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Book Club 2014: Amazing Grace (Kozol)

Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell December 12, 2014 No Comments
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Today, a book I was eager to read but ended up disappointed with.

Summary: From Goodreads:

The children in this book defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them. The book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDs, life-consuming fires and gang rivalries take a high toll. Several children die during the year in which this narrative takes place.

A gently written work, “Amazing Grace” asks questions that are at once political and theological. What is the value of a child’s life? What exactly do we plan to do with those whom we appear to have defined as economically and humanly superfluous? How cold — how cruel, how tough — do we dare be?

My take: I expected to get a lot more out of Amazing Grace than I did.  For one thing, what GoodReads called “gently written” was a quality that to me made it seem like Kozol was disorganized in his writing.  I had trouble tracking it, but maybe that was part of the point.

I gave Amazing Grace two stars on GoodReads, because it’s hopeless; it’s a collection of anecdotes that don’t try hard enough to make a point, but rather show that it’s everyone else’s fault, and surprisingly enough, since you can’t control others’ behavior, there are no solutions.  But as Mrs. Washington says in the book, “People also simply change their minds.”  Times and illnesses and people change, and politics and the AIDS crisis have a different face now than they did twenty years ago.  And so I am looking forward to reading Kozol’s follow-up book published more recently, Fire in the Ashes, on my reading list for 2015.

Shop more meaningfully this Christmas

As a retired teacher, who attended New York’s PS 65 and volunteered there at the time of the writing, preaches to these children and to us, “You can’t control what you were born as, but if you can control yourself, our life will be more peaceful.”  As for me, let me encourage all of us to remember that we can control ourselves, and our compassion, and our spending, even at Christmas.  If you read the book Radical: Taking your Life Back from the American Dream, and choose to “radical”ize your Christmas shopping (and maybe your life?), perhaps we’ll make a real difference in the gross injustice in our country and our world.  Some very different Christmas catalogs to start with: Compassion, Gospel for Asia, Samaritan’s Purse, and World Vision.  Or you could give someone a much more meaningful gift card, like one I got from an encouraging reader, from Kiva.org.

Back to the book, my major issue was that while Kozol ends the book recognizing that there are no easy answers (that is the truth here: there are no easy answers), as he walks among these children and destitute people in the midst of the AIDS crisis in New York’s poorest neighborhoods, he -and they- succumb to the very strong temptation to imagine there are easy answers, namely, if only we threw more money at the problem, everything would be fine.

For example, Kozol mentions a money manager who had earned more than $1B in a year:

An extra 20 percent tax on his earnings, if redistributed in the South Bronx, would have lifted 48,000 human beings–every child and every parent in every family of Mott Haven–out of poverty, with enough left over, I imagine to buy many safe new elevator doors and hire several good physicians for the public schools that serve the neighborhood.

So, there you have it.  After story after story about the government  accidentally canceling people’s welfare or cutting their check or losing their records, Kozol buys into the belief that this same government would suddenly become effective at ending poverty… drug use… lack of education… work ethic problems… unemployment… if it could simply take more money from the rich, and give it away.  And give it away as efficiently as it does everything else, of course.

I try to sympathize but I know that I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a child in these neighborhoods.  I don’t live an ostentatious life in my own estimation.  I live in a 1250-sq-ft house with one bathroom, no garage or basement or playroom or swimming pool.  My girls share a small bedroom and their clothes share a dresser, which is in their brother’s even-smaller bedroom.  But we have heat and air, food in our refrigerator and pantry, and when our roof leaked and shower tiles fell off we were able to fix them nicely.  We have a lovely Christmas tree and “O Holy Night” playing over ad-free Pandora radio.  It’s a blessed life that makes it so that I (and probably you too) can only try to work hard to show empathy and compassion to families who suffer in true poverty.  But on the other hand, I’m pretty sure a blank check alone never solved anyone’s drug addiction.

