them into their car seats.

  Time flies.
  Hackneyed reprise.
  They grow up too fast.
  Romanticize the past.

  Clichéd lip sync.
  Buckle them into their car seats.

  Let them be little.
  Trite transmittal.
  Time please slow down.
  Stave off nervous breakdowns.

  Clichéd lip sync.
  Buckle them into their car seats.

  Where has the time gone?
  Banal yawns.
  Can’t they stay little forever?
  Attempt to keep it together.

  Mama needs a drink.
  Clichéd lip sync
  because society pretends motherhood is always sweet.
  Buckle them into their car seats.

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  Posted in kids, parenting, poems, Uncategorized, writing | 2 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, don't blink, kids, parenting, poems, poetry, time flies, writing

• Mini Book Reviews for June 2019

  Posted at 9:32 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on July 6, 2019

  

  

  

  

  

  

  I had high expectations for my June reading month. Read more nonfiction! Read less fantasy! Read less YAL! Read sixteen-twenty books!

  Then I made a rookie mistake–I fell down a Sarah J. Maas hole named the Throne of Glass series–shattering my June reading hopes and dreams because the books are fiction, fantasy, YAL, and tomes.

  If you’ve ever found yourself at the bottom of a Maas rabbit hole, please please please tell me how you extracted yourself from it. When I realized the depth of my addiction, I resorted to alternating one of the books from the series with an adult, non-fantasy venture in a bizarre attempt at self-preservation, quitting after book four cold turkey.

  Here’s what I read in June:

  1. The Other Woman by Sandie Jones–3 stars–mystery/thriller–I keep reading this genre despite my low expectations. Emily meets Adam. He’s a catch but a total mommy’s boy. I saw the ending coming from about halfway through the book.
  2. The Book of Three (The Chronicles of Prydain, #1) by Lloyd Alexander–4 stars–middle grade/fantasy–Not my favorite fantasy read, but I see why it would appeal to middle grade readers. It’s no Narnia; the world building is blasé. However, it does feature a sassy, soothsaying pig, a welcome addition to ANY novel if you ask me.
  3. Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1) by Sarah J. Maas–4 stars–YAL/fantasy–Ahhhhh. Welcome to my demise’s advent. Celaena Sardothien, an former assassin and current slave, gets offered her freedom in exchange for becoming her mortal enemy’s champion in a world where magic is banned. I like this series more than Maas’s A Court of Thorn and Roses series. 
  4. The Au Pair by Emma Rous–3 stars–mystery/thriller–Mehhhhhhhhh. Of course there’s au pair drama. Cliché cheating with the nanny and unrealistic falling action drag this book down.
  5. Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2) by Sarah J. Maas–4 stars–YAL/fantasy–Just as entertaining as book one.
  6. One Day in December by Josie Silver–3 stars–contemporary fiction/romance– I found this Reese Witherspoon pick frustrating; the self-absorbed characters grated my nerves. 
  7. Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3) by Sarah J. Maas–4 stars–YAL/fantasy–Book 3 isn’t nearly as good as the first two. Too many Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings/Twilight parallels for it to be original. My least favorite word in all of YAL (“chuckle”) made hefty appearances, too. Insert eye roll here.
  8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield–4 stars–contemporary fiction–This novel has been on my TBR for awhile. It’s eerie and keenly written, a mashup of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Jane Eyre.
  9. Finale (Caraval, #3) by Stephanie Garber–4 stars–YAL/fantasy–If you love YAL and fantasy and haven’t picked up the Caraval series yet, you should. The trilogy finished too neatly and lovey dovie, but overall, I’ll remember Garber’s Caraval, a teenage version of The Night Circus, fondly.
  10. My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing–3 stars–mystery/thriller–A married couple tackles serial killing together. Take a look at this book jacket. Little Thing gave me major side eye the whole time I was reading this book. 
  11. Dopesick:  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy–5 stars–nonfiction prose–Read this book. It will change the way you view drug addiction and treatment.
  12. Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4) by Sarah J. Maas–4 stars–YAL/fantasy–I’m a fan of this series–I swear–but these books keep getting longer as the series progresses (This one clocked in at 648 pages.) and are wordy, wordy, wordy. To reach my read-150-books-in-2019 goal, I’m taking a Throne of Glass hiatus because there are three more books in this series, the last one housing nearly 1,000 pages. I wish Maas would consider writing trilogies.
  13. The Lost Man by Jane Harper–4 stars–mystery/thriller–I heart Jane Harper’s Australian outback mystery novels so hard.
  14. Factfullness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund–4 stars–nonfiction prose–Approach this nonfiction read with an open mind and consider that the data collection method is mildly flawed. The authors present an interesting argument that the world is “better but still bad,” iterating the mass gains that civilization has made over the years through examining our outdated knowledge of the world. 

