Archive for School Visits

Here are 6 Videos I Made for Teachers and Homeschoolers to Share with Young Readers

March 26, 2020 / / 3 comments

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I posted a week ago about our collective struggle to find ways to do something meaningful, helpful, positive during this challenging time. As a children’s book author, my immediate goal has been to provide some online material that teachers and parents can share with young learners.

As of today, March 26, I’ve created six videos and posted them on my own Youtube channel (link below). I’ve also learned how to embed them here, also below. For me, that’s saying something.

Technology: ick.

But, as we’re finding in these days of physical distancing, a valuable way to connect.

Please feel free to share these videos with fellow teachers, media specialists, parents, students, children.  If you have ideas or suggestions for future videos, I’ll be happy to respond to that. Thanks for what you are doing.

Stay smart, keep safe, and enjoy the moments we are given. In my house in upstate New York, we are hunkered down with two of our three children, Gavin (20) and Maggie (19), along with my midwife-wife, Lisa (no age given). Our oldest, Nick (26), is in his NYC
apartment, working online. We miss him terribly. Each night, we’ve been enjoying lovely family dinners. We’re rotating who cooks and (purportedly) who cleans. In many respects, it’s been a beautiful experience. Trying to hold onto those positive feelings. Not worrying, for now, about all the lost income, the stress about bills, all the money stuff. There will be time to recover from that. For now, we embrace the now.

Here’s a link to my Youtube Channel.

I’ve included a brief description and target age level immediately below each video

 

THIS IS THE FIRST VIDEO I made, and the shortest, and it touches upon a theme I try to emphasize before every student I meet, regardless of age (though the delivery gets more sophisticated at middle schools): “You are unique. You have stories inside you that only you can tell.”

 

I MADE BOOKS WHEN I WAS a little kid. I sold them to my friends and neighbors. My mother saved one and I read it here. Kind of funny, I think. Hopefully this video inspires young people to make their own books. In the case above, I needed help with the words from my oldest brother, Neal. Ages 4-up.

 

FOR FANS OF JIGSAW JONES: Here I talk about what I was like as a kid — more of a spy than a true detective — and how I gave my favorite childhood toy to Jigsaw Jones. I read a scene from THE CASE OF THE BICYCLE BANDIT.

 

FOR GRADES 4-UP, JUST RIGHT FOR MIDDLE SCHOOLERS. THIS VIDEO LESSON centers around a writing tip first offered by Kurt Vonnegut Jr: make awful things happen to your leading characters! I discuss that idea and, to make the point, read two passages from BLOOD MOUNTAIN, my most recent middle-grade adventure novel and a 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection.

 

HERE’S ONE FOR THE YOUNGEST READERS, ages 3-up, where I read from WAKE ME IN SPRING. I also describe the creative process, the thinking, behind the story. And again, as always, I try to turn it back to the reader, to inspire their own creativity moving forward.

 

MY “SCARY TALES” BOOKS are often wildly popular on school visits. Though the books seem to hit that sweet spot of grades 3-5, I’ve met very young readers who are impervious to fear, second graders who love them, and also, by design, readers in uppers grades and middle school who have enjoyed this high-interest, low-reading level stories with the super cool artwork by Iacopo Bruno. For some, their first successful reading experience of a full-length book that is not heavily illustrated. Here I read from the first two chapters of GOODNIGHT, ZOMBIE. 

 

I’LL CONTINUE TO POST MORE VIDEOS — including a full reading of “ZOMBIE” — as time allows. Please, by all means, feel free to share these videos far and wide. Obviously, if I hear positive reports, I’ll be encouraged to do more. Thanks for stopping by.

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Category: Around the Web, In the Classroom, Jigsaw Jones, Scary Tales, School Visits, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , ,

Online Support: Working with Teachers, Schools

March 16, 2020 / / 3 comments

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Everyone is scrambling to catch up with an ever-evolving news cycle where the world beneath our feet seems to radically shift by the hour. Schools are closed or closing. We’re all supposed to stay indoors. We’re not sure how best to respond.

As an author of children’s books, familiar with speaking to large groups at school visits, I haven’t figured out my best response to all of this just yet. But I do expect to offer up some Youtube content, book talks, readings — I’m not really sure at this time what would be most helpful. There’s a learning curve, most certainly. 

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Illustration by R.W. Alley from Jigsaw Jones: The Case of the Hat Burglar.