David, a boy whose mom was dying of AIDS:

God…is not powerful enough to stop the evil on the earth, to change the hearts of people…. [Evil is] what the rich have done to the poor people in this city… Somebody has power. Pretending that they don’t so they don’t need to use it to help people–that is my idea of evil.

A woman, on the subject of what if the children went and stole everything in FAO Schwarz:

You have to ask if they could ever steal back half as much as has been stolen from them.

One more:

If you moved these families into a nice suburb, nine tenths of this feeling of constriction, I’m convinced, would be relieved.

But the obvious questions are left out, as they usually are: Who is the “you”?  Who is going to move them to a “nice suburb”?  What defines a “nice suburb”?  Where is it?  What if they don’t want to go there?  Who’s going to pay for the house when they get there?  Who’s going to teach them to maintain that new life you wanted to give them?

David’s mom and her journey toward death break my heart, but she can be very judgmental and nonspecific in her opinion that if only the rich gave more money to the poor, everyone would be okay:

“Women who pay money like that for a brassiere must think their chest is made of gold.  Are you goin’ to tell me that these people are too poor to pay their share?”

So while she blames the rich for being judgmental of the poor, she gets to determine what “their share” is, and what they’re allowed to spend their money on, and that they obviously didn’t work hard to get it, and that there must be enough to spread around to people indiscriminately so they can get what they need with some of them working for it and others not.

Don’t misunderstand me, though.  I think a reality check and a heavy dose of personal responsibility and empathy would go a long way for the rich and the middle class, too – and for the poor and addicted.  There’s a lot of material in this book that will make you stop and think about how to address problems in our society that should concern every single one of us.  Some quotes that made me pause:

A teenager:

If you weave enough bad things into the fibers of a person’s life–sickness and filth, old mattresses and other junk thrown in the streets and other ugly ruined things, and ruined people, a prison here, sewage there, drug dealers here, the homeless people over there, then give us the very sorst schools anyone could think of, hospitals that keep you waiting for ten hours, police that don’t show up when someone’s dying, take the train that’s underneath the street in the good neighborhoods and put it up above where it shuts out the sun, you can guess that life will not be very  nice and children will not have much sense of being glad of who they are.  Sometimes it feels like we’ve been buried six feet under their perceptions.  This is what I feel they have accomplished.

About Häagen-Dazs:

This familiar detail, something that belongs to the everyday world, something I would buy at my store too, seems reassuring, safe, and normal.  It shuts out the sense of peril for a while.

A poet, when a child asked if he would teach him to write:

It was in my mind that I should not encourage him in a career with so much disappointment.

Columnist Annie Roiphe:

[Cruelty is] “the fuel that powers the palace” of our satisfactions.

David, the same boy whose mother was dying of AIDS:

It isn’t bad to sound like children.  Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see.

Services like those for orphans of AIDS, welfare offices, soup kitchens, and so on,

are needed–all these and hundreds more–if our society intends to keep on placing those it sees as unclean in the unclean places.

Quoting Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, A.D. 251 about an epidemic:

It is not for you to think that the destruction is a common one for both the evil and the good.

Kozol’s comment on Cyprian:

Consolations of this nature, however, have not always been persuasive to the victims of a plague.

At a prison:

I knew, even before I asked, how many must have been the former students of some of the schools I’ve visited, which in an awful sense, have come to be their preparation for life on this island and in many ways resemble prison buildings, although the facilities on Rikers Island are, in general, in better shape than most school buildings in New York.

Semantic somersaults are often undertaken to avoid the use of clear words on a matter in which clarity is badly needed.

A teacher in NY about screening black kids to put in private schools by scholarship:

In one sense, it simply makes things worse in public schools by pulling out the children that a teacher counts on to keep class discussions going and to spur the others to succeed… A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.

The big question Kozol made me ask: what decisions am I making that are vanquishing someone’s dream? And to put some personal responsibility on it, what choices are they making about real things?

About schools like Stuyvesant,

The question that no one wants to ask is: What do other kids deserve and how is the whole idea of a “deserving” or an “undeserving” person used to mask some of the cumulative consequences of injustice?

