5: A week in the reading life of a deaf teacher of english

When you teach, your reading life is necessarily a tangled mix of subjects: I read books my students should read at their age so as to build connections and help them find books they will personally like, which requires sometimes reading things I don't normally find interest in (but young teen books are often far more positive than adult books, which is a plus.)

I read the theory-books of education and Deaf Studies that feed what I do in the classroom and shape how I teach reading and how I involve American Deaf culture and ASL (the same way, I imagine, a school which specialized in a bicultural Spanish/English environment would try to involve works by Latino/Latina authors and explore the relationship of Spanish to English.) I also read the books you read because... well, when you're an English teacher, you like reading, and that's reason enough.

THIS WEEK'S PROFESSIONAL READS:

THIS WEEK'S PERSONAL READS:

There's an interesting story behind that last book. It was left to me by my great-Aunt Gloria when she died; I was 13. For some reason I decided there was a reason she left it to me, so I took to reading every short mystery contained in the book. The list is considerable; I think it must comprise most of Christie's Hercule Poirot short stories. It was picked up one day by sticky fingers (or an accidential cleaning lady) in the MSSD cafeteria, and I never saw another copy until I hit the Church rummage sale with MS this past Sunday. Of course I picked it up right away, and it's startling how much of the structure of the stories I still remember, and how much it reminds me of childhood.

Reviews will be forthcoming, as the books get done.