literature – Page 9 – Amber Nicole Brooks

We should support our local artists, whether they are writers, musicians, or painters. This is a sound philosophy, even if it is sometimes difficult to follow: we can only be so many places at once, afford so many babysitters, stay up late so many nights of the week. We’ve all been there, I’m sure. I want to support my friends’ band, but why are they playing at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday? That reading sounds great…let me find a sitter. However, we can read on our own time—how perfect! So buy some books and magazines and support your local artists. The following list will get you started.

For this post I’m focusing on our local writers and their works that have been published this year. What do I mean by local writer? I’m including those who currently live in Georgia, as well as those who have lived here in the past. Many writers have been to school and /or taught in Georgia, while many current Georgia writers have deep roots elsewhere.

BOOKS

Stephanie Perkins now resides in Asheville. I am super excited to read her debut YA novel, Anna and the French Kiss (Dutton) which comes out in December 2010. Her second book, Lola and the Boy Next Door is set to come out in the Fall of 2011. About Anna:

“Very sly. Very funny. Very romantic. You should date this book.”

— MAUREEN JOHNSON, NYT bestselling author of 13 Little Blue Envelopes and Scarlett Fever

Josh Russell gave us the fantastic Yellow Jack (W.W. Norton, 1999) and now My Bright Midnight, A True Story (LSU Press, 2010).

“I’ve been waiting for more of Josh Russell’s NOLA since Yellow Jack, waiting patiently, most of the time, and now it’s paid off. This book flat out kicks ass in its New Orleansness but also in its humanness, a novel firing on all cylinders, amazing characters, killer details, lyrical language and a plot that keeps the pages turning. A book worth the wait and worth its salt, a novel to read and reread, to savor, to treasure.”
—Tom Franklin, author of Hell at the Breech and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Ben Spivey’s debut novel, Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, has received blurbs from Brian Evanson and Gary Lutz.

“Ben Spivey’s alluringly melodial debut novel of a marriage gone asunder unreels itself with the indisputable logic of dreams and delivers, along its phantasmagoric and dazing way, emotional clarities that feel entirely new.”

–Gary Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way and I Looked Alive

SHORT FICTION

Much of this short fiction news is lifted from The New South’s Writing Workshop news page. Visit the site for more news.

Sonya McCoy Wilson published the “The Rigor Tree” in Diverse Voices Quarterly as well as “Brown Paper Bags” in TimBookTu (July 2010).

Karen Gentry’s story “Treasure Island,” which appeared originally in NÖO Jornal, has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions 2010.

John Holman’s story “Credentials” (which first appeared in Mississippi Review) has been reprinted in Fictionaut. Holman’s profile of the South’s best bird appears in the Oxford American‘s Best of the South 2010 (May ’10, Issue 69).

Josh Russell’s story “Young Woman Standing Before a Window” has been published in Epoch (Vol. 58, Number 3).

Dionne Irving’s story “Florida Lives” was a finalist for the Mid-American Review‘s 2009-2010 Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award.

Cheryl Stiles has published a work of creative nonfiction, “Systems Failure,” in Southern Women’s Review. This essay is part of a book length manuscript of essays entitled On Nelson Street.

If you have additional news, corrections, or links you’d like me to add, please leave the information in the comments section of this post. Thanks for reading.

I urge all educators to pick up a copy of the Jan./Feb. The Atlantic to read Amanda Ripley’s article “What Makes a Great Teacher?”

I ran into a former student on campus the other day, and my immediate thought was to tell her “Oh, you should be in my literature class now!” She was a wonderful, motivated student who contributed to class and produced strong work. She passed the class long ago and expressed that she got a lot out of it. Why would I want her to experience the same class again? I’ve changed, the class has changed, and for the better. Nothing was necessarily wrong before, but I could feel some clumsiness, some stops and starts, some instances of wasted energy (at times by me, at times by my students), and I could see some students not exercising their full potential.

Glancing at my syllabi, changes aren’t immediately clear, but I’ve made many incremental changes along the way about how I run my classroom. I’ve executed, assessed, and adapted, repeatedly. I’m not running around searching for new things to teach students, I’m figuring out how to teach them the same material better. The material of certain lessons/lectures has expanded over the years–for example, I now have a great list of movies that capture the essence of the Southern Gothic–but, the basics will always be the same.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Amanda Ripley explores this topic in her article “What Makes a Great Teacher?” Instructors can present the same material and have the same goals for their students. But, in the college classroom, why might I receive blank stares from one group of students and several voices chiming in from another group of students when I pose the same exact question? Minor factors might include the fact that one class is at eight in the morning and another class is at noon. The more important factors to consider are 1) Do they have an answer to my question? 2) Do they care to answer the question? and 3) How do I get them to that place of care?

Ripley explores why two grade school teachers at the same school, both beginning with the majority of their students testing below grade level, end up with disparate results: Mr. Taylor ends with 90 percent of his students at or above grade level and Unnamed Teacher ends up with only 44 percent of her students at grade level with none above (far worse than her group began).

Ripley’s exploration is a good one, because she acknowledges the complexity of the question, the inherent difficulty in articulating what works. We can see failures in large templates placed on educational systems (no child left behind?) which were designed to make things work. Many things do not work. We know this. But, how do we quantify, document, and then disseminate what does work?

The large amount of data and research collected by Teach for America provides the basis for Ripley’s discussion. Ripley finds an answer:

“At the end of the day,”says Timothy Daly at the New Teacher Project, “it’s the mind-set that teachers need–a kind of relentless approach to the problem.”

I couldn’t agree more. We are never done working on this project of instruction. When we think of Professional Development we might get excited or our eyes might glaze over as we imagine a list of things we have to do to say we did. I can’t even imagine how long this list of things we have to do to say we did is for the average public school teacher.

How can we make a teacher have a “relentless approach to the problem”? Well, Teach for America tries to find the individuals that are like that naturally, naturally relentless. Here are some of the indicators:

What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance–not just an attitude, but a track record. […] Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”–defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, and measured using a multiple choice test–were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer.

Let’s allow our teachers persevere and relentlessly approach their complex problems as they see fit; many hope Race to the Top will give a framework for identifying and rewarding the gritty teachers. And for those of us that teach, let’s take time to reflect on our relentlessness, our grit.

Tag: literature

Support Local Writers

“Grit” an Indicator of Teacher Success