About holding up examples of kids who succeed, to make everyone feel better:

The trouble with miracles, however, is that they don’t happen for most children – without making clear how rare these situations are, we may seem to be condemning those who don’t have opportunities like these or, if they do, cannot respond to them.

[We] inflate exceptionality into a myth of progress that is not based in reality.

As Kozol asks, “How does a nation deal with those whom it has cursed?”

“Down south,” says Mrs. Flowers, who has relatives in Alabama, “people let you know exactly where you stand.  Here in New York they smile and smile and pat you on the head and then they send you back where you belong.

Less than 13 percent of the doctors practicing primary care in the Mot Haven area are certified by medical boards to practice.

[A pastor:] If New York were a Judeo-Christian city, “I think that we’d be asking questions all the time. ‘Where does my money come from? Who pays a price for all the fun I have? Who is left out? Do I need this bottle of expensive perfume more than a child needs a doctor or a decent school?'”

Seeing these women in the street, you feel almost ashamed of your good health and worry that, no matter how you speak of them, it may sound patronizing… Maybe we simply ask forgiveness for not being born where these poor women have been born, knowing that if we had lived here too, our fate might well have been the same.

It’s hard to think that any city that has love for children would allow them to grow up in such a place.

The killer is the street in which we live like rats.

It strikes me how much Kozol has to hedge sometimes to make the point he wants to make (like any researcher, I suppose; emphasis mine):

White American physicians, numerous studies seem to indicate, often evince a strong aversion to providing heath care in such neighborhoods.

Elizabeth, about finding a man,

I’d rather have a peaceful little life just with my kids than live with somebody who knows that he’s a failure.  Men like that make everyone feel rotten.

To end, some quotes, sad and/or poignant and/or resonant, about God, good, and evil:

…devout black women, in whom Cornel West has rightly said one often finds a spiritual strength unknown to most other Americans…

The evil is already set in stone. We just move in.

“I pray. I talk to God. I tell Him, ‘Lord, it is your work. Put me to my rest at night and wake me in the morning.’ ”
“Do your children have the same believe in God that you do?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding at her daughter and her son-in-law. “They do. This family talks to God.”

“If you don’t believe in God and don’t believe in family or society and don’t believe you’ll ever have a job, what do you have?”

People in every era, as we know, want desperately to find a visible explanation for their suffering.

“People who don’t have no hope are dangerous.”

[The poet:] “Children long for this-a voice, a way of being heard- but many sense that there is no one in the world to hear their words, so they are drawn to ways of malice. If they cannot sing, they scream.”

