Sunday Salon: June 7, 2020

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz runs The Sunday Salon. 

Books read over the past week:   

• Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens

Challenge progress 2020

• Literary Escapes Challenge--This week: 1 state and 0 countries. 18 states and 12 countries total
• Mount TBR Challenge--1 book read this week, 33 books total
• Popsugar reading challenge--0 books read this week, 23 books total
• Social Justice Challenge--0 books read this month, 5 books total
• YA Award Winners--0 books read this week, 7 books total

My life outside books:

Another week of finishing zero books. Well, not quite. I finished the one above, but I'll admit that I skimmed many parts of it. I hope that since school ended this past week that I will have a little more bandwidth for reading. It's funny that I thought a stay-at-home pandemic would mean I'd be reading more. Silly me.

My daughter and I watched an intense movie last night: Queen and Slim. It came out about 6 months ago, but relates to the protests and issues going on the past couple of weeks.

Though the school year has officially finished, I still have a lot going on:

• I am teaching summer school for students who failed American Government during the school year. Normally I teach students who are trying to get ahead in their studies so the change means that I have completely reworked my course. But, what a time to teach Government! The class moves very quickly since we do a semester in 3 weeks so normally there is tons of grading until the end of June. However, I've just learned that I have only 6 students (instead of the usual 70) so that's a relief.
• I am on our school district's Design Team that is working on what school will look like in the Fall. We're meeting 3 to 4 times a week in June and I am guessing it will continue all summer in some fashion.
• I am also on the committee that is creating professional development for our staff. We're creating courses for tech tools and helping to implement a pre-designed program that will help us do better with online teaching.
• Last, but certainly not least, a colleague and I have decided to offer a BAR WE course for our staff starting July 1. BAR WE (Building Anti-Racist White Educators) is a group based in Philadelphia so we're using their materials (plus some of our own) to lead monthly meetings and study groups.

Out of all the horrible, exhausting, wonderful, uplifting, and depressing things from this past week (and there were so many) I have two favorites. I attended our local Black Lives Matter protest last Sunday and was inspired by the community support and the powerful speakers. People actually worked at social distancing and wore masks. My other favorite was the DC Mayor creating the Black Lives Matter Plaza on 16th Avenue and painting the street.