  Bright side: at least I managed two nonfiction reads?

  (All cover art taken from Goodreads.com)

   

   

  Posted in books, reading, Uncategorized, writing | 3 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, book reviews, books, caraval, dopesick, factfullness, finale, jane harper, read, reading, sarah j. maas, the lost man, the thirteenth tale, throne of glass, writing

• An English Teacher Tale: Guess What? Cold Read Tests Don’t Work and How I’ve Gotten It So Wrong

  Posted at 3:38 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 29, 2019

  

  Invigorated and overwhelmed, I’m freshly nestled home post three day teacher leader conference in New Orleans. While attending, I listened to 2018 National Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning discuss teaching fearLESS (teaching with less fear). I learned more about growth mindset, the importance of recruiting teachers, and cultural competency. But mostly my chosen sessions focused on ELA curriculum shifts, particularly text complexity. 

  By midafternoon on conference day two, two things became glaringly clear: 

  1. The New Orleans Convention Center is a dementor; it sucked my soul arid. (I’m not knocking the conference AT ALL; it rocked. The convention center itself is cavernous and scary, all dim backlighting and conference tables billowing in death-black robe tablecloths. The stale air permeating the facility was akin to a dementor’s dreaded kiss, leaving me dehydrated and lifeless by day’s end.)
  2. According to experts, I’ve been testing and teaching my subject matter the wrong way for at least 8 years; if I’ve been doing it wrong, chances are you’ve been doing it wrong too. And I’m a great teacher–and chances are you are too. (I’m not saying I’m doing everything wrong.)

  About 8 years ago, Louisiana ELA educators started making the shift to assessing kids with “cold read” (readings that kids hadn’t seen before) tests, the idea being that kids should be able to use the standards that are being taught in the classroom and apply them to any text that’s given to them, essentially moving away from testing kids on the content that we’ve taught them and focusing on mastery of standards. This is more reflective of the way our end of the year state tests work too (Students are given multiple pieces of complex text they’ve never encountered before, answer multiple choice questions about those texts, and then write essays about those texts–all strictly timed.). Disclaimer–this is a MAJOR oversimplification of the process, and I may have botched it. Please bear in mind my recently escaped dementor’s kiss. I’m awaiting Dumbledore to appear with some chocolate for me, and then I’ll be back hunting horcruxes, errrrrr, I mean existing like a rational muggle in no time. 

  For a few years now, I’ve been lamenting to my fellow coworkers, my mom, willing ears:

  1. How can you give “cold” literature to kids, timed no less, and expect them to comprehend and analyze it? They could be given anything on those tests! For example, I could be teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and focusing on the Civil Rights Movement and the Great Depression. How does that content help them read a cold read task about the Cold War on a benchmark or standardized test? It doesn’t. I can’t prepare kids’ background knowledge on every single topic/culture/time period/etc. that they encounter. 
  2. Vocabulary is my biggest battle. How can I prepare my kids for every single word that they encounter on a cold read test? Yeah, context clues might help, and they know how to use context clues, but YOU CAN’T FIGURE OUT EVERY SINGLE WORD FROM CONTEXT. And yeah there are roots, prefixes, affixes and other tricks, but again, it’s no panacea. Furthermore, what about the words they encounter in test questions and answer choices where there’s virtually no context? It’s mind-boggling, disorienting even, to think about how limiting this can be for a child to be successful when it comes to reading comprehension, and if they don’t understand what they read, they sure as heck can’t analyze it.