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Previous Book Club ’14: A Step of Faith & Walking on Water (The Walk series)
Next Best of 2014 #5: How I use verb charts
Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell
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      • Book Club '14: Monuments Men, With the Old Breed, In Pharaoh's Army
      • Book Club '14: The Kite Runner
      • Best of 2014 #3: Sample homework choice systems
      • Book Club '14: Crazy Busy
      • Book Club '14: The Hobbit & The Scarlet Pimpernel
      • Best of 2014 #5: How I use verb charts
      • Book Club 2014: Amazing Grace (Kozol)
      • Book Club '14: A Step of Faith & Walking on Water (The Walk series)
      • Best of 2014 #4 & #8: Curriculum planning outside the textbook
      • Book Club '14: Five Days at Memorial & Men We Reaped
      • Best of 2014 #9: Genius hour isn't a great idea for novice classes
      • Book Club '14: The Painted Veil & Life After Life
      • Best of 2014 #10: The new JCPS curriculum documents
      • Happy Cyber Week! Resource sale Dec. 1-3
      • Musicuentos Book Club 2014
    •  November (4)
      • Lessons from ACTFL '14: if they have all the answers, they're trying to sell you something
      • What's ahead: ACTFL, best of '14, and the book club
      • Linguacafé: The idea that rocked my interpersonal world
      • What we learned at IFLTA '14: Everyone struggles, Culture leads
    •  October (5)
      • Communicative teaching in the shadow of [grammar-focused] common assessment
      • More multi-tasking children's lit
      • Next on my PD list: New proficiency videos
      • What we learned at KWLA: share, think, respect
      • The game-changing authentic resource guide for Spanish 3+: it's here!
    •  September (4)
      • Three days and then...
      • The technology that's making us irrelevant...and more relevant
      • Thank you, reflective teachers
      • See you this year? Conferences & Camp Musicuentos
    •  August (6)
      • How I teach La ciudad de las bestias
      • Putting homework in their hands: Sample systems
      • The First Day Story: Empowering with CI
      • Keeping games communicative
      • Let's talk tacos: Informing parents & students on proficiency
      • Regreso a clases! Ciudad on sale
    •  July (2)
      • Oso de Mantequilla: A tribute
      • It's coming!
    •  June (7)
      • What we learned at Camp Musicuentos
      • Lesson plan: Indirect objects and celebrations (template too)
      • New Podcast: What kind of corrective feedback works?
      • New resource: Educating parents and students on proficiency
      • Another resource: JCPS new curriculum documents (K-12)
      • Introducing the past tenses together
      • Time for you to get feedback?
    •  May (9)
      • Upcoming workshop (IN): Proficiency-based lesson planning
      • Stop calling this easy & fast
      • Revisiting Photopeach for the AP Final
      • Stop stressing: It's wrong to do the best you can
      • Three tasks for crafting an effective message: Black Box Podcast episode 4
      • A Year in a Day: Camp Musicuentos 2014
      • Taking care of business: Summer collaboration for a successful year
      • 4 ways to tweak the exit ticket
      • Black Box Podcast episode 3: To Sell Is Human, part 1
    •  April (9)
      • Top 25 Spanish novels
      • Let's play
      • New activity resource: Tweetfest!
      • Black Box Podcast episode 2: Circumlocution
      • An impromptu "langcamp"
      • See you at ACTFL '14
      • 4 ways to keep curriculum relevant
      • Tutorial on the best free PD you'll find in your own home
      • The Musicuentos Black Box Podcast: IT'S HERE!
    •  March (11)
      • Authentic visual illustrations of proficiency (Spanish)
      • Curriculum planning outside the textbook, Part 2
      • A week or more of working with Vivir mi vida
      • Resource release: Complete verb pack
      • Curriculum planning outside the textbook: Part 1
      • Corrections to simple verb pack
      • Musicuentos is on Pinterest!
      • Is this the best we can do?
      • Writing a restaurant review: Activity from Bethanie Drew
      • Putting a number grade on proficiency-based assessment
      • Resource release: Simple verb pack
    •  February (7)
      • My favorite source for restaurant (and other) reviews
      • Guest post: A TPRS rebuttal by Carol Gaab
      • TPRS strategies I don't put in my toolbox
      • What I love about TPRS
      • Repost: Valentine's #authres from Twitter
