Category: Teaching

The #20BooksofSummerChallenge Wrap-up

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

Fall has officially descended here upon Southern Germany and I am happy to report that while I did not complete 20 books in 3 months, I did reach my personal goal of 10 before September 3rd.

My last three books were all super excellent!

#8 Running Home a memoir by Katie Arnold

I enjoyed this story a great deal. I don’t think you have to be a runner to enjoy it. Katie Arnold was the Leadville 100 champion last year and is in her mid-40’s, so I find her to be particularly inspiring as I deal with the declines of my 40s. But her memoir is about dealing with grief from the loss of her father, combined with new revelations about her childhood as well as postpartum difficulties from having a baby at the same time:  a perfect storm of mental health attacks. And it’s about how running, and time, and love and support saved her.

#9 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I thought this was an excellent summer read! The story is about the time 15 years after the collapse of civilization and a band of musicians and actors that travel to survivors camps and towns to perform Shakespeare and play symphonies. The narrative jumps to that present time and back to the day or two before the collapse began with a wildly contagious flu. The main characters are expertly interwoven in their pre and post-collapse connections. While this book was a lot of fun to read, it was also a time for solemn reflection about what we will shortly face and what life might look like.

#10 The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Wow, this story is incredible. The level of neglect Walls and her siblings endured is eye-popping and hard to believe. Because you never doubt that her parents love her and her siblings. But the way they conducted themselves is purely criminal. However, if they had been caught, the children would have been split up and maybe this would not have a happy ending. At the same time, this book is a celebration of the American spirit. You do not have to be a product of where you came from in our country. You can still make your own way. Or at least, they were able to at the time and this story is inspiring as a result.

Now we’re back full-on in school mode and I’m reading several books for school and myself. For me, I’m reading I Have the Right to Destroy Myself which is more depressing Korean fiction and I’m reading Training for the Uphill Athlete. For school, I’m reading Things Fall Apart (for IB English) and Challenger Deep (for Middle School). According to Goodreads.com, I’m way behind on my annual goal of 30 books. I’ve only read 17. So we’ll see.

Happy reading!

Books 6 and 7 of the #20booksofsummerchallenge and a birthday book haul

~ erinhenkels ~ 1 Comment

Book number 6 ended up being something that wasn’t on my original list and the next few after #7 are going to the be the same since I got a stack of books for my birthday.

IMG_5504

#6 Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer

I saw this book on our shelf at home, left behind from our renters. I just picked it up and started and it was a quick-read to the end. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to read this. I’m already a vegetarian. I already know how horrific factory farming and animal-for-consumption-slaughter is. I’ve avoided fish even longer, realizing the damage we are doing to the ocean is a travesty. So, I’m not on the fence in need of further convincing. But what this book did give me is more data and reasoning behind my arguments. Not that I go around proselytizing. Quite the opposite–people attack me when they learn I’m vegetarian and I often find myself on the defensive these days. Because as soon as someone asks me “why?” then with my answers they automatically assume I must be judging them. I try to avoid these conversations because these decisions are moral and ethically motivated, so I don’t know how to respond without people feeling like I’m the one doing the attacking. But Foer makes a good point in that it’s not enough that I don’t eat meat. I should lean into these conversations and I think this book has given me some good ways to do that.

#7 Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

At first I was a bit skeptical about this book. It’s a re-telling of The Tempest and at first I thought that the main character directing The Tempest was just a little too much–too beating me over the head with it. BUT, I came to adore this story even long before the brilliantly clever ending. As the narrative points out, The Tempest itself is like a play within a play. And so this re-telling makes it a *Tempest* within a *Tempest* within a *Tempest*, as the themes and narrative are played out at multiple levels. At the same time, the theme of imprisonment in the actual play is re-told in an actual prison and so the level of further understanding one gains from the original play becomes so much more rich.

I loved the characters in this novel and the wry tone. I adored it that the prisoners were only allowed to use Shakespearean insults as their curse words. Insults ends up being one of my favorite lessons with students and so these parts were particularly entertaining. I loved Felix, the main character, and the magic he wove both with his drama program and with his revenge in making his enemies live The Tempest. This was so clever. I cannot wait to read this book again with students. As someone who loves Shakespeare, this re-telling was so special to me.

A little haul:

IMG_5503

For my 40th birthday, I had margaritas and then spent a good hour or so in the Boulder Bookstore. I also ordered a couple of books I had an eye on. So, my next current reads are Running Home by Katie Arnold and Training for the Uphill Athlete. 

It’s looking like maybe with my goal of 10 I was being a little too easy on myself this summer. Perhaps I can do more? I have well over a month to go….

Books #4 and #5 of the #20booksofsummerchallenge

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

4. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

I really enjoyed this play and I’m excited to teach it next year. I love commentary on Victorian society and thought this play was hilarious and witty. There are so many zingers and excellent one-liners. I think it will be very fun to have students read parts aloud in their most affected Judy Dench accent.

5. The Fault in our Stars by John Green

I might be the last YA lit reader on planet Earth to have read this, but I’m glad I finally did. There are so many beautiful, poignant and honest observations about life as these terminally ill teenagers try to make sense of it all. Of course it’s sad. Yes, it’s heartbreaking. But it is truly beautiful and stands out in ways that other simply sad books can’t touch. I’m a better person for having read it and what it’s given me. IMG_5450

Book Review: Sula by Toni Morrison (#3 of the #20booksofsummerchallenge)

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

IMG_5446

It was so nice to revisit Toni Morrison. It has been a lot of years since I read one of her novels. I really liked the scope of this novel about a poor black community in an Ohio town, mostly during a 20 year span from 1920 to 1941 and with a check in in 1965. I’ve not taught a Morrison before, but I think this one would be excellent for the advanced literature classroom of upper school grades.