  So why highlight these two points and how does it relate to me teaching and testing the wrong way (and quite possibly you too)? Louisiana is currently piloting a program where . . . wait for it  . . . the state test aligns to English teachers’ actual content in their classroom . . . because research shows that:

  1. Teaching solely standard based for ELA doesn’t work. How many of you have been told to develop your lessons around a standard and subsequently gone scrambling around for content that lends itself to teaching said standard while trying to find interrelated texts? [Mrs. Ram raises her hand.] Sidebar–I do rely heavily on my district’s curriculum, but I supplement.
  2. Giving struggling students texts to read on their “reading level” actually does more harm than good because they’re not grappling with more complicated syntax and vocabulary. Say you’re teaching about the Holocaust at the 8th grade level and decide to give your struggling readers Number the Stars while handing out The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to your more accelerated readers, focusing on teaching the same standards in both texts over the course of reading. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most English teachers have done this, myself included, but I have moved away from doing this–whether in relation to big pieces of literature or different leveled exit tickets. But look at this chart using ACT data:(image credit) What can you surmise? Hey, how well people do on the ACT has to do with their ability to read complex texts. Also, I learned that it doesn’t matter if students have mastery of skills necessarily. I know if my students have mastered a standard, but if students can’t read a specific complex text independently they’re unable to answer test questions correctly. (Both bullet points 1 and 2’s ideas were discussed in Tim Shanahan’s Ed Talk: “Educational Equity and the Importance of Complex Text.”) This ties in directly with my next bullet.
  3. Background knowledge is key for success on tackling complex texts. So Recht and Leslie, researchers, did this study known as the baseball experiment. Over-simplistic premise: Let’s give kids a comprehension test about baseball. Look at this:(image credit) Guess what? The kids, no matter their reading ability, who had little prior knowledge of baseball did way worse on the test than kids of any reading ability who were more familiar with baseball. Earth shattering, isn’t it? P.S. this study has been around since 1988, and this is my first time seeing it. I have a master’s degree in curriculum–WHY HAVEN’T I SEEN IT BEFORE? If we learned about it in grad school, I don’t remember it.

  Y’all might have been privy to this info before, and while my biggest struggles as a teacher are directly reflected in my main takeaways from the conference, I feel validated in my criticisms of the way we test children, but heartbrokenly irate that we’ve gotten some teaching and testing methods so wrong for almost a decade. For at least this next year, if not two or three, my students are still going to take standardized tests with cold read passages that are not reflective of what my students, your children, are capable of achieving. 

  But change is on the horizon. Thank goodness. To read more about Louisiana’s Innovative Assessment pilot click here.  

  Teachable Moment: While I know this post is rambly, all over the place, full of glue words and not written on a particularly high reading level, keep in mind what I’ve been I’ve been telling you. How many of you aren’t teachers who read this post? What teacher jargon did you struggle with? Did you know what a “cold read” task was before reading this? Or even what mastery of a standard entails? Do you know what the standards are? Do you know how to determine what makes a complex text? Do you know what ELA stands for? Chances are if you aren’t an English teacher or even a teacher in general you had to struggle to make meaning with what I was talking about. Then on top of that I made Harry Potter allusions throughout this post. If you’ve never read Harry Potter or seen the movies, are you going to get all of those references? Or is it going to go right over your head? An allusion missed means there’s missing meaning in a text. On that note, do you know what allusion means? Did you figure out what it means based on the context? Or did you just fly by it and register it as a word you don’t know? Think about all the different ways you had to make meaning behind my thoughts, my word choice, the way I built my sentences, the way I structured this post. How many different ways can understanding be hindered? (This idea is taken from Natalie Wexler’s Ed Talk: “The Importance of Background Knowledge” and applied to my own writing.)

  And that friends is what our children are trying to do every single day when they’re in my classroom with readings they encounter and why it’s a shame to ask them on a standardized test to read texts they’re completely unfamiliar with. 

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized | 4 Comments | Tagged blogging, cold read tests, standardized tests, students, teaching

• IBD: The Only Things I Can Eat Without Feeling like Death

  Posted at 12:17 am by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 22, 2019

  
  

  Photo by Mona Sabha Cabrera on Pexels.com

  I need to vent. This isn’t some tragic “woe is me” post. Like I keep saying, I’m just trying to be honest about my experiences with chronic illness.

  I’ve been limited in my food options for years now kudos to an extremely touchy stomach, but due to my recent ulcerative colitis flare and the medicine I’m taking, my diet is even further reduced. I wanted to write some snarky rhyming poem about the things I can’t eat right now because I miss being able to inhale whatever I want. But that list is as long as Rural Route 1, and the only good rhyme with “no gluten” is “highfalutin’” (I guess I could rhyme it with “tootin’–but that’s the obvious choice when you’ve got tummy issues.).

