Queer, There and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager and Zoe More O’Ferrall

Full disclosure: I received this book in conjunction with a meet-the-author event at Andrea Swenson’s amazing school library.  And I’m so glad I did because I think every school librarian serving high school students will want a copy of Prager’s chatty collective biography of queer history on their shelves.  Brief as they are, her twenty-two biographical chapters on twenty-three historical figures are intriguing and leave the reader wanting to know more.  Through the brief lives examined, the casual reader will start to grasp the bigger outlines of queer histories.  Prager’s considered and inclusive stance will aid younger readers in exploring multiple perspectives in a world wracked with adversarial and exclusionary politics.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

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Prager, Sarah and Zoe More O’Ferrall.  Queer, There and Everywhere:23 People Who Changed the World.  New York: HarperCollins, 2018.

Interdisciplinary Collaborations-- Hidden Figures

Interdisciplinary Hidden Figures Unit Leadership Team meets at the start of 2018 to co-plan at the Intrepid.

Ms. Chau supervises an NSD student bottle rocket launch after teaching students how to create their own rockets in February.

The books are ready to be distributed to every student at Belmont.

Ms. Ikawa leads "I Have, Who Has... in Ms. Ernyey's Advisory

At the Intrepid, students are challenged to complete simple tasks with gloves on to simulate the challenges faced by astronauts in outer space.

At MoMath in March!

Interdisciplinary Collaborations-- Hidden Figures

At the end of January we kicked off an interdisciplinary collaborative literacy initiative in advisory classes with two language learning activities to prepare students to engage with Hidden FiguresYounger Readers’ Edition.  Our school’s principal purchased a copy of this new paperback for each and every student and we had the fun job of partnering with advisors to distribute these gifts.  Students expressed satisfaction that they would be able to keep the books and were generally eager to begin reading them.

Ms. Ikawa, Speech-Language Pathologist, led students through a round of “I Have… Who Has” first, and then I introduced the terms associated with front matter and back matter.  We walked through the back matter together and concluded with a small competition to see who could utilize the index most efficiently.  Students did not want to stop looking things up at the end of the period.

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Approximately one month later, the unit concluded with hands on learning experiences at the IntrepidMuseum (for placement students) and the National Museum of Mathematics (for detention students.)  We were so consumed with the work at hand--science, literacy, social studies were all involved-- we had little time left over to post, but here are a few photos of the highlights. --Jessica Fenster-Sparber, School Librarian, Belmont