Tag Archives: reading

The Unlearned Lesson of Untold Lessons⤴

from

Untold Lessons (Tornare dal bosco literally Returning from the Woods. The US title is Dear Teacher)
by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet:
Hardback: September 12, 2024
Paperback: July 3, 2025
Pushkin Press


In the beginning it was the title. What exactly is an untold lesson? 


Synopsis: The novel opens with a striking premise: a teacher named Silvia disappears into the woods after the shocking news of a favourite student's death. As the mystery of her disappearance takes hold in her small Italian village, the narrative delves into Silvia's past, the speculative theories of the villagers, and the impact of her absence on the community. The story delves into the psyche of a teacher and how a tragic event related to a student impacts her, potentially offering insights into the emotional and psychological toll of the profession and the relationships formed within it.

Whose Untold Lesson?

The book sat for over a week in my bedside pile. The ambiguity of the title didn't just puzzle me, it got under my skin. It was like one of those itches that you just can't stop scratching at. Whose "untold lessons"? Were they intended for the characters to give or receive, or intended solely for the reader? And if the lesson goes untold, can it even be considered a lesson at all? who didn't tell it; who didn't learn it? All these questions, and I hadn't even reached the first page. When I finally started, I prepared myself for the big reveal. I read, and waited. And it didn't happen. Which of course makes absolute sense because it's untold. It was only afterwards that I learned how this lesson actually unfolds. It emerges gradually with nuance and subtlety through the reading experience and long after the final page. Untold Lessons is a profoundly haunting meditation on loss.

Echoes of the Unlearned 

The novel is inspired by the tragically real events that happened more than fifty years ago, originating from the author's own family history and community lore. Vaglio Tanet pieced the story together from scattered allusions, fragments, and then corroborated details by finding old newspaper articles, and although she hasn't publicly named the specific individuals or provided all the granular details of the true event (likely to maintain the privacy of those involved and allow for fictional interpretation), the core elements are derived from this historical incident. 

Vaglio Tanet has emphasized that she wasn't writing a journalistic account, but rather using these real fragments as a foundation to explore the novel's deeper themes of guilt and responsibility, compassion and self-acceptance, and community and the human psyche in the face of tragedy. It is perhaps for this reason that the novel deliberately avoids imagining the crucial moment of the student's death, focusing instead on the aftermath and its ripple effects. 

This basis is not merely historical fact. It has the effect of making the novel's story seem less like a telling than a retelling. It is as if the real event were the first occurrence, the fall, and the literary event, a repetition of that cataclysm. The fact that the author felt compelled to revisit and re-imagine an event from her own past, that perhaps the community (and humanity) has still not fully processed or learned from, lends significant weight to the idea that we are not so much dealing with an untold lesson so much as an unlearned lesson. 

We are often told in the face of tragedy that lessons have, or will be learned. It's often the first platitude out of a politician’s mouth. But if the logic of this interpretation holds true, it's only a matter of time for the lesson to happen again. The persistent lesson in the novel is that the untold all too easily becomes the unlearned. Is it really our collective fate to learn nothing?


Growing up with Franz Kafka⤴

from

Which book has the best opening lines?

When I started as an apprentice electrician, I hadn't read anything literary. The only book that I remember us reading at school was Clive King's Stig of the Dump. A year later, when we were fifteen and knew everything, we almost read John Christopher's brilliant sci-fi novel of environmental catastrophe The Death of Grass. But we stopped after a couple of chapters because the class hated it. We did West Side Story instead. I guess that might have been because it was the east-end of Glasgow, and our English English teacher thought we'd be able relate to violent gang fights. The experience made three lasting impressions: 
  • firstly that I hated English teachers;
  • secondly, that the idea of relevance was a repugnant one - and thirdly,
  • a lifelong and totally unjustified hatred of poor old Lenny Bernstein's music.

When I started as an apprentice, the EETPU shop-steward told me that I should be reading Camus and Kafka. He wasn't the sort of person who suggested things, so at the end of my 39-hour week and with my newfound wealth of £38.17 minus travel expenses, minus the pocket money that I was told that I had to give my younger brother, minus my mum's dig money, minus money to buy tools, I managed to put a little aside to buy Albert Camus' The Outsider at the end of the first month and Franz Kafka's The Trial at the end of the next. I bought both books from that great Glaswegian institution of John Smith and Sons on St. Vincent Street. It's long gone now, of course, but it became part of my life after that first visit. And even though it's gone, it still is.