  Here’s a list of what I’m currently, barely, tolerating:

  • White rice (Thank heavens for jasmine rice.)
  • Eggs
  • Ripe bananas
  • Overly cooked plain green beans.
  • Mushy zucchini
  • Boiled/sauteed spinach–no stems
  • Natural peanut butter
  • String cheese–one serving daily
  • Gluten-free bread
  • Gluten-free pasta
  • Potatoes
  • Tortilla chips
  • Thoroughly masticated almonds
  • Cooked carrots
  • Meat and fish
  • Add-ons: olive oil, vinegar, salt (a minuscule amount), basil, oregano, and ginger

  That’s. It. Anything else makes me regret eating it later. Garlic? Forget about it. Onions? You jest. Tomatoes? I’d need an intestine transplant.

  More and more, looking at some food or even smelling it makes me gag, and the only thing that I can stomach reheated is rice.

  Next week, I have a conference in New Orleans for three days, and I’m more than a little concerned about eating (and functioning afterward) while I’m there. Convention attendees might question my sanity if they find me curled up in a food-induced ball of pain in a conference room corner.

  Not eating isn’t an option. I’m still starvin’, Marvin! It’ll be torturous to be in NOLA and not eat charbroiled oysters, a muffelatta, or a Lucky Dog.

  I miss real culinary delights. I’d move mountains for a slice of lasagna, a gyro with tzatziki, or my mom’s curry chicken salad.

  Food shouldn’t make anyone hurt. It’s a basic need and one of earth’s greatest pleasures. And it’s a damn shame that it can make some people feel like knives reside in their innards. 

   

   

  Posted in chronic pain, ulcerative colitis, Uncategorized, writing | 9 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, daily prompt, daily word, daily word prompt, dailychallenge, ibd, inflammatory bowel disease, inhale, ulcerative colitis, writing

• A Reflection on My Thirteenth Year of Teaching

  Posted at 1:44 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 15, 2019

  

  In May, I finished my thirteenth year of teaching. (How in the French toast did that happen?) Here are my key takeaways from this school year. (Please excuse the formatting issues. I CANNOT figure out how to fix them.)

  1. Sayonara(ish) technology. My district is fortunate enough to provide devices to every single student in the parish, but this teacher is going back to making the copy machine my long lost paramour. I know paper isn’t sexy and students need digital literacy skills but . . .

  • Technology is the biggest behavior problem in my classroom. Micromanaging 20-25 students with screens for faces is damn near impossible. For starters the kids don’t recognize checking their grades, googling random pieces of information, skimming their inboxes, etc. as off-task behavior. Then there are the students who email back and forth with their friends, play games, or watch YouTube videos. Technology makes classroom management harder, and a student who isn’t paying attention isn’t mastering content. (On a side note: while technology exists that teachers can control what students access during a lesson, our district doesn’t own it on a wide scale yet. I’m hoping to pilot software that combats this issue next year.)
  • Troubleshooting technology problems wastes valuable instructional minutes. Technology doesn’t always work. Sometimes it’s a school wide issue or district issue, but sometimes the students’ individual technology just refuses to behave. Multiple times daily I stop lessons for individual students’ internet connectivity problems, device and website login problems, and the list goes on and on. While teaching troubleshooting techniques and offering my own help remains integral in a digital classroom, sometimes the ONLY solution is sending them to the library for help. And again, this detracts from the lesson. Heck, the student isn’t present for part of it.
  • Research shows that students retain information more when taking notes by hand. Paper engages students more.They can quickly annotate and highlight instead of navigating through cumbersome technology equivalents–that you have to teach them how to use, which takes even more time and varies from program to program (Drummond).

  Disclaimer:  I’m not fully eschewing technology, but I’m cutting back big time next year.

