June 2012

Recently, I read a harrowing account of a doomed 1912 Arctic expedition, where a ship seeking new hunting grounds became frozen in the pack ice of the Kara Sea. After a year and a half, the author and 13 crewmen decided to leave the ship and the remaining crew, embarking on a perilous 235-mile journey for help via kayaks and homemade sledges, and complete with polar bear attacks, starvation, snowblindness, and mutiny. The book is called In the Land of White Death by Valerian Albanov, and it’s a great read for high school classes and above.

Summer vacation is coming. The students are probably beginning to lose some of their focus, and perhaps their teachers are as well. Wandering minds are inevitable at this time of year, with the promise of lazy days by the pool, endless sports, and the freedom from homework. But as educators, we know that the glory days of summer have a dark underbelly – the dreaded “summer slide.”