I loved how the character Shadrack’s mental illness and PTSD framed the story and led to town tragedy, and I appreciated the realness of the bickering, jealousy and dogma of the community. I found it true to human nature. I loved the touches of magical realism, too, like the robins that accompany Sula’s return and the deweys.

But of course, I loved Sula the most. She is a woman who doesn’t understand or own shame and refuses to apologize for being a woman and human. What the community took as “evil” people would now call “woke.” The relationship between Nel and Sula is so complex and beautifully imagined–two halves of the same person. Morally, neither better or worse than the other. I really appreciate how Morrison structured this look-in-mirror for one woman who always assumed herself to be “better.”

What I’m still grappling with and sorting through is the parade. The jazz funeral (or at least that’s how I see it) and what compelled people to join it and their real feelings about Sula. I also wondered for some time why narrative was spent on Nel’s childhood journey to New Orleans, but now I think it’s because of Shadrack’s parade, as well as revealing the depth of character of Nel and her mother, Helene Wright. And the passage about Nel’s grandmother is so fraught with symbolism and foreshadowing about both Sula and the tragedy at the tunnel, it makes a re-read of the novel necessary.

In conclusion, Toni Morrison knocks my socks off.

20 Books of Summer begins with 2 of 10 (#1 and #2 in the #20booksofsummerchallenge)

~ erinhenkels ~ 1 Comment

And they are both dramas!

 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry 

We are still in school here in Germany–even though grades and reports are submitted. So, we plow ahead with classes the last weeks of June. This month I read A Raisin in the Sun with my 9th grade IGCSE class. We had time to read and analyze, but not write anything on it. So that’s the plan for when we re-convene in August (IGCSE is a two year program, so I will continue with this group through 10th grade). I love this play. It’s a re-read for me as I both studied it as a high school student and have taught in the past. So, I’ve read it a lot. When I made my challenge list, I forgot that I was also in the middle of teaching. But, I’ve read it in June, so it counts!

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

I quite enjoyed this play, finding it very unlike most comedies I’m familiar with–all the magic and confusion and envisioning the storm at sea and this enchanted island…I mean, I guess there’s elements of Midsummer Night’s Dream and of Twelfth Night. But this was so different in the characters. I found the master-servant relationship theme interesting and multi-layered and also felt like this play, more than any other, dealt quite a lot with forgiveness and righting wrongs. And of course, Miranda says, “How beauteous mankind is. O, brave new world, that has such people in it!”–and being the teacher nerd I am, I also love teaching Brave New World. So there we have it. I’m glad to be able to move on to Hag-Seed now.

So I’m about two-thirds of the way through Sula at this point and am really getting into it. I imagine it will be #3. With grades complete, I think my next books will go much faster!!!

Happy summer reading!

Gemütlichkeit

~ erinhenkels ~ 4 Comments

While I’m pretty terrible at learning languages (a major disadvantage and embarrassment), I still love learning interesting words or phrases or local slang that reveal some gem about a culture. For example, in Ecuador, the Spanish is excellently pronounced and paced, so it’s a great place for people to go to learn Spanish. But, in their slang, they also incorporate many Quechua words when the sound of the word fits the meaning better than the Spanish word. Like, “chuchaqui” (choo-chak-ee)–it means hungover. When you say it out loud, isn’t it so much more apt than “resaca?” I love this.

Back to German: because English is originally Germanic, we have a lot of overlap in vocabulary and some constructions. But there are also German words for which there is no direct English translation. We can explain the meaning of the word, but we don’t have one word that means the same. This brings me to my personal favorite:

img_4926

Gemütlichkeit. It’s a word you sing a lot during festivals. You hear this maybe every half hour at Oktoberfest. The song goes, “ein prosit, ein prosit, Gemütlichkeit…” and this is repeated again before you then cheers three times. It means, a toast, a toast, this feeling of warmth, camaraderie and acceptance, here at this table in this cozy place–all of us, all together, where we belong. Isn’t that beautiful? Doesn’t it give you warm fuzzies?

It’s a word that I’ve needed for those times when we’ve been outside skiing and we go into a mountain hütte. There’s a fire on, and people are gathered around wood tables. The light is beautiful and the food is delicious and satisfying. Everyone is smiling, and there is no where else in the world you’d rather be.

In German, I think there is a word for this feeling because this very particular feeling and experience is highly valued. It is a priority to share a drink regularly with your friends in a cozy place and to bask in that warmth. At least this seems to be so in the South of Germany where we live. It seems a part of mountain culture here, which extends through Austria and into Northern Italy: Tyrolean. I think many mountain cultures all around the world share this particular value. It was true in Japan though expressed and felt a little differently, and it is true in Colorado. Through this word, I learn a little more about myself. It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I love the mountains. But it’s not just the natural beauty and the activities that draw me there. It’s also the Gemütlichkeit.

 

Welcome

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

Here we are–out there. Beyond.

Beyond because this life has become more than a let’s-try-it-and-see. That we change so much, so drastically, so often, has become the normal. We adapt to adapting. Here, 12 years and 4 countries into living and teaching overseas, I am at a point and age where I feel different. I can look back and identify when, where and how I changed. I can pinpoint the pieces of each culture that I have integrated into myself. I know why I hang dearly on to those parts of myself that were originally my identity. There is nothing to fear in change and I welcome it.

So part of this is the adapting and changing. Part of this is the things I do and the places I go. Part of this is what drives my life and motivation outside of work.

It’s the books I read. It’s the mountains I run and ski. It’s a new journey into vegetarianism and trying to care about fuelling.

It’s a little bit of everything.