New Book

I ordered this book back in October when I was doing a paper on multicultural education and I was really surprised when it arrived today because I had given up on it ever getting here. With my Amazon Prime account, I can get most books the day after I order them. Some books, however are more difficult to get through the amazon.de website and this was one of them. The delivery date kept getting pushed farther and farther back and I actually thought I had canceled the order anticipating that it was a text I would have to wait on until I am back in the U.S.

Now that this book has shown up, I am really excited to read it! I think it relates well to the research I plan to do for my dissertation. I am always looking for ways to be a more effective teacher for students whose backgrounds are different from my own. I am leaning towards researching the effectiveness of core reading programs for students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and I am going into with the belief that reading instruction needs to be more directly related to the particular students in a classroom, especially when students are learning English and come from cultures other than the mainstream. In my opinion, core programs don't do this since they are scripted, so I am interested in reading up on research that supports different methods for these populations of students.

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I have been slacking on my reading this week. I was in the middle of The Borrowers, but I honestly was not digging it as much as some of the other books I have read from my list. I put it aside and started Island of the Blue Dolphins, which I have heard great things about. Neither book was bad, but I guess I overloaded the week before and now my brain just can't handle all the reading. The truth is I never just give myself a break, so it's probably time to do just that. I will try to finish those two books before school is out next week since I have to return them to the library. I have a few other teaching books I ordered waiting for me in California, so maybe it's time to switch back to PD books instead of children's novels....