It’s clear to me that times like these – frigid temperatures, fights in Washington, and February flatness — call for help from William Stafford. Why? He is a poet who knows what to do when times are hard. Press on, I think he’d say. He is known for … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.”
Ever since I started reading a history of the United States, I’ve been thinking long and hard about how our past has led to our present. I am reassessing many of my assumptions about our core values. This provocative book is challenging me even further. Wilkerson argues that “Just … Read More
“Nearly five in ten white families and nine in ten black families endured poverty at some point during the Depression.”
Why was the rate of poverty so high for black families in the 1930s? The version of American history that I learned in high school decades ago never explored this question. In fact, I don’t recall learning much at all about laws in the last century that made things worse … Read More
“The inexplicable is all around us. So is the incomprehensible.”
Are you as astonished as I am by the events in Washington this week? During uncertain times like this, I like to reach for the works of the wise poets who are drawn to things that they find inexplicable because they believe that the process of achieving clarity is a … Read More
Best 2020 Book Prescriptions
If 2020 was a great year for you, stop reading. This blog post is not for you. If, however, 2020 presented you with some real challenges, and you are looking for some prescriptions in the form of book recommendations, here we go:
Worst year ever? If you are wondering if … Read More
“We will not succeed in teaching today’s students unless we make a fundamental shift in our thinking: away from preventing distraction and toward cultivating attention.”
While reading James Lang’s newest guidebook for college teachers, I shared one of the ideas with my English 1 students: “Attention is a gift that students and professors give to each other.” I asked them how their teachers cultivate and sustain their attention. I got an earful – and their … Read More
“Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.”
It is easier to blame people for making mistakes than it is to consider the role that policies play in determining outcomes. Ibram X. Kendi writes, “Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy” (28). For example, when my book club discussed of … Read More
“Instructional vitality is an essential part of satisfying and rewarding careers in academe.”
“At the end of my suffering there was a door.”
It’s best to eat chocolate, I think, when reading the strong poetry of Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. She goes for the jugular. Glück is known for her clarity and her interest in the abandoned, the punished and the betrayed. To be successful – … Read More
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
After reading two biographies of Theodore Roosevelt this summer, I was interested in the author of a book that pays homage to him by drawing on his famous 1910 speech for its title and opening chapter. I’ve come to the conclusion that if he were alive today, Teddy Roosevelt and … Read More
“The course of history is unpredictable, as irregular as the weather, as errant as affection, nations rising and falling by whim and chance, battered by violence, corrupted by greed . . .”
“. . . seized by tyrants, raided by rogues, addled by demagogues.” What a wonderful opening sentence! I’m eager to make my way through this 900+ page history of America. At this moment – in the first hours of autumn, in the heat of a presidential election, in a torrent … Read More
“Accept your students with compassion while also holding to the evidence-based truth about race and racism.”
Controlling the tone of difficult conversations is never easy. And yet, it’s especially critical when helping students gain new perspectives on race. Cyndi Kernahan cites research that shows that making students feel blamed or guilty only leads to backlash, not learning or attitude change (5). Rather than being confrontational, … Read More
“It’s one thing to know a lot and to have experienced a lot, but it’s quite another to know how you feel about what you’ve observed and lived.”
We can’t assume that all novelists who create likable characters are likable themselves, but I imagine that Richard Russo is. In this collection of essays, he is warm, funny, and self-deprecating – traits that characterize many of the people in his novels. For example, he tells us about the classmate … Read More
“You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels.”
When this book was published five years ago, Toni Morrison famously predicted that Coates will fill the intellectual void created when James Baldwin died. Now, seeing this book back on bestseller lists made me wonder what Coates thinks of Baldwin’s legacy. In a May 2020 interview, he said that … Read More
“Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite.”
“Feminism Lite” is the idea of conditional female equality, where men believe they are superior but should be expected to “treat women well.” It can be disguised as real feminism when men behave in an equitable way – but believe it’s optional and provisional. You hear it in phrases … Read More