Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Writerly Wednesday: Mindy Kaling and Reggio Emilia


Little life lessons and interesting ponderances from my book stack this week!
  • I'm zipping through Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling.  It's hilarious and charming, and I'm thinking that Mindy and I should probably be best friends.  I'm sure she would love the on-fleek arts scene in Minneapolis, and she and I could establish a fabulous creative partnership.  In her book, Mindy provides an instructive list of take-aways from the time her hit television show switched networks.  I'm excerpting it here:
    • No matter how good you have it, it's cool to want more.
    • Self-pity gets results
    • It's OK to drink tequila in the car if you just had a really good meeting.
    • If you believe in yourself and work hard, your dreams will come true.
    • Well... I guess the people who work hard whose dreams don't come true don't get to write books about it, so we never really find out what happens to them. So...
  • For months, I've been dabbling in The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation. This is part of my "Teach Elementary School Someday" professional development plan.  In the most recent chapter, the mayor of the remarkable city of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy discusses immigrants and the importance of welcoming. "[C]hildren are a great engine," Mayor Delrio says.  "[T]hey perceive that we do not have any other destiny than knowing one another, living together, and not being against but instead in favor of someone or something."  I like that a whole lot.  The book has a whole section on the family-school partnership, and I'm especially excited to get to that part.
I think that's it for this dreary day, but if you think about it, that's kind of a lot.

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