To Start A Book Club?

As busy English majors, it can be overwhelming to think of the exhaustive list of literary classics that we feel we must read. And each year, new books are released that capture the attention of the literary world and seem to only make that list even longer. When selecting books to read outside of class, where do we begin? And without the guidance of literary experts (our professors), will we be doing it wrong?

To alleviate these problems, our chapter has decided to start a book club. As a group, students can read a selected book, then discuss it in a book club meeting. After a vote, STD members chose a diverse group of eight books to read together during the 2010-2011 school year, including classics such as Lolita, Wuthering Heights, and Pride and Prejudice, contemporary favorites such as The Kite Runner and The Alchemist, the poetry collection The Stranger Manual, and one young adult novel, Shiver.


The first book club selection is this year's Sigma Tau Delta Common Reader, Lorene Carey's Black Ice.

A tentative schedule of the reading order and due dates:

1. Black Ice by Lorene Cary - Sept. 8th
2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - October 13th
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini - November 12th
4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - December 3rd
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - February 9th
6. The Stranger Manual by Catie Rosemurgy - March 16th*
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - April 15th
8. Shiver by - April 29th*
*date has been changed

To Manage 125 Teachers?

This summer, I have had the ultimate lesson in classroom management--managing 125 teachers at my internship with the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Each week, for five weeks, 25 new teachers have joined me and the seminar leaders at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey for a six-day residential program, in which they earn 45 professional development hours. One of the greatest aspects of the internship is meeting all of these Humanities teachers from throughout the state of New Jersey and asking them questions about teaching, texts they use in their classrooms, and methods of teaching. I am a sponge. Since I will be student teaching this semester, I have been using the opportunity to learn as much as I can.

The five seminar topics are as follows:

1. Race in American History and Culture: New Perspectives
2. Poverty, Affluence, and the American Dream
3. America and the Politics of the World's Religions
4. Narratives of Immigration: Latino/a Lives
5. Adolescent and Young Adult Literature

Needless to say, as a future English teacher, I am looking forward to the final seminar the most. However, all of the seminars have been eye-opening experiences, which have allowed me to learn how to connec these topics back to the classroom. If anyone is interested in professional development, I would highly recommend these seminars.

The above picture is from a field trip the Week 4 group took to the Seabrook Educational-Cultural Center to learn about New Jersey's role in immigration.

~Kristen C.