  

  Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

  2. An endless combination of nicknames exist with my last name. My personal favorite from this year? Mrs. Ramengobble. I’m also enamoured with Mrs. Ma’am-a-gost (albeit seemingly redundant). Am I insulted? No. I will respond to anything students call me, unless it’s mean. I feel honored every time a new nickname is bestowed upon me. It fits in with my next bullet point.
  3. Have fun. Let’s be honest, English class content can be disinteresting for the average eighth grader. I recognize my subject’s limitations and balance it by building student relationships and cracking jokes. And whether students like English class or not, they’ll leave my room at the end of year loving me (or convinced that I’m a psychopath), dammit.
  4. Refrain from telling students they’re smart. I don’t think I’ve ever really done this in the first place, but I sure won’t be doing it from now on. At our eighth grade awards night every year, each teacher hands out an outstanding student award and gives a little speech. In almost all of those speeches, every teacher used the term “hard-working” to describe their chosen student. The terms smart and intelligent weren’t used once. Teachers are in the business of growth. We value students who take feedback and run with it. Every single student I taught last year was smart. But not everyone was a hard worker. Or an active participant in their own education. Praising students’ intelligence pigeonholes them. Sometimes they think they deserve an A without working towards it and then lash at you for their earned “B” or “C.” And sometimes it manifests in anxiety where they believe they can’t live up to a perceived expectation (“Should We Stop Telling Kids They’re Smart?”). I will be making more of an effort next year to praise growth daily with my students.
     

     Photo by Giftpundits.com on Pexels.com

  Bring on year 14! (Gulp!)

  Works Cited:

  Drummond, Steve. “In The Age Of Screen Time, Is Paper Dead?” NPR, NPR, 10 Sept. 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/09/10/544546911/in-the-age-of-screen-time-is-paper- dead.

  “Should We Stop Telling Kids They’re Smart?” NPR, NPR, 24 June 2016,                              http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=483126798.

   

  Posted in teaching, Uncategorized, writing | 4 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, reflection, students, teaching, writing

• Hello Ulcerative Colitis My Old Friend

  Posted at 11:41 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on June 7, 2019

  

  I had a colonoscopy today. If you’ve ever had one, you can sympathize with me–they’re the WORST (Okay. Okay. Maybe not the worst, but they’re damn god-awful.)  

  Why are they the worst you might ask?

  • You can only have a liquid diet the day before. I’m the hungriest person I know, and liquid doesn’t suffice. By ten yesterday morning I had a raging food withdrawal headache. Not to mention the non-solid foods that are allowed like chicken broth (sodium-laden with hidden garlic and onion), sodas (sugar bombs), and popsicles (frozen sugar bombs) I’ve eighty-sixed from my diet because my sensitive tummy handles zilcho processed foods. But I managed to choke down lime Jello and bubbly ginger ale all day (P.S. Little Thing couldn’t handle my dietary complaints yesterday because soda, Jello, and popsicles all day sound delightful to a second grader. Don’t worry, she got her Schweppes, jigglers, and ice lollies on, too.) And you know the worst part? YOU CAN’T DRINK, SUCK, OR SLURP ANYTHING RED OR PURPLE, the two best flavors of all things liquid or gelatinous. Sigh.
  • Your innards need to be vacant. Yep. No intestinal occupancy. I’ll keep this brief because, well, ewwwwwwww, but my doc told me to take 4 laxatives at 3 p.m. and then drink 64 ounces of Gatorade (not fruit punch, harrumph, but lemon lime) mixed with a bottle of Miralax over the course of five hours. Sounds rip-roarin’ doesn’t it? When you’re already feeling shitty, pun intended and hence the reason for the colonoscopy, this adds insult to injury.
  • A doctor puts a camera up your booty. ‘Nuff said. Thank the heavens you don’t remember this part because the anesthesiologist knocks you out.

  But all bad jokes aside, he did discover that I’m having my first relapse with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease, in twenty years. This flare feels a bit different because it’s a mild form (Mild my ass. I still feel wretched.) called proctitis, only affecting the rectum.

  

   

  Now I understand that I may have grossed you out and talking about poop and colonoscopies might make you uncomfortable but:

  1. A wise philosopher once said, “Everybody poops.”
  2. Ulcerative colitis isn’t a bad stomach ache, IBS, or annoying diarrhea. It’s a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (along with Crohn’s) that can completely debilitate its sufferers. In high school it made me severely anemic, and I almost had to have a blood transfusion. I know people who have had parts of their colon removed and now have colostomies because of it and others who are no longer able to work because of their symptoms.
  3. When you turn 50, you get to have a colonoscopy too.
  4. And as always, invisible illnesses only remain invisible if we don’t talk about them.
  Posted in chronic pain, ulcerative colitis, Uncategorized | 11 Comments | Tagged blogs, chronic illness, colonoscopy, ibd, inflammatory bowel disease, invisible illness, proctitis, ulcerative colitis

• Mini Book Reviews for March, April, and May

  Posted at 11:28 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on May 31, 2019

  

  

  

  

  

  End of my thirteenth year of teaching? Check. (P.S. How the hell did that happen?)
  End of musical theater and soccer season for Little Thing? Check.
  End of physical therapy? Check.
  End of the house being on the market? No check. But we’re hopeful.
  End of Mrs. Ram’s Jams’s blog pause? CHECK!

