Farewell, Profile

I have been waiting for this moment for a long time.
As I am retired from my position at Profile School, I wish good luck to all of you, teachers, paras, staff, administrators. We have had a really good run together. 
For most of these past 21 years, and in spite of vicious assaults, Profile has kept its flamboyance and magic, thanks to your dedication and camaraderie.  I am honored and grateful to have been part of this adventure. May good winds take you to beautiful, surprising shores.

Dr Jacques-Jude Lepine

CLI-FI: Emerging literary genre helps fighting suicidal climate change denial

STRANGER THAN FICTION

Rising seas, unprecedented storms and dystopian landscapes are fodder for powerful stories. Beyond entertainment or distraction, could the emerging genre of climate fiction (Cli-Fi) actually help us avoid the worst impacts of climate change? Stanford biological anthropologist and environmental scientist James Holland Jones thinks so. The Long Now Foundation, a future-focused think tank, recently invited Jones to give a public talk on the subject, in which he discussed the physiology and neuroscience of storytelling and narrative and why this makes stories a particularly powerful way to communicate complex information.

See Jones'talk here with a list of Cli-Fi novels

from the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment

The Wall in Pink Floyd and US Politics. by JJ Lépine

Make the Most of your Chromebook

As I see a growing number of staff members getting into Chromebooks (who would blame them? Say good bye to start up delays, long virus scans, maintenance needs, cumbersome installations, disrupting updates, etc...), here are a few tips to get the most of them. One that is so helpful: you may use the most important  productivity apps even when offline.  Enjoy!

2018 Teen's Top 10 Novels

by School Library Journal  Staff 
Oct 18, 2018 | Filed in News & Features

 The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)announced the 2018 Teens’ Top 10. 

The official titles, as voted by teens around the world from mid-August to mid-October, are:

1. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green 
2. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
3. Warcross by Marie Lu
4. Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
5. Caraval by Stephanie Garber
6. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
7. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
8. Paper Hearts by Ali Novak
9. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
10. Once and For All by Sarah Dessen

And now it's time to start thinking about the 2019 list. 

Through New Year's Day, readers 12 to 18 can nominate their favorite books
to be considered for next year's list.  

Nominated books must be published between January 1 and December 31, 2018.

Information Literacy: Propaganda in Media Today

Mind Over Media project addresses the broader idea of propaganda in the 21st century. 

Mind Over Media is a free online resource devoted to helping individuals understand how to recognize and interpret propaganda in media. 

A teachers page includes a complete curriculum as well as eight lesson plans. 

Teachers can create a free account to curate media for their lessons and view sample, teacher-created custom galleries. Because the platform includes a crowdsourcing feature to encourage educators to share more examples of propaganda, the library of available media will continue to grow.

A Summer Offering

By your Girardian Pink Floyd fan: