NZ Authors James Russell, Dawn McMillan and Janet Martin

Yesterday I went to the Dorothy Butler Bookshop in Ponsonby to meet James Russell, a New Zealand author of the Dragon Brothers books. He did a reading from his first novel and demonstrated the augmented reality on the maps in his books with his ipad. As we talked I found out he is in the middle of promoting his books and is doing school tours, so I have emailed him about dates for coming to our school. 

Dragon Brothers Books

New Zealand authors are amazing because they are so accessible to schools. Last year I organised for Janet Martin and partner to come in as part of our Book Week. They had puppets and sang songs from their books. I thought they were best suited to the junior school, but surprisingly the seniors enjoyed them too. It just shows the power of a good story and song, and a real life performance. 

Janet Martin's website

Last year during the same book week I made an experiential book walk which read Dawn Macmillan's story Colour the Stars. Ash had printed out the story on huge pieces of paper and each page had a station to experience alongside the words. 

The heater was to experience the feeling of the colour yellow.

What green feels like.

Bubbles were the stars bursting from the sky.

The stars are as abundant as the grains of sand.

I emailed the pictures of the Book Walk to Dawn McMillan and she said she would love to skype us. I only just got around to organising that meeting this year, so Room 12 were lucky enough to have an interview and book reading from her. She was amazing, and as an ex teacher built fantastic rapport with my students. 

We love authors in Aotearoa!

Why Our Futures Depend on Reading - Neil Gaiman

Neil Gainman - The Future of Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming

An article from 2013, these words still ring very true for our modern world.

Thoughts from Neil to ponder

• There is research that shows strong correlation between how many prison cells will be needed 15 years in the future and what percentage of 10 and 11 year olds who can't read.
• Reading "forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going (grit and perseverance to see what happens next and how the book ends!)
• "Words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far."
• Don't be a book snob and take out from the collection what you think is not 'good' for children. Your book taste is going to be different from others and that's ok. 
• "You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed."
• You learn that "The world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different."
• "Libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information."
• Librarians help people source the right information. They are also places you can still legally borrow books for free. 
• "We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different." 
• "Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Where to next

I am obviously a lover of all things to do with books and reading and I promote it constantly to my class and the school through Whanau Time presentations. I am a huge believer in reading for pleasure. What better way to spend twenty minutes, or half a day!

• Words and new ideas build empathy and understanding that we are not all the same. This builds tolerance to people in the world around us and those in our daily lives. 
• I absolutely love this quote: "You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well". This is an important life skill to know, that some adults haven't quite got the hang of.
• I like his ideas about obligations to daydream, and it's easy to do this through reading a story or being read to. I love all the Kickstarter type websites out there, because they are full of people who have dreamed big dreams of something new, probably combined with some STEM skills. Books give us ideas about how we can create something new.
• Libraries are centres of literacy. 

Keeping Ourselves Safe manual

Our school is running the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme (Te Whiwhi Awhina) currently and I have read the manual on this topic. It contains some pretty heavy material, especially as my class as a whole seem quite young and innocent in general. There has been a lot of giggling and embarrassment due to new concepts being taught. We all had a great laugh together when saying all the names for the body parts including penis, vagina, testicles and breasts!

It can be heavy to speak about these topics with your class, but as the statistics are so shocking with 1 in 3 girls having experienced sexual abuse by the time they are 18, it is a very relevant topic to be talking about. Those statistics probably mean that it could be a current situation for some of the girls in my class, or will very likely happen to others in the future. Terrifying stuff! So despite it being a big topic I believe it is so important to give words to these things, so that students have a voice and a choice of being heard if something like this does ever happen to them.

Libraries vs. MLE's

Article by Mark Osbourne - Modern Learning Environments and Libraries
Pages 7-8

In reading this article by Mark Osbourne from SLANZA's magazine Connected Issue 12 I have a few responses. Mark is a passionate advocate of libraries, even though his school Albany Senior High is the epitome of a modern learning environment.

He notes that traditional schooling was all about separation into separate desks, classrooms etc. Compare that to today's vision of connectedness and collaboration, and our buildings have not caught up to the modern vision. He notes that the vision of the New Zealand curriculum states that “young people who will be confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners.”

Mark wonders about the future of the library and comes up with 4 answers to keeping it relevant:

• The service centre  which teaches information literacy, digital citizenship, communication and research skills etc. 
• The gallery which showcases students work and creations
• The community space held for meetings and events etc.
• The Storehouse for artefacts and expensive resources.

I agree with Mark that all of these things, but find that he misses the point about a space just for books, relaxing, and reading for enjoyment and pleasure.

Sure, students are connected in new ways to more amounts of literature than ever before, but that doesn't discount a hard copy of a book. Reading from a device and reading a real book are two different experiences. I think browsing a bookshelf will bring a lot more interest than browsing an online shelf. 

I also believe that MLE's are for collaborating and working, whereas libraries can be for reading for pleasure. Libraries are all about literacy. We as humans have created a space for the love of reading! I think this is amazing and says a lot about us as people. I believe that there is still space in education and for both MLE's and libraries to work alongside each other in perfect harmony.