      • How I use verb charts
      • Guest post: What students need- A leader (David Seibel)
    •  January (10)
      • Every language teacher's biggest mistake
      • My new favorite digital storytelling app
      • Why Genius Hour can't work in a novice classroom
      • Website review: Geoguessr
      • 2014 resolutions #5: Use more authentic sources.
      • 2014 Resolutions #4: Take a step outside the textbook
      • Reviewing 2013: Five blogs to watch
      • 2014 Resolutions #3: Survey your students.
      • 2014 Resolutions #2: Collaborate with someone
      • 2014 Resolutions #1: Read a book
  •  2013 (110)
    •  December (13)
      • The #1 Musicuentos post of 2013 (and the six years before that)
      • Best of 2013: #2 - Tips for the new AP
      • Best of 2013: #3 - Choice in homework, updated
      • Best of 2013: #4 - Novice song for Spanish Class Idol
      • Best of 2013: #5 - Can you control vocabulary?
      • Best of 2013: #6 - Is your lesson plan out of whack?
      • Best of 2013: #7 - Four habits that enrich vocabulary
      • AP Spanish final exam: Controversia navideña y Vacunas para niños
      • Best of 2013: #8 - Novice high vs. Intermediate low
      • Best of 2013: #9 - Using assessment to inform your teaching
      • Best of 2013: #10 - Spot-checking conversations
      • First-ever Musicuentos ebook: Reader's Guide to Ciudad de las bestias
      • Happy December!
    •  November (8)
      • AP Spanish essay - Obamacare
      • Vote: Musicuentos proposal for ACTFL '14
      • Setting goals
      • Don't go to ACTFL '13 without TELLing
      • Repost: A story for demonstratives
      • Listen to some Grammy music
      • Caring about the Really Big Deal
      • Calm before the excitement!
    •  October (4)
      • Using assessment to inform your teaching
      • Just some fluff: Makeup for busy mom teachers
      • Top 3 mistakes teachers of novices make
      • Book review: Teach Like A Pirate
    •  September (7)
      • Interacting with authentic materials: a guide
      • Using audio-lingua
      • Seven keys to a great story
      • Stations: Exploring music
      • It's a myth: Equipping students to communicate with... themselves
      • Turn a Novice Song into "Spanish Class Idol"
      • Is your lesson plan out of whack?
    •  August (12)
      • Children's literature for the world language class (Helena Curtain)
      • App review & Giveaway! High School Spanish
      • Choice in homework, updated
      • Back to school: Proficiency posts
      • App Review: Storykit (bonus - meet my family!)
      • Back to school: Evaluate traditions
      • Back to school: Blogs with great ideas
      • App review & giveaway: Word Magic dictionary and thesaurus
      • My authorized AP syllabus
      • Back to school: Musicuentos "first days" posts
      • Back to school: Give them signals
      • Going back to school with Musicuentos
    •  July (6)
      • Tips for the New AP
      • Don't be fooled! What the AP does and doesn't measure
      • Illustrating proficiency with a laugh
      • Snag some free apps while you can!
      • Stop asking for unnatural language
      • Fun video: Animals, present, feelings
    •  June (9)
      • Targeting problems with a pop quiz
      • Song, irregular present, part 4: Tengo tu love
      • It's my birthday - check out our presents!
      • A meaningful approach to grammar
      • Websites for creating online magazines
      • A world with no magazines
      • Guest post: Coaching with choice
      • Screencast: Photopeach
      • Communicative grading made easier
    •  May (10)
      • Health infographic: Novice - Intermediate Activity
      • A lesson in finding authentic sources easily
      • Tips and songs for past participles
      • Foster higher-level thinking from the beginning
      • Summer: Language for the fun of it
      • Novice high vs. intermediate low
      • E-magazines with learner appeal
      • Step outside the textbook: Tell a story
      • Repost: Novice description with Jengibre and Pin Pon
      • Interpersonal communication by choice
    •  April (11)
      • Novice speaking: Describing self with Sie7e
      • Can you control vocabulary?
      • Activities from authentic resources: Future tense
      • Why I love mistakes
      • Maternity leave!
      • Lots of your class gone? Pick up a book.
      • Abandon the multiple-choice question
      • Songs for future tense
      • I choose béisbol: sample "homework" report
      • 300 times thank you
      • Reporting like kindergarten
