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From: Howard Mason <howard...@metrounitedway.org>
Date: Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 9:33 AM
Subject: [Louisville_Neighborhoods] Social Change Book Club--6 pm, Monday, October 19, 2009
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Social Change Book Club 3.0

A LIVE UNITED Community Event

Our home is Heine Bros. Coffee, 119 Chenoweth Lane, St Matthews. We are grateful for the invitation and hospitality.

Strange as it may sound, the mind is not designed for thinking—it's designed to save us from having to think, according to Daniel Willlingham, author of our October book, Why Don't Students Like School. Because thinking is slow, effortful, and uncertain, we rely on memory, not thought, to guide us whenever possible. Nonetheless, we are curious and we do like to think, so long as the issue or problem at hand is neither too easy nor too hard. People enjoy mental work if it is successful. People like to solve problems, but not to work on unsolvable problems.

Three questions lie at the heart of Paul Tough's book, Whatever It Takes, our November selection. Why are poor people poor? Why do they stay poor? And what would it take to get them out of poverty? Geoffrey Canada identified a big chunk of Harlem — twenty-four blocks initially — and he planned to address every problem that was holding back poor kids in that neighborhood, from their families to their schools to their community. He didn’t want to chip away at the problem of urban poverty. He wanted to solve it.

Whitefoot, our December book, can be shared by the whole family. In this enchantingly simple and elegant children's book, famed Kentucky author Wendell Berry recounts the adventures of a white-footed mouse who lives in the forest and finds herself adrift in a new world during a flood. The story connects us with Whitefoot's keen survival instincts and her gentle acceptance of what has happened to her.

We meet the third Monday of each month at 6:00 p.m.

The Social Change Book Club is open to everyone who is interested in understanding, participating, leading, or supporting social change. Each month we select a book and get together to discuss. Selections rotate among three themes: social changes, how we work with others to make change happen, and the inner qualities needed to bring change into the world.

People just show up if they are interested--no RSVP, commitment, etc. It is great when people have read the book, but that is not a requirement to come and discuss.

We got this going because there is a lot to learn about how to make social change happen and people who are interested in changing the world need opportunities to share stories and experience community with others who care.

October 19, 2009

Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom
by Daniel Willingham

Why Don't Students Like School? Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television program, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test?

Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers and others who facilitate learning. This book will help teachers and learning leaders improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn—revealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.

Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a set of nine principles that are easy to understand and have clear applications for the classroom and any situation where learning is the focus. Some examples of his surprising findings are: "Learning styles" don't exist The processes by which different people think and learn are more similar than different. You cannot develop "thinking skills" in the absence of facts. We encourage people to think critically, not just memorize facts. However thinking skills depend on factual knowledge for their operation.

Why Don't Students Like School is a basic primer for every teacher and learning leader who wants to know how their brains and their learners' brains work and how that knowledge can help them hone their teaching skills.

6:00-8:00 p.m., Monday, October 19, 2009

Heine Bros. Coffee, 119 Chenoweth Lane, St Matthews

November 16, 2009

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America by Paul Tough

What would it take?

That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children--not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, now a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in their lives--their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.

Whatever It Takes is a portrait of the Harlem Children's Zone, Geoffrey Canada and the parents and children who are struggling to better their lives. The Harlem Children's Zone, writes Paul Tough, is "the first and so far the only organization in the country that pulls together ... integrated social and educational services for thousands of children" — all under one umbrella, all in one place, all at one time. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is an account from inside one of the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time. There are lessons to be learned from the Harlem Children's Zone—about the power of an idea, the role culture plays in student achievement, accountability, the indomitable human spirit.

Paul Tough is an editor at the New York Times Magazine and a writer on poverty, education, and the achievement gap.

6:00-8:00 p.m., Monday, November 16, 2009

Heine Bros. Coffee, 119 Chenoweth Lane, St Matthews

December 21, 2009

Whitefoot: A Story from the Center of the World by Wendell Berry

Whitefoot is a mouse, a small creature with "elegant whiskers" and a "reddish brindly tan" coat. She lives at the edge of the woods, where she knows, without a doubt, that she exists at the center of the world. What she doesn’t know is that not far from her safe haven there is a river, and a world of such size and magnitude that she cannot even imagine it. One day, a burst of rain floods down on Whitefoot, lifting her in its currents and carrying her far from home. What happens next leads Whitefoot on a great adventure — one in which she must encounter new experiences and challenges to her survival.

She owes her survival to her innate skills. She does this by doing as little as possible — in other words, by following her instincts. Though everything that happens takes place an inch off the ground, Berry finds a heroic dimension to Whitefoot, and his gift is to make readers feel it, too. The discovery of the universe around her, and her ability to survive within it, is a lesson that can resonate with children and adults alike.

Wendell Berry is an essayist, novelist, and poet who has written more than 40 books. He lives in Henry County, Kentucky. The book is illustrated with original drawings by artist Davis Te Selle.

The story was originally published in Orion Magazine and can be found online: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/14/

6:00-8:00 p.m., Monday, December 21, 2009

Heine Bros. Coffee, 119 Chenoweth Lane, St Matthews