For the last year, I have been the chair of the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. This award is a little different from most of ALA’s Youth Media Awards who’s winners will be announced on Monday, January 25, 2021. For the last month, the entire committee has been reading madly because we had to turn in a list of five finalists today, December 1st.
I turned in the names of our five finalists yesterday, along with an annotation for each book. I heard back almost right away and was asked for a quote for the press release. Fortunately, the email contained an example from a previous press release. I had to come up with a big picture look at five very different titles.
Later yesterday afternoon, I was teaching a reading lesson and asking students to do some big picture thinking about their reading. I was surprised how what I was asking them to do resembled the work that I had done just that morning, so I told them about it. It was a real-life application of what we were doing in class.
The press release announcing our finalists will come out late this week or early next week. When it does, I will happily talk about each of the books with my students. I also promised them that I would share the big picture thinking I had to do for the press release.
Making connections of what we teach to how it applies to our lives is really powerful. It always helps when students see that what we are asking them to do is something we do as well.
Hi Adrienne.
Thank you for continuing work on YALSA. I appreciate your writing and feel grateful for your teaching. Hugs dear Adrienne.
Cathie
Sent from my iPad
Cathie Padgett
It’s awesome when that happens, and so important for us to talk about! I bet you’ll be glad when the project is done and you can take a little break. While you chair this committee again in 2021?
No I won’t chair again. I am looking forward to reading fiction for pleasure.