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If you are interested in anything like that, or in something more interactive with readers, please feel free to contact me at jamespreller@aol.com and hopefully I can provide some support for meaningful, book-centered learning. 

My inclination is that this would be free or low cost, depending on the time and effort required. I’ll keep posting as this concept develops. Please don’t hesitate to write to me with your thoughts, questions, ideas. I’ve never used Zoom before, but my wife has, and it sounds user-friendly. Most important of all, please take this virus seriously. Stay home. Hunker down. Read, think, reflect. Take long walks. We’ll get through this. 

Category: Around the Web, Current Events, School Visits, Skype / Tags: , , ,

Thought for Teachers (and Parents!) on a Friday

February 7, 2020 / / No comments

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This meme speaks to a feeling that I experience on school visits every time I make a presentation, or even speak one-on-one with a child. And with that feeling comes an immediate identification with teachers, because I recognize that they must feel it, too, every single day.

As a parent, I’ve experienced it constantly. 

To the point where it must speak to the essence of what it is to be a teacher, to be a parent.

Scattering seeds to the wind.

On visits, I’ll have 45-50 minutes with, say, a group of 200 students. I’ll joke, tell stories, read something, explain my writing process, show photos of my dog, try to pass along my love of literacy, answer questions, maybe even impart bits of wisdom gained in 34 years as a published author. Then time’s up and they dutifully file out of the big room, shuffling off to what comes next.

And I wonder: Did I connect? Did my words make a difference?

Again, I could be talking about my four-mile walk yesterday with my son, Gavin, age 20. Did he hear me? Did I say anything of value? And also, along with that: What did I learn? Was my heart open?

In the end, we have to keep faith that our efforts have meaning. Yes, many the seeds will not thrive. In busy schools, the days are packed. There’s always the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. A flowing river of next things. But we also know that sometimes, for certain kids, those experiences miraculously do stick. A thought, a feeling, an idea clicks. Maybe not today. Maybe in five years it resonates anew.

And maybe the memory of that experience lingers for a lifetime.

Imagine that.

Imagine making that kind of impact on a life.

It’s what teachers do every single day.

The seed finds fertile soil. The rain comes down, the sun shines warmly. And one day a green sprouts lifts its head, says “I am,” and starts to grow. 

All we can do is keep scattering those seeds, doing what we can, hoping for ears that listen, hearts and minds that are open.

Every time I am invited to a school, I am grateful for that opportunity.

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Look for All Welcome Here, by James Preller, illustrated by Mary GrandPre, coming this June.

 

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Category: In the Classroom, School Visits / Tags: , , , , , ,

A Decade in Review: Book Covers from the 2010s

January 1, 2020 / / No comments

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I’ve seen several author friends do this recently, a glance back at the past decade via book covers, before looking ahead to bigger and better things. Thank you for your encouragement and support.

 

                                                            

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AND COMING IN JUNE, 2020 . . .

 

PRE-ORDERS NOW AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON . . .

With gorgeous multimedia paintings-and-collages by acclaimed artist Mary GrandPre, James Preller’s All Welcome Here promises to be an evergreen gift picture book for children about to take the big leap into their first days of school.

The bus door swishes
Open, an invitation.
Someone is not sure . . .

The first day of school and all its excitement, challenges, and yes, anxieties, are celebrated here in connected haiku poems. A diverse cast of characters all start―and finish―their first days of school, and have experiences that all children will relate to.

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Category: All Welcome Here, School Visits / Tags: , ,

Shades of Meaning: Hey, Teachers, Here’s an Easy Idea for Your Classroom!

December 20, 2019 / / No comments

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I like it when I get to sit in real classrooms. I look around, check out what’s on the walls and in the bins, try to absorb all the details. I don’t often have the chance to do that on school visits. I’m usually in the library or the auditorium or the (dreaded) cafetorium, which smells of old cheese and ammonia, then maybe I’ll duck into a side closet to sign books.

Recently I visited the cozy Richmond Consolidated School in Massachusetts, a visit organized by a force of nature known as Rachel Kanz. Zipping from one spot to the next, we dashed into Rachel’s 6th grade classroom for a pit stop. 

I noticed this on the wall:

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Are your eyes not what they used to be? I know the feeling. Here, step closer, take a closer look:

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“Clever,” I commented. “Shades of meaning. I like it.”

“I got it from Lucy Calkins,” Rachel said, crediting the influential author and founding director of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. “Her idea. I just ran with it.”

 

Category: In the Classroom, School Visits / Tags: , , , ,
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