  Here’s what I’ve read during my absence. Since nada writing happened during my break, these reviews are bare bones (and I skipped reviewing a few *wink wink*). After all, I crammed in 39 books in March, April, and May. The ones I highly recommend are in bold with their book jackets (All book jacket art is taken from Goodreads.).

  March

  • Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman, YAL/science fiction, five stars:  This series has yet to disappoint me. I can’t wait until book three comes out in September.
  • The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo, romance/contemporary fiction, three stars:  I hate it when book reviews/blubs tell you that a book is like another book when it completely gives away the story’s ending. That happened to me with this one, and I might have enjoyed this read a bit more if it hadn’t been totally predictable.
  • The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty, YAL/fantasy, three stars:  It drew me in but couldn’t hold my attention. It felt breathy. What happened to conciseness as opposed to needlessly drawn out pages?
  • The Kiss Quotient (The Kiss Quotient #1) by Helen Hoang, romance/contemporary fiction, three stars:  I liked this a lot better than The Light We Lost, but this one was way more what I consider to be true romance/erotica. However, it was not anywhere as close to good as The Hating Game.
  • The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) by N.K. Jemisin, fantasy, four stars:  Okay, I get it. One of the characteristics of fantasy is a long story, but damnnnnnnnn. I lose interest in a book around the 400 page mark if it’s not phenomenally written. However, this was still a good read.
  • An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena, mystery, one star: I don’t think I’ve ever ranked a book with one measly star. This was awful. Lapena tried to emulate Agatha Christy, and it came off like a poorly written book version of the game Clue.
  • Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman, thriller/mystery, three stars: Please someone recommend a more than decent thriller/mystery for me. This genre hasn’t been doing it for me lately.
  • An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, thriller, three stars: Read The Wife Between Us instead; it was a much better collaboration than this one they put out.
  • The Library Book by Susan Orlean, nonfiction, five stars:  One of the coolest things I’ve ever read. It’s the story of a Los Angeles library fire, a love letter to books, and an homage to libraries.

  April

  • The Passage (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin, horror/apocalyptic, three stars:  At first, I was captivated by this vampire apocalypse story, but it’s gargantuan without needing to be. I will not be picking up book 2.
  • The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2) by Holly Black, YAL/fantasy, four stars:  A YAL faerie and mortal love story done right. Book 3 is out in November.
  • The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1) by Rick Riordan, middle grade/fantasy, three stars: I didn’t see what all the hype was about.
  • More Than Words by Jill Santopolo, romance/contemporary fiction, four stars:  So much better than The Light We Lost.
  • Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, contemporary fiction, four stars:  I love me a good Brit lit read. This was Jojo Moyes-esque but with a narrator who makes terrible decisions.
  • The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson, fantasy, four stars:  Read this instead of City of Brass.
  • On the Come Up by Angie Thomas, YAL/contemporary, four stars:  Not as good as The Hate U Give. The dialogue and the narration cheese so hard, but ‘tis to be expected with YAL.
  • Maid:  Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land, memoir, four stars:  The title explains it all.
  • The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray, contemporary fiction, three stars:  Boring, but nicely penned.
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, contemporary fiction, four stars:  Where has Taylor Jenkins Reid been all my life? A fledgling magazine writer gets the chance of a lifetime to interview an old school movie star, Evelyn Hugo, and gets the juicy scoop on each of her husbands.
  • Coraline by Neil Gaiman, middle grade/horror, four stars:  I’m trying to tackle the entire Gaiman cannon, and while I thoroughly enjoyed this middle grade read, I liked The Graveyard Book more. The characters in Coraline looked blurry and read blurry, and that’s probably Gaiman’s point, but The Graveyard Book felt more concrete.
  • Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore #1) by Robin Sloan, contemporary fiction, five stars: I honestly don’t think this book will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I adored the blend of humor, intrigue, and nerdiness.
  • The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings #1) by Mackenzi Lee, YAL/historical fiction, four stars:  A swashbuckling adventure that I didn’t know I was missing.
  • American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson, contemporary fiction, four stars: A solid, albeit, slow paced, spy story.
  • Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman, chick lit/contemporary fiction, two stars:  Bleck. Bleck. Bleck. Good riddance Good Riddance.
  • The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3) by Katherine Arden, fantasy, four stars:  So, I adored this entire series. It’s Russian folklore meets history clashing with Christianity. The first two books were lyrical and magical, and this last one had a very satisfying ending but lost its poetical syntax.
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, classics/plays, four stars:  I love teaching this play to 8th graders. A love triangle, plays within plays, and fairies. What’s not to love?

