I wanted to share a book with you about a tragedy that Pearl Buck wrote about in 1947 that is still being published today. The book is The Big Wave. Many people do not know about this very special 57 page book about destruction and death. Very simply the story shows that through experiencing danger people learn how to be brave and really appreciate life. The part on death can be used with any age in any situation also. This very quick read about a tragic situation in paperback brings comfort to all ages today. I promise that it brings knowledge and comfort to those who read it. I personally would be happy to provide some copies for your school. Copies of this book would be a way librarians and their schools could contribute to what has happened in your area of the country. I am getting a copy for a 20 year old family friend from Savannah who was on the tall ship, Bounty, that sank in the storm with 2 people dying. If you can
get a copy of this book, please let me know by replying to my email if it would be helpful in your situatiion at your school.
ool, which means that our one school building serves 3 schools: two high schools and a middle school. All three schools have an advisory program whereby students meet once a day with their advisory teacher to discuss current events, tween/teen issues, and anything else that is important to students, e.g. school matters, bullying prevention, etc.. Hurricane Sandy will probably be the topic of discussion for some time to come.
So we need lesson plans for our advisory teachers to use to teach/help our students COPE with living through and dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster. One librarian has already reached out to me and asked me what we in Staten Island need. My home weathered the storm well and so did my school and school library because I live and work in an area of Staten Island that is on higher ground and was not as badly hit as the other parts of the island. We are not a neighborhood school however, and therefore our
students come from all over the island. Although we will learn more in the days ahead what our students are dealing with, we are anticipating that many will be dealing with some very tough stuff.
Just to give you an example, I took a 5 mile drive to my bank yesterday and it took me over an hour to get there because of the lack of power to traffic lights. (Turned out it was closed when I got there anyway due to the lack of electricity). It is usually a 10 minute trip. I saw for myself those long gas lines. I saw people collecting donations in the bank parking lot and I saw utter confusion and chaos on the roads. Life has been completely turned upside down, and it took me another hour just to get home a very short distance on a very small island.
I am appealing to the AASL listserv because I know that our list members come from all over the States and have themselves been through natural disasters. What did your school communities do to
support students through a difficult time, particularly a disaster on a massive scale? What lessons were taught in class that helped teachers help students cope with their lives being upended? If you'd like to see some pictures of what our students are dealing with, you can see some here:
https://statenisland.recovers.org/I am among the fortunate. I have power and safe drinking water, though I did lose it for a time, and I can search the Internet myself, but maybe you already have some lesson plans you can share. I have already found plenty of material about how to help children cope, but structured, actual lessons for advisory are what I am looking for.
I will share with the list what is shared with me.
Thanks.
Patricia
____________________________________________
Patricia Sarles, MA, MLS
Librarian
Jerome Parker
Campus Library
100 Essex Drive
Staten Island, NY 10314
718-370-6900 x1322
psarles@schools.nyc.gov
http://www.scoop.it/t/help-with-the-common-core-state-standards/http://paper.li/psarles/1332609247The new power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of the many. - John Naisbitt, Megatrends
The Internet may be the world's greatest library, but let's face it - all the books are scattered on the floor. - D.C. Denison, Boston Globe
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. - Mitchell Kapor
To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true
from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction ... The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. - Martin Luther King, Jr. The Purpose of Education