As I look at what I am reading and want to read this summer, it\u2019s kind of all over the place. I\u2019ll be reading about Vermont education, racial justice, and some fiction in the fantasy genre.<\/p>\n

As a new Professional Development Coordinator, I\u2019m trying to get the lay of the land. Even when I lived in Massachusetts (as recently as a few weeks ago), I was aware that Vermont education was unique. The hard truth is that in the rest of the country education reform is dominated by a worrisome blend of privatization, standardized testing, and victim blaming. The Vermont contrast is best drawn by the letter<\/a> from Commissioner of Education Holcombe, which to a progressive educator and education policy hobbyist reads like pure poetry. Now, after experiencing the innovative educators and professional development model of the Middle Grades Institute<\/a>, I\u2019m even more convinced that there\u2019s something special going on here in Vermont. So this summer I\u2019ll be scouring the Vermont Agency of Education website<\/a> along with other resources about Vermont education and personalized learning.<\/p>\n

Lately Twitter has brought to me many articles about another great emerging story\u00a0\u2013 the rise of Ta-Nehisi Coates as a master journalist, truth teller, and increasingly influential public intellectual.\u00a0After savoring his appearances in such places as a feature<\/a> by the New York Times Magazine, an interview<\/a> with Slate, two stories<\/a> on National Public Radio, and a teaser blog post<\/a> in the Atlantic, I\u2019ve ordered his new book Between the World and Me<\/a>. I\u2019m not yet sure how to translate my intentions to be an ally in the fight for racial justice with my new life in the most predominately white state in the union. But I know we each have a role to play and that studying Mr. Coates can only help me figure out mine.<\/p>\n

And finally, to bring a bit of balance, I will be reading some fun fiction. This includes various books filled with fantastical adventure that I will read with my 5- and 3-year-old daughters, such as My Father\u2019s Dragon<\/a>, where a young boy quests to rescue a baby dragon. I just finished The Last Unicorn<\/a>, featuring an immortal protagonist who sheds much light on the human condition, in a way only an immortal can. There\u2019s a parallel between the inevitable triumph of magic and love with the hopefulness found in Vermont\u2019s educational context and the poetry of Coates\u2019 social commentary. I suppose the parallel is unsurprising, since I gravitate to the fantasy genre not just because its stories provide an escape, but also because they offer hard truths alongside hints of paths to a better future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I look at what I am reading and want to read this summer, it\u2019s kind of all over the place. I\u2019ll be reading about Vermont education, racial justice, and some fiction in the fantasy genre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[144,71,219],"class_list":["post-6422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-reading","tag-social-justice","tag-social-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31412,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6422\/revisions\/31412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}