    •  March (11)
      • Training in circumlocution: Ban the dictionary
      • Fun activity #9: A leer
      • Last tips on avoiding burnout
      • Cortometraje for narration
      • Make developing curriculum even easier
      • Even more tips on avoiding burnout
      • Authentic resource: trivia games
      • Still more tips on avoiding burnout
      • Two more ways to ease into developing curriculum
      • Song, irregular present, part 3: Carmelina
      • More tips on avoiding burnout
    •  February (10)
      • Intermediate news activity for all three modes
      • Easing into developing curriculum
      • If you don't pay attention to comprehensibility...
      • Burning out or burning bright?
      • Keeping the class engaged: Change activities
      • Fun activity #8: A cantar
      • Twitter/relationships activity, just in time for Valentine's
      • Tech tools gone wrong
      • Grading regular free-topic writing
      • Add more music to homework choices
    •  January (9)
      • Spot-checking conversations
      • Song, irregular present, part 2: Hace tiempo
      • Four habits that enrich vocabulary
      • Paragraph form
      • Myths 8 & 9: I don't do it because they can't handle it.
      • Assigning homework
      • Song, irregular present, part 1: Sigo con ella
      • More choice every day
      • A novice cross-curricular activity from authentic materials
  •  2012 (38)
    •  December (2)
      • 5 New Year's resolutions for every WL teacher
      • It pays to have a focus
    •  October (2)
      • Best and worst games I've seen
      • Example: authentic text for novices
    •  September (7)
      • Success with Stations
      • More student choice in homework
      • Prezi: The Choice is Theirs (KWLA 2012)
      • Prezi: Kick the Vocab Quiz (KWLA 2012)
      • Take the leap to standards-based assessment
      • Fun activity #7: Conecta cuatro
      • A song for feelings
    •  August (10)
      • Screencast: Edmodo
      • Myth #7: Spanish Mike is a taco.
      • A study in motivation, part 2: Self-assessing abilities
      • It's my blogiversary - but you get the gift
      • Menus
      • Reading guides: Cajas de cartón & Esperanza renace
      • A re-post for your first days back: Abecedario
      • Screencast: Finding authentic sources for prompts
      • Maintaining personal proficiency
      • AP redesign: Units & EQ's
    •  July (9)
      • A study in motivation
      • Advice for teachers in training
      • More uses for Amor de mi tierra
      • Book review: The Talent Code
      • Songs for 'duele'
      • The Case for Commands
      • Got idioms?
      • Like Musicuentos? Like it on Facebook.
      • Very short times with very young kids
    •  June (1)
      • 5...4...3...2...1... LAUNCH!
    •  March (4)
      • Another change: Survey says...
      • Design your own final exam
      • What I'm changing this week
      • Repost for CSC12: Increasing target language
    •  February (1)
      • A storytelling success story
    •  January (2)
      • Not going to ACTFL again, but for the best reason ever
      • Free Ebook for WL educators
  •  2011 (57)
    •  November (1)
      • Dear novice-learner teacher - love, an AP teacher
    •  October (3)
      • Learning from #langchat
      • Not your average health unit
      • Presentation: Target Language: Expect More, Say Less
    •  September (6)
      • Spanish 3 assessment documents
      • For KWLA 2011: Media from Reel to Real
      • Accuracy vs. proficiency: an illustration
      • Fun activity #6: A escribir
      • App review: Tour Wrist
      • Myth #6: Memorizing vocabulary
    •  August (5)
      • Trending topic = authentic comprehensible input
      • Got the rubric!
      • New year, new units, new assessments
      • Jumping on the Animoto bandwagon
      • Rethinking "late" work
    •  July (1)
      • A song made for early Spanish 1
    •  June (9)
      • Proficiency & tacos
      • Proficiency levels shouldn't be a secret
      • Flipbook illustration
      • Ethics in the language class - we aren't their parents
      • Activity #5: Gira la botella
      • Symbol Illustration
      • Connecting your classroom
      • Myth #5: The textbook is all I need
      • Taking paperless to the blog
    •  May (2)
      • Combat the 'este tiempo' monster
      • Children's DVD giveaway!
    •  April (6)
      • Activity #4: Drama Inmóvil
      • Myth #4: The Time Whine
      • Have you used PhotoPeach?
      • The myths aren't going to ACTFL
      • Fun activity #3: ¡Arriésgate!
