On books, audiobooks, and an anti-racist classroom

Lockdown progress report for June 4-5, 2020

Total words: 631 (though I will write more today)
Manuscript total: 92,630 (about halfway done?)

I’ve been mostly silent these past couple of weeks, out of energy to blog about the coronavirus and the George Floyd protests. Out of energy because I think I’ve been swamped with grief.

It’s just so disheartening, so dystopian. Every little bit of bright news, like the sheriff in Flint, MI, who marched with protesters, seems to be overshadowed by the next piece of bad news, like the 82nd Airborne lining the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as though there is no irony in that scene at all.

But here’s what I’ve been up to.

Empress of Dorsa — Book Progress

I’m back to my daily writing habit, after being thrown off for a week by the emotional rollercoaster of interviewing for and then receiving a job, then taking time to do an insane amount of new hire paperwork.

As you can see, my manuscript currently stands at just over 90,000 words, which is already insane because I don’t feel like I’ve hit the book’s midpoint yet. I don’t want this book to be as long as Soldier of Dorsa, but it seems like it’s heading that way.

Remember when I told you not to let me write a book that long again?

Now’s your chance to tell me to cut, cut, cut mercilessly.

Soldier of Dorsa — Audiobook Progress

The other good news on the writing front is that I finished proofing all 21+ hours of the Soldier of Dorsa audiobook — a bit of news that should please those of you who, like me, only “read” by audiobook these days. The book has now bounced back to my narrator, who will make the final edits before we release it to Audible. From there, it typically takes about 7-10 days for the book to be approved.

When all is said and done, if you figure it takes my narrator about 10 days to do all the edits, then it will take Audible another 10 days to approve it, I would guess it will be live around the end of June.

Sorry that it’s later than anticipated. Story of my writing life. 😐

Forming an anti-racist classroom

I decided to sit the George Floyd protests out, not because I don’t agree with them but because they do not seem safe. It seems that totally innocent protesters are getting harmed by a frightened police force, and it also seems that mass gatherings in the era of coronavirus is not the best idea.

This time, instead of protesting, I’ve decided to focus my efforts on forming an anti-racist classroom as my personal contribution to addressing the ugliness that’s happening right now.

I keep thinking about how all the people in positions of authority today were once just kids in a classroom, learning not just subject matters but also how to interact with one another, how to interpret the world, how to examine evidence and form opinions. And I can’t help but think that schools must have let them down somewhere along the line.

School isn’t the only place where subtle forms of racism embedded themselves into their minds, but it was certainly one very important place.

A chance to root out racism early

I’m joining with a group of other recent USC graduates, all of us first-year teachers, to have ongoing discussions about how we can identify and deconstruct both obvious and not-so-obvious forms of racism within our classrooms.

For example, one issue that came up in our first-ever meeting on Thursday was a friend who asked how she could have better handled a kid who used the name “Jim Crow” for his handle when they were about to start a Kahoot! game (an online quiz game if you’re not familiar with it). She deleted it and said it was inappropriate, but the kid challenged her and pushed back, identifying the single black kid in the class and asking if he thought it was racist. Put on the spot in front of the entire class, the black kid responded how most singled-out fourteen year-olds would — “Naw, it’s fine.” My friend reiterated that it was still inappropriate and then moved on, but she couldn’t help but feel she’d missed a teaching moment.

We spent some time discussing how to handle a situation like that, and how, as teachers, we can’t let our kids dictate what is and isn’t racist — because we’re the teachers. It is our job to teach. In the end, we concluded that in particular moment, Jim Crow itself could have become the “new lesson,” superseding the importance of the Kahoot!.

“What do y’all know about Jim Crow? Look it up on Wikipedia and tell me what you see. Alright — here’s what Jim Crow was. Here’s what it represented. Was that what you were intending to represent when you chose that name as a joke? No? Okay, then, that’s why we’re not going to use it as a Kahoot! name, even as a joke.”

Finishing with a plea for your help

I’m trying to outfit my classroom with middle grade books that include lots of people of color as protagonists. Knowing my school, I can expect about 70 percent of the kids to be Latinx, about 20 percent Filipino, and the rest African American or multiracial. I want them to have books in my classroom to read or borrow that feature young people who look like them.

I’ve received book donations before, so I have most of the classic literature covered. From Kafka to Steinbeck to Hemingway, I have the Dead White Guy canon. What’s harder to get by donation is quality young adult literature featuring stories of people of color.

So will you help me build my classroom library? I have 32 books on my wish list over at First Book Marketplace (discounted books for teachers and schools), for a grand total of $132. A $5 donation would pay for one of those books and most of the shipping.

If you want to help, you can go to PayPal, go to “Send” and use my email address, ramarshall dot writer at gmail dot com. (I spell it out to prevent my email address from getting spammed by robots.)

Thanks in advance if you can donate to the cause, but no worries if you can’t. I know better than many what it’s like when money is tight.