Month: March 2019

TeachingLeave a comment

Writing Teachers Who Write, Reading Teachers Who Read

Jason Simon

In the past year or so, I’ve been writing. Quite a bit actually. In addition to the usual cheeky, absurdist social media observations or histrionic political outrage rants as well these educational blog posts, I’ve been writing short stories. (Shameless plug: much of my short fiction is available at All Persons Fictitious if you’re into that sort of thing.) I’ve been writing for all the usual reasons that motivate writers: finding a creative outlet, dealing with personal crises, trying to make some sense of this current insane moment in history and political discourse, etc. And it’s been good for me. … Continue reading Writing Teachers Who Write, Reading Teachers Who Read

Education, ReviewLeave a comment

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf (Book Review)

Jason Simon

Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf My rating: 5 of 5 stars Just as in Wolf’s earlier book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, the author writes passionately about the act of reading, particularly its necessity in fostering the connections, predictions, inferences, and other requisite skills involved in critical thinking. For this neuroscience professor, these are skills that come exclusively from the slow, close reading of printed texts and will not be developed in the same way in the brains of readers who primarily engage in the … Continue reading Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf (Book Review)

DP Lang & LitLeave a comment

An Adversarial Relationship Between Reader and Text

Jason Simon

At a workshop in Singapore last weekend for the new IB DP Language & Literature course guide, I came across the following sentence from a student example essay in the workshop materials. “The reader simply cannot deduce what [the chapter titles] could [mean], effectively forcing the reader to keep turning the page.” For me, the image of a reader hypnotically paging through a book against his will or even pitted against it in heated battle is a funny one. I picture Bruce Campbell’s Ash facing down the Necronomicon in one of the Evil Dead films, but there are Harry Potter associations that work just … Continue reading An Adversarial Relationship Between Reader and Text