      • Fun activity #2: A conversar
    •  March (3)
      • Dismantling Myths 2 and 3: Learning about language and its cousin, Grammatical Terms
      • Activity 1: Cuento poco a poco
      • (Trying to) Make learning fun
    •  February (10)
      • Two new options for out-of-class fluency
      • Great resource from la Sra. Birch
      • Dismantling Myth #1: What's a qualified teacher?
      • Keep singing: 189 pages of Spanish lyrics
      • #Charlando para aprender
      • Vote for this week's #langchat topic
      • It's time for them to use their time
      • For tonight's #langchat: A game for description
      • Short listening activity tailor-made for beginners
      • Ciudad de las bestias: Guides public & streamlined
    •  January (11)
      • Instead of the vocab quiz
      • Best songs for stem changing irreg. present
      • Do something drastic - kick the vocab quiz
      • Topic for #LangChat 1/27
      • Topic for the first #LangChat 1/20
      • Low-level learners can't understand authentic media, what?
      • They can't speak, and it's our fault: Dismantling the myths
      • Don't teach a health unit without this song
      • New: A language teachers' weekly chat on Twitter - choose our first topic!
      • Since I stopped teaching to the [AP] test
      • Faith and Culture: help me decide our AP topic
  •  2010 (38)
    •  December (4)
      • 9 ways to increase students' TL use
      • I love collaboration
      • The problem with translation (from a student)
      • Why music is more powerful than anything (& how to use it)
    •  November (2)
      • iPad giveaway!
      • A collaborative project for our Spanish-teacher PLN
    •  October (2)
      • And the winner is...
      • In the spirit of open source: Ciudad de las bestias
    •  September (10)
      • Books recommended as 'easy'
      • Pure present tense & at least 22 repetitions of 'ya no'
      • For a conference attendee: resources in math
      • Searching BBC Mundo
      • Prompts with Power: writing/speaking prompts
      • Prompts with Power: Prezi
      • Prompts with Power: German & French resources
      • Prompts with Power: Dating in high school
      • KWLA Presentation: PLN-ology
      • Tweet with double objects
    •  August (6)
      • Interactive comic creator using Maya & Miguel
      • Ads of the World | Creative Advertising Archive & Community
      • Added some great new links
      • First 12 days of Spanish 1
      • My supply list
      • Scope & sequence, word list for Spanish 1
    •  July (4)
      • 5 tips for increasing (your own) target language use
      • A warm-up from @samocamila: por vs. para
      • Camila's all on board! (well, on Twitter)
      • Getting vocabulary from a tweet
    •  April (3)
      • Huge toy giveaway from SpanglishBaby
      • A case for avoiding "pet" grammar
      • Authentic audio with future tense
    •  March (2)
      • Interesting blog post about iPod as language lab
      • News article: appeal + subjunctive for influence
    •  January (5)
      • A high-interest exercise for imperfect/pasado continuo
      • A song with 17 verbs in past subjunctive
      • My corporate Spanish links, all in one place
      • "Adora la Exploradora"-the week we didn't feel like a boring past-tense review
      • My level 1 and 2 stories (for Bethanie, and whomever else)
  •  2009 (80)
    •  December (2)
      • A song with 37 repetitions of "más que"
      • Switch to a communicative set-up
    •  November (10)
      • Print & audio sources for AP synthesis essay re: efficient energy
      • Two songs for voy + a + infinitive
      • A case for free-topic blogging
      • It's 19 de noviembre!
      • Camila's new single: "Mientes" (release date 11/24!)
      • A case for pleasure reading
      • Noviembre - a popular month for songs
      • Zachary Jones's "Clozeline"
      • Two songs + resources for Ojalá + subjunctive
      • A song just for @mamitati
    •  October (13)
      • You can't buy this in a textbook
      • Cultural connections: Four songs to explore using Google Earth
      • David Bisbal's YouTube channel
      • Correction on Pin Pon in Shrek
      • Four songs for contrasting que & lo que
      • Nominados en la 10a entrega de los Latin Grammy
      • Story and songs for subjunctive: indefinite/negative antecedent
      • AP sythesis essay sources: Los indocumentados y el sistema de salud
      • Blog that does what I do, only better
      • My October playlist
      • We must not ignore the Paz Sin Fronteras (video)