  May

  • The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick, contemporary fiction, two stars:
  • The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin, contemporary fiction, four stars:
  • His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire #1) by Naomi Novik, fantasy, three stars:  Can anyone recommend a good dragon story? I thought for sure Novik wouldn’t disappoint, but this wasn’t nearly as compelling as Uprooted.
  • Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, classics/plays, four stars:  I hate teaching Romeo and Juliet. I know it’s poetry, but I can’t stand Benvolio. Everytime he gets on stage he repeats EVERYTHING that has just transpired.
  • What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, YAL/contemporary fiction, four stars:
  • Confessions of a Domestic Failure by Bunmi Laditan, chick lit/contemporary fiction, two stars:  This was supposed to be funny, but it missed its mark. The humor relied on overplayed mommy situations instead of wit. Read How to Party with an Infant instead.
  • Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, historical-ish fiction, five stars:  A sixties rock band story told in an interview format. It has an Almost Famous vibe.
  • The Witch’s Daughter (The Witch’s Daughter #1) by Paula Brackston, fantasy/historical fiction, four stars:
  • How to Party with an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings, chick lit/contemporary fiction, four stars:  Hilarious, but the narration could use a little tweaking for cleanliness.
  • Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal, contemporary fiction, four stars:
  • The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen, magical realism, three stars:
  • Year One (Chronicles of The One #1) by Nora Roberts, fantasy/apocalyptic, two stars:  My first venture into Nora Roberts’s prolific writings crashed and burned. You’ve got your standard apocalypse scenario: a virus knocks out most of the world’s population. Then you throw in fairies, witches, elves, etc. and the worst written dialogue I’ve ever seen on a page (and it’s dialogue heavy y’all) to ultimately reveal a good vs. evil/the chosen one archetype. The ONLY reason I didn’t rate this book as one star is because it was TERRIBLY readable (emphasis on the terribly). I kind of hate myself for even finishing this book and ranking it this highly.
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, fantasy/horror, four stars:  Normally I staunchly eschew from assigning ½ ratings to books, but this book is more deserving of 4 ½ stars. I would have rated it five, but it’s a loosely adult parallel of Coraline. Gaiman’s ability to weave a fantasy, make it seem so real, and write subtle truths into his fiction makes him one of my favorite authors.

  And as always, any and all discussion about these books is welcome. I’ve missed y’all.

  Posted in books, reading, Uncategorized, writing | 7 Comments | Tagged angie thomas, blogging, blogs, book reviews, books, candice carty-wlliams, coraline, daisy jones & the six, holly black, how to party with an infant, jill santopolo, katherine arden, kitchens of the great midwest, lauren wilkinson, mackenzi lee, maid, mr. penumbra's 24 hour bookstore, naomi novik, neal shusterman, neil gaiman, queenie, read, reading, robin sloan, tara conklin, taylor jenkins reid, the ocean at the end of the lane, the witch's daughter, thunderhead, what if it's us, writing

• A Poem: Collecting Dust in the Dungeon

  Posted at 5:34 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 23, 2019

  

  I am a day late using this word prompt! My bad! Please forgive me daily word prompt aficionados! Also, it’s a bit of a mess. Like me.