The question at the top of this post was asked by Laura Hackett in The Times newspaper's Culture newsletter. Paraphrasing Tolstoy, Ms. Hackett observes that books with great opening lines are all uniquely different. For my part the choice was straightforward.  It was either 

Camus' Outsider:

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday. The telegram didn't say.

or,

Kafka's Trial:

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.


Twenty years later, when I left Glasgow City Council's employ, that same shop steward wrote The Outsider's opening lines in my going away card. The ones I've automatically signed tend to contain nothing better than façile "good luck" wishes. No-one, in my experience, really wants to tell the truth. But after all that time, he'd remembered. And it seemed like perhaps in buying those books at his "suggestion" that that had mattered something to him. I hadn't known that. The Camus book has been lost along the way, but I still have the Kafka. It's been with me my whole adult life. Strange things books.

In the end, it had to be the Kafka. Nothing was quite the same after both books. But it had to be the Kafka.

I replied to Ms. Hackett, and was chuffed to see it selected the following week:


Community readers – The most magnificent thing⤴

from @ Glowing Posts

This blog was active until 2022. It is a great example of a project blog:

This blog records the fantastic reading work which takes place at Kirkhill Primary School and Dechmont Infant School. We love to read and encourage all our families to read and share books for enjoyment as much as possible. While our access to books and ability to share books has been limited over the last eighteen months we have found new ways to celebrate reading.

Community readers – The most magnificent thing | Kirkhill Reads/ Dechmont reads

The blog consists of posts containing videos of different people from the school community reading different books. What a great idea.

Making the most of Microsoft Lens to support learning and teaching⤴

from

Microsoft Office Lens (or Office Lens, or Microsoft Lens) is a versatile digital tool which can be helpful in many situations in an educational context. A teacher may wish to quickly grab the text from a page of a printed document to edit, to annotate and to share with a class. Office Lens can do …

Why you should start a reading habit.⤴

from

“Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching”

I love reading.

I believe that it makes me a better teacher and that it could make you a better teacher too. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a better teacher and to learn something every single day. It is what we want for our school children so why should we stop when we are an adult. Henry Ford once said “Anyone who stops learning is old whether at twenty or eighty. Any one who keeps learning stays young” and I want to stay young that’s for sure so if Mr Ford is right I’m going to read every day.

I didn’t always read. Not because I wasn’t able to but I told myself the famous old excuses, the same excuses that our students will give us:

‘I read too slow’

‘The book is far too long’

‘I don’t have the time’

‘Books are boring’

Do these sound familiar? I bet you have used one of them at some point. We all have.

Reading is highly enjoyable, informative, thought provoking, it can clarify thoughts that have been swimming around your head and bring new perspectives that you may never have had. As teachers, of some subjects more than others, we wax lyrical about the benefits of reading to our students who just aren’t interested. We must, however, ensure that we have a love for reading and that we have built a reading habit. This will allow us to model to students our good habits and share with them our joy of reading.

If you already read then please share your successes with others. Tell them about the books you read and what you are learning. How it is shaping your mind and your life. It will amaze you what comes back and how people love to share what they have read also.

If you don’t regularly read I implore you to start. It doesn’t have to be non-fiction or books about education (although I’d love to share my learning with you if you want to chat about it). We can learn so much from fiction as the characters and their personalities came from somewhere right?

So why should you start or have a reading habit? Why don’t we start with this study published in Neurology in 2013. The researchers demonstrated that reading can slow the cognitive agin process as when your mind is engaged in intense mental activity (reading a new book) it does better. You could compare it to working hard in the gym the more you train the stronger you become. Books are like protein shakes for the brain!

In short: Read. Use your Brain. Be better.

The biggest excuse for most of the adult population is that of time. Consider this, if you read only 10 pages per day you would read 3650 pages per year. This equates to 18 200 page books. Imagine the knowledge you could gain in one year from simply reading 10 pages per day. It’s not that much is it?