      • Build your perfect tenis (en español)
      • Video with por, haber, past participles, commands, from Coca Cola
    •  September (10)
      • Latin Grammy website gets a cool makeover... and nominations!
      • Songs for the elusive 3rd pers. sing. preterite
      • I just made my first Yodio
      • KWLA Fall 09 Conference presentation
      • Found Juanes on Twitter
      • For you French teachers
      • Bilingual toy giveaway, gracias a @mamitati
      • Keeping your eyes open for gold nuggets
      • CNN launches Latino in America
      • Bob Esponja on Mundonick
    •  August (4)
      • A correction on the correction of La Frase Tonta
      • I am in technology heaven
      • An AP oral presentation, with past tense: "Consecuencias"
      • I love crossover songs
    •  July (2)
      • Raimundo, the bilingual Latin American snail
      • A song for object/refl pronoun 'te'
    •  June (6)
      • A song for your hip-hop fans
      • Developing world citizens
      • Follow me on Twitter
      • Aquí Estoy Yo: video oficial
      • A new group on my radar
      • Two months later, back to the blogosphere (with a companion)
    •  April (5)
      • A most fantastic performance at Premio Lo Nuestro
      • The heroes speak Español
      • A brilliant pair of songs contrasting por/para
      • Useless grammar I used to teach
      • Adding some links--check 'em out
    •  March (7)
      • Negative commands + culture
      • Winds of change
      • Our students aren't the only ones who have speaking problems!
      • Activity: News interaction (present perfect)
      • A new smash hit with a subjunctive benefit
      • A shout out for Jacob & Joshua
      • El campesino y la princesa (a Spanish 3 story test, with a bit of subjunctive)
    •  February (15)
      • More interactive websites, courtesy of my students
      • A product I love
      • Good stories for commands
      • a story for imperf. vs. pret. and subjunctive influence
      • Interactive websites: practicing house/location/color vocab
      • Subjunctive for doubt: Story, song, activity
      • A good story for 'tiene'
      • A song for subjunctive/nosotros commands
      • A story for demonstratives
      • Rules in a communicative class
      • Cause and effect
      • Relating everything to English
      • A correction on La Frase Tonta
      • Equipping and informing, for free
      • A project based on motivation
    •  January (6)
      • "How much is estuvo de pie?"
      • One more song for subjunctive
      • A couple more subjunctive songs
      • An example of vocab
      • Internet scavenger hunts
      • A Spanish 2 story test
  •  2008 (51)
    •  December (7)
      • Videos from Jesús Adrian Romero
      • Alex Campos's YouTube channel
      • A story test
      • A video for Navidad
      • Great new song for subjunctive
      • ¡Nueva música!
      • A fantastic blog post
    •  November (14)
      • Ever heard of Patito feo?
      • Two groups you just can't go wrong with
      • Things to be thankful for
      • Grammar learning vs. acquisition
      • Forced to give grammar tests?
      • High aptitude is a beautiful thing
      • Another Spanish 1 reading
      • New media list!
      • At the ACSI conference in Dayton
      • Story success: Huevos verdes con jamón
      • Another story source!
      • Words we don't use
      • Song success: Hace tiempo
      • El carro de sus sueños
    •  October (12)
      • Overgeneralizing, again
      • Spanish 2 Story: La llama se llama...
      • Song success: Me voy
      • Not posting lately
      • overgeneralizing
      • The outcome of Pin Pon
      • Pin Pon in Shrek?
      • Best practices
      • Reading in Spanish 3
      • SCORE!
      • My media list
      • Awesome YouTube video
    •  September (18)
      • KWLA '08: Assessing comprehension without English
      • Song success: La llave de mi corazón
      • Spanish 1 Story: Insectos grises para el almuerzo
      • Finding stories
      • How do I find the music?
      • Modeling the billingual lexicon
      • Summaries of some classroom SLA articles
      • Love/Hate Krashen
      • Another article that rocked my world
      • More sunshine
      • When it's not all coming up roses
      • What on earth is going on here?
      • So, what are the cuentos?
      • The verdict on pop test 1
      • People I love
      • A pop test
      • Some assumptions
      • Starting to share my journey

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