There is so much I want to read but here is what I hope to get through this winter break:
Social Nonsense
Doug Shaw is part of the Applied Improvisation Network I have snuck into. He is a math professor and is hilarious. I took his workshop called okzoomer during the early pivot to DL. I learned a ton. Mainly that zoom has some key ways to engage learners that is going to make synchronous classes engaging.
Songs for the End of the World
No idea what this is but my Aunt Renee (best Aunt ever) has started a family book club and I have to get this read by the end of January.
Reflective Learning
This one was recommended by someone (probably Dr. Carrie Nolan but I am not sure) and it turns out it is out of print. Took a long time to find it and get it and I feel like I cannot ever let it go because it must be very valuable and at the same time I have not read it yet.
Hatchet
This one is with my youngest son. We started it but never finished so now is the time. Classic book about a kid who survives in the wilderness in Canada.
Rebent Sinner
Ivan Coyote gets me in all the feels about being a human. I love all they write and cry when I get to hear their stories. It’s hard to get me in the feels so this is like therapy.
Braiding Sweetgrass
An Indigenous botanist writes short essays. I am half way through this already and am definitely inspired to bridge my discipline with experience. More to come on how much this is meaning to me but this one is helping me reconcile my experience growing up in the lower mainland with scottish parents who were newcomers to Canada with the twenty years I had on Haida Gwaii. How to reconcile those two existences is something I consider most days honestly.
Economics For Everyone
I like this book. I will not read the whole thing but will look up pieces that relate to my classes to hopefully gather some language and story and meaning into my own teaching. Economics can drag you down into the modelling and calculations quickly at the expense of inspiration and connection with the subjects at hand so looking up parts of this book helps me straddle that divide and come back to the meaning of economics for my students.
Finally I am going to get an opportunity to dig into this paper. This year I attended an OER conference (being online allowed me to attend when I could not afford the cost or time in face to face conferences in the past) where Jessie Loyer presented about the land back movement and OER. You know I teach about the factors of production with an emphasis on land because Canada has so much of it and I have a ton of curiosity and a growing support of the Land Back Movement. Do I think economics is going to need to consider land in a more sacred, life affirming context? Yes. Do I know how to consider land in that context for my students? Not yet. Step by step.