  ---

  a dungeon of

  Birds Killed and Mocked and Thorns

  Letters Scarlett O’Hara-ed in the Wind

  Gatsby’s Expectations unGrateful

  Naked Juliets and suicidal Romeos

  Mice, Lennie, and George Orwell

  451 flames flickering like 5 Slaughterhouses ignited

  Purple Arms will never Color Farewell in a Dark Tower

  because they’re collecting dust in the dungeon

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Posted in books, poems, poetry, reading, Uncategorized, writing | 0 Comments | Tagged blogging, blogs, books, dungeon, poems, poetry, reading, writing

• A Poem: Her Mom Instead of Her Mommy

  Posted at 11:27 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 15, 2019

  

  Have you seen My?
  She’s been lost for a while,
  and I’m in denial
  because I’ll never get to tell her bye.

  Once she’s gone, she’s gone forever,
  and I’m not just yet ready for never
  again to have my My.

  Oh my my!
  Oh how I cried
  and died
  a little inside
  when I realized My was a thing of the past
  because Mommy is gone and Mom is here at long last.

  And My is no longer the end but the beginning, my mom instead of Mommy.
  And oh my my!
  Oh how I cry
  and die a little inside
  because I have to learn to be her mom instead of her mommy.

  Posted in kids, parenting, poems, poetry, Uncategorized, writing | 1 Comment | Tagged blogging, kids, parenting, poems, poems about kids, poetry, writing

• A Poem: Stop What You’re Doing and Lock the Door

  Posted at 8:55 pm by Mrs. Ram Jam, on March 8, 2019

  

  

  stand at the door

  make conversation

  Happy morning, students!

  check their uniforms

  Take off that necklace, please!

  No labels on socks; that’s a citation.

  the bell rings

  go inside

  lock the door behind you

  take attendance

  “Can I charge my ChromeBook?”

  You mean, may I charge my ChromeBook? Yes, you may.

  “Can I take my doctor’s excuse to the office?

  Ummmm, number one–you should have done that before the bell rang. Number two–did you not just hear me say it’s “may” not “can”? Sign out. And somebody go lock the door.

  submit attendance

  read announcements

  knock knock

  go answer the door and lock it behind you

  continue reading announcements

  knock knock

  stop what you’re doing and answer the door and lock it behind you

  go over the objective

  overhead intercom interrupts–“Can you send So-and-so to the office?”

  So-and-so, stop what you’re doing, sign out, and go to the office. And somebody please go lock the door behind her.

  model your thinking

  knock knock

  Somebody, stop what you’re doing and go answer the door. And don’t forget to lock it.

  students work on group work

  take a student’s ChromeBook because he’s playing games

  admonish another for for using hers as a mirror

  “Hey, my ChromeBook’s frozen!“

  And? That’s a statement. If you want help, please ask a question.

  “Can I go to the library to get my ChromeBook fixed?”

  Did you try to trouble shoot? Did you turn it off and back on?

  continue to monitor the students

  “It still won’t work.”

  Take it down to the library. Sign out.

  stop what you’re doing and lock the door

  they’re finally working

  sit down at your desk

  check your email

  check exit tickets

  check your coffee breath

  pop a mint

  field questions from your desk

  decide that’s useless

  they’re restless

  help them

  make them laugh

  get them back on task

  knock knock

  This is ridiculous. said under your breath

  stop what you’re doing and answer the door

  “You look mad. Can I tell you a joke?”

  ignore the remark

  forget what you’re doing and what day it is and your middle name

  take a deep breath to recenter yourself

  hold a discussion

  overhead intercom interrupts–“Lock down! Lock down! This is a lock down! Active shooter! Active shooter!”

  Students, get in the corner. Be quiet.

  check the blinds to make sure they’re drawn and swipe your phone and your laptop from your desk and turn off the lights and open the cabinet door to block the view from the classroom door and huddle on the floor next to your students and send an everyone’s-accounted-for email

  shush the children

  Moment of Clarity.

  The. Door. Isn’t. Locked.

  Crawl on the floor.

  Reach up.

  Cold lock in your sweaty fingers.

  Twist it as as someone pounds on the door.

  Students whimper.

  Look up. See a cop.

  His glare, a condescending reprimand.

  Because even though you stopped what you were doing, you forgot to lock the door.

  The overhead intercom interrupts–“All clear. All clear. It was only a drill.”

  but you know that the only thing that’s clear is the drill of your beating heart and your lesson is ruined and you’re close to tears because the only thing that’s important anymore is having your door locked

  Posted in fibromyalgia, kids, poetry, teaching, Uncategorized | 6 Comments | Tagged blogging, poems, poems about teaching, poetry, teaching, writing

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