.summer reading = fall course planning.

Even though my summer break could start any moment (if I would only finish grading that small pile of portfolios) I can't help thinking about the service-learning classes I'll be teaching in the fall.  So I've been reading like a madwoman trying to find some good material for my students.  Since the class will be mainly focusing on the African refugee situation I've begun reading Dave Eggers' What is the What and I think I've already found the excerpt I'll be sharing with my students.  I also plan to assign a chapter from Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and Little Bee by Chris Cleeve (if you haven't read them I highly recommend both!)

My professor of the Writing and Social Activism class suggested two other books that I'll be checking out soon: Say You're One of Them? by Uwem Akpan and They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan by Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, and Benjamin Ajak.  And The Lost Boys of Sudan documentary is currently sitting on the coffee table ready to be viewed.  If you can't tell, I'm very excited about the course!

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This weekend I watched The Stoning of Soraya M. and even though it wasn't necessarily "enjoyable" to watch it was very powerful; the women and their stories have stuck with me.  I don't understand how we live in a world where this kind of violence still occurs and where women have no rights whatsoever. It's often easy to forget about these kinds of atrocities but they need to be in our reflections and prayers.  I only first learned that stoning was still in practice in my Women's Studies class in undergrad - yes, not until I was 19 did I learn that women are still punished unjustly for crimes by stoning (before then I only knew about it from the Bible when Jesus says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7)  - it's not acceptable that our culture can turn such a blind eye to this issue.  Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is another issue I did not learn about until college, and I know that high school might not be the place for this kind of education, but young people - women especially - need to be aware of these occurrences around the world.