Skip to main content

Podcast Episode 2: LGBTQ Books



In our second episode of English Teachers Chat, Daniel Valentin interviews Dr. Tony Sinanis, author of Hacking Leadership. Together, they discuss some of their favorite LGBTQ books.

Links to all the books discussed:
Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
George by Alex Gino
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Other books mentioned:
Hacking Leadership by Joe Sanfelippo and Tony Sinanis
Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Music from the podcast c/o Kevin MacLead. You kind find more of his royalty free music at incompetech.filmmusic.io/

Daniel Valentin teaches American Wilderness, Ethics, and English 9 at Horace Greeley High School. He is currently reading The Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay and listening to Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. He wants his students to feel empowered through books. Follow him @DaValentinCCSD

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HyperDocs: Creating Ownership Through Exploration

HyperDocs are here, and the potential for student exploration and engagement seems bountiful. But hold up— Before we delve into the potential, what is a HyperDoc? The short answer is: It's a Google Doc with a variety of links that leads to a number of different tasks. Once students receive this doc, they're free to explore it in any order and any pace of their choosing. But to sum up a HyperDoc as a Google Doc with just a bunch of links would be the equivalent of saying Moby Dick  is a book about a whale. To be so reductive is to miss the point. To see a full HyperDoc Click Here Going Beyond the Workshop Model As an ELA teacher, I'm a workshop model kind of guy. Walk into my class at any given moment, and you know what you will see. The first ten minutes? Reading. The next five to ten minutes? Quick Write. Followed by mini-lessons, workshop time and sharing somewhere in-between. It's routine (and never boring). Often times, I map out my work weeks in advan...

Diversify Your Anti-Racist Readings

When I say Anti-Racist books, what do you think? Does you mind go to Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be An Antiracist  or Tiffany Jewell's This Book is Anti-Racist . Great! What else? Anti-Racist texts are topping the charts of every best seller list. Take a look at the New York Times  Combined Print & E-Book Non-Fiction chart for the week of 6/22/20. This is a wonderful first step. Anti-racist texts occupy nine out of the 10 best selling books. But as educators (or even people just reading this random blog post from an ELA teacher in Chappaqua), is that enough?  Short answer: No.  Taking a look at the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction chart for the same week, and you'll see the problem. Anti-racist fiction is largely ignored. This is a problem. It needs fixing. Only two books on here are what I would categorize anti-racist. What's happening to our anti-racist fiction?  1. Are black writers not writing?  2. Are white publishe...

Read This: This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell

There seems to be no shortage of Anti-Racist texts. Whether you're going with How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi or his remixed version of Stamped with Jason Reynolds or the increasingly scrutinized (but I argue, still important) White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, you can find anti-racist texts. But the one anti-racist book you should definitely read? Tiffany Jewell's This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work . This is a book that's circulated on my periphery for some time. I purchased this along with half a dozen other anti-racist texts, but when I received it, I gave it a cursory glance and thought, "looks interesting, but maybe not for my students." I pushed it aside temporarily and figured I would get to it. After hearing Jewell speak at #KidLit4BlackLives , the book immediately moved to the top of my queue.  I  can't stress this enough: this is a book that you need to read. It demands you...