SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS (On Sunday, 1/29/23)

Posted on by Rae Longest

powerfulwomenreaders

I’m not quite through, but reading One Crazy Summer, a Newberry Honor Book, winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, the Corretta Scott King Award, and a National Book Award Finalist, has been such a positive experience that I’ve ordered the other two books in the “Gaither Sisters Series” by Rita Williams-Garcia.

The Gaither Sisters, travel to Oakland, California, on their first airplane trip, by themselves, to meet the mother who abandoned them to be raised by their father and “Big Ma.” It is a tumultuous time for Oakland, and the girls find their very sophisticated mother involved with the Black Panthers and all the riots and terror in Oakland that summer.

I am only on page eighty, but I have come to empathize with and care about all three girls, from Delphine, the oldest, to Vonetta and Fern, her younger siblings. Cecile, their mother, is “something else,”…

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A WORD TO MY STUDENTS

Posted on by Rae Longest

This semester, I will be teaching freshmen for the first time since 2017. My Advanced Writing students have been giving me dire warnings about what I am in for. This cartoon posted by the Bluebird of Bitterness in a series on “Board of Education” gives good advice to this semester’s students:

Students, I actually do explain things in class! Please give me your undivided attention for the hour we are together. Be patient with me when I run over; I’m used to a three hour class. I promise to do my best to end on time.

I am looking forward to this semester!

Mrs. Longest