Here are some tips on how you could easily make reading a habit in your daily life:

  • Set a time. You could read while having breakfast. Read while using the toilet. Read after dinner. Read before you sleep (we have all heard about not having technology in the bedroom but books are encouraged!!) If you read at all those times for 10 minutes that would be 40 minutes a day (roughly), plenty time for you to get your 10 pages done.
  • Have a set place. Some places are just full of distraction so to give it your full attention I’d recommend having a quiet place at work or at home. If you don’t have one make one, it is worth it.
  • Always carry a book. I listened to a podcast with Ryan Holiday (a brilliant author) and he spoke of always carrying a book with you so I have started doing this. In a queue, read your book. At your Childs gymnastic class, read a book. Waiting at the airport, read a book. Waiting in line at Starbucks, read a book. You get the gist.
  • Instead of watching the news use that time to read a book. The news is bad for you according to this post in the Guardian quite a few years ago. The news is full of hyperbole and negativity. It fuels your negativity bias and encourages people to post on social media about the catastrophe and drama it promotes. How often does the news share good and great stories about the many amazing people in the world? Instead use that time to read a book. Instead of a newspaper, read a book on the science of how we learn. Wouldn’t that be much better for your students and children?
  • If you have children read to them every single day. Reading books to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It develops their language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word. Do I need to say more?
  • Have a reading hour. Further to having a set time you could adopt a reading hour. Many personal development advocates like Tony Robbins, Robin Sharma, Hal Elrod etc etc. All advocate a power hour of learning. Adopt it and read as much as you can. The more you learn the more you grow and the more you know the more you realise you don’t know. So you learn some more. Isn’t that just magic?
  • Start or join a book club. Sharing and collaborating is one of the great joys of life (in my humble opinion) so reading with an aim to share is a great way to build reading into your life as it will make you want to do it and contribute to the discussion. Being a part of. book club helps with decreasing the stress of reading as you are ‘in it together’, encourages you to finish books, allows you to gain new perspectives as everyone will understand t=it differently and it has also been shown to boost teamwork skills!

I hope this post helps you foster a love of reading. It really has moved my thinking forward and I feel confident when offering my thoughts and opinions as I have worked through them in the books that I read.

Happy reading!

 

 

Reading this week…13th January⤴

from

The first piece is by Mark Ensor, and it’s about parts of teaching which are not seen, but happen all the time in a reflective classroom. The piece discusses lesson observations at one point. I’ve had a few of those and I wouldn’t rate them highly as something that has improved my teaching. The things that have improved my teaching are reading websites, tweets and books, high quality training and casual observations and chat with the wonderful folk I’ve been lucky enough to work with.

Here is teacherhead revisiting Dylan Wiliam’s formative assessment strategies. When I’ve heard or read Dylan, it is a good reminder that his key principles of formative assessment have become many things to many people. He doesn’t think all of them are a good fit with his initial ideas.

If you’re wanting some podcasts for the new year based on education Third Space has this list.

I’m very interested in the use of retrieval practice to secure pupil learning and I’m always looking for ways to use it in class. Here is one teacher’s ideas.

And here are some more ideas of how we can use recall in class.

A simple sketchnote to help develop depth in questioning from Impact Wales. And another one.

Day 24 of 365

Gordon McKinlay

Day 24 of 365

Doorway Online Interactive and Accessible Learning⤴

from

Doorway Online Interactive and Accessible Learning – http://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/– an array of free online teaching resources which can be used by early learners independently or as classroom activities led by a teacher on an interactive whiteboard.

These support learning and teaching in literacy (letter and number formation, first sounds, first words, first blends, spelling using look, say, cover, write and check), numeracy (odd and even, counting to 10, number table, number sequencing, station of the times tables, addition and subtraction to 10 and to 100, telling the time, and handling money), touch-typing games to learn keyboarding skills, and matching and memory games.

Each activity has a range of accessibility (whether keyboard-only users, mouse-only users and switch users) and a range of difficulty options.

 

Reading blog⤴

from @ EdCompBlog

We are in the process of setting up reading groups on the Goodreads website to use with pupils in our school. The idea is to set up reading groups, share reading lists and get children to write and publish reviews.

Sample Poster
Sample Poster
I thought it would be interesting to tie Goodreads into another school initiative - the "Currently reading" posters. All members of staff are encouraged to update a poster and display it on their door to show what they are currently reading. It's part of a campaign to create a culture of reading in the school.

I wanted to combine the posters with Goodreads. Rather than just show what I'm currently reading, I could link to Goodreads which tracks my progress, lets me publish a review when I am finished and records which books I've completed so far this year. Or at least, that was the plan...

The trick was to share links to specific sections of Goodreads. The best way I could find was to use the widgets provided by Goodreads to place the details in a blog and then share the blog posts.

The result: Mr Muir's Reading Blog. Only a few posts so far but a couple of key sections are:
Put some QR codes on the poster to link to the relevant sections and job done. At least, job done assuming anybody bothers to scan the QR codes and read the blog. 

What do you think? Daft idea? Vaguely interesting? Please leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or suggestions.