Dr. Mike Macaluso: Education, Animated.

0:00:09.7 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning, from the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So we pair two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests, share your takeaways and come back for more. You're listening to Think-Pair-Share, with me, Audrey Scott.

[music]

0:00:41.3 AS: Get ready, because I feel like today's Think-Pair-Share is gonna be a little like the audio equivalent of a choose your own adventure book. That's due to my guest's indomitable spirit and genuine enthusiasm for all things English and language arts. Actually, for all things, period. Dr. Michael Macaluso is a faculty member of the Alliance for Catholic Education and a fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

0:01:04.4 AS: His primary research focuses on critical approaches in English education, and he hopes to inspire life-long readership both in and out of the classroom. Mike believes literacy has implications for the ways in which we know, see and understand the world, and therefore live, act and interact in the world. I'm looking forward to learning more. So without further ado, hi, Mike.

0:01:23.9 Dr. Michael Macaluso: Hello, hello? Am I good? [chuckle]

0:01:29.4 AS: There is.

0:01:30.8 Mike Macaluso: I just wanna be sure that... You know, Steve came in and set things up, and I just want to... Are we good or do you think you got me? 

0:01:36.6 AS: Yes, we're good.

0:01:37.9 MM: This picks up everything. Even the move of my file folder, I hear.

0:01:41.2 AS: Yeah, these mics are pretty good these days, that's why I'll give you a couple of those tips, if you can try not to hit the table because the mic is sitting on it, it will pick it up, but please do.

0:01:51.4 MM: You tell the Italian not to use his hands. "How am I gonna get through this? Oh God." [chuckle]

0:01:57.0 AS: No, please be comfortable, be yourself.

0:02:00.2 MM: Okay, I will, I will.

0:02:01.6 AS: Don't worry about the little sounds.

0:02:02.1 MM: Alright, sounds good.

0:02:02.6 AS: Everyone will understand. Okay, lots of good stuff on tap, so we'll probably jump right into the fun section.

0:02:08.2 MM: Oh, I'm so excited about the fun section. I'm a little jealous that Professor Gibbs got the Halloween section, but I'll deal. I'm excited to see what you have on tap for me here.

0:02:16.5 AS: I kinda like the theme idea, but because I know a little bit about your fun personality, we went sort of eclectic instead.

0:02:22.2 MM: Yes, I love eclectic. Oh my goodness, this is great. Such a visitor.

[chuckle]

0:02:28.3 AS: That's okay. We ready? Heads or tails? 

0:02:33.2 MM: Heads.

0:02:34.7 AS: Beard or mustache? 

0:02:34.8 MM: Oh, beard.

0:02:36.7 AS: Lions, tigers or bears? 

0:02:37.5 MM: Oh my, let's go... Let's go tigers.

0:02:42.8 AS: Nice. Tiny house or RV? 

0:02:45.4 MM: Tiny house. I can't handle an RV. I don't think I could do that. I really don't. Nor could my wife, so. [chuckle]

0:02:52.7 AS: I'm right there with you, but I do like the look of an Airstream on like a Christmas tree lot, maybe? 

0:02:58.3 MM: Yes, that looks so nice. It does. It's like picturesque. But living in it I can't imagine is picturesque, so.

0:03:05.6 AS: This might not be for us either, but how about zombie outbreak or alien invasion? 

0:03:10.4 MM: Oh, this is so fun. I mean, we could just talk about this, this is rapid fire... Actually, I feel like we could talk about this. [chuckle]

0:03:16.7 AS: We'll go off on this tangent. [chuckle]

0:03:19.4 MM: I would probably say zombie invasion, just because I feel like you have the potential to fight back and think of ways to fight back, whereas if aliens come, they're just gonna beam you up and you have no plan of attack. But one of my favorite movies growing up was Independence Day. I loved it. Man, the movie... That movie and Jurassic Park were game changers. But I'll go with zombie... What is it, zombie... Zombie invasion. Apocalypse, whatever.

0:03:45.0 AS: So I had to laugh actually, I was like, you actually did mesh the two, 'cause I said, "Zombie outbreak or alien invasion," and you said, "Zombie invasion," like the best of both worlds.

0:03:52.6 MM: There we go. [chuckle]

0:03:54.5 AS: Okay, misquoted movies or mistaken lyrics? 

0:03:58.1 MM: Oh man, I feel like I sorta treat movies as like somewhat kind of sacred, so you can't misquote. So I'll go the... What is it? The misspoken lyric? I really like that Taylor Swift song. I don't even know what it is, but she said... The actual lyric is like "star-crossed lovers", and for the longest time I thought it was "Starbucks lovers". And I actually think Starbucks... Do you know what I'm talking about? [chuckle]

0:04:19.6 AS: I totally thought it was... I still to this very moment thought it was Starbucks.

0:04:23.2 MM: But I like "Starbucks lovers" better because I feel like that works so well with what her song is trying to say there, and I think Starbucks... Maybe I'll write to her and just say, "You should officially change it, 'cause that just fits so much better and a much more poetic level of what your song is trying to say."

0:04:38.5 AS: Okay. Fiction or non-fiction? 

0:04:41.4 MM: Fiction, hands down. Although, am I supposed to be commenting on these, because I'm just...

0:04:45.5 AS: You can.

0:04:46.2 MM: Okay.

0:04:46.9 AS: Sure, it's your show, Mike, you do whatever you want with it.

[chuckle]

0:04:49.6 MM: So I have to give a quick little plug. I've been in somewhat of a non-fiction kinda kick lately because there is this great author, she was recently nominated, like short-listed for a Newbery. She wrote The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh. I knew very little about him, but she's a local author, and she's done a ton of stuff, she's also written on the Romanov family, and the Charles Lindbergh book was so good.

0:05:14.4 MM: I mean, it's just like fascinating, and I would totally use that book in an American Lit class or History class. Talk about history repeating itself. This, I recommend this book to everybody, and now I'm reading with my boys, she just wrote one on The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, it's with King Tut. Again, fascinating.

0:05:32.4 MM: She starts each chapter by saying, "They say that there was a curse with the mummy's tomb," and then talks about examples of how this curse has happened, and then she'll go into the history and the backstory of how they found the tomb. So she is just doing a wonderful job of making history sound like a story and a narrative, and I just highly recommend, especially the Charles Lindbergh book, but now this mummy one just came out.

0:05:55.2 AS: Is it Candace Fleming? 

0:05:57.2 MM: It's Candace Fleming, yes, Candace Fleming. Way to go. Oh my goodness, they're so, it's just so good. So a little caveat there, fiction, however, she's doing some wonderful work with non-fiction, highly recommend those books.

0:06:09.3 AS: Excellent. Okay, DC or Marvel? 

0:06:11.2 MM: Oh man, this is hard now. See, I thought I had an answer, but now I'm stuck. So I loved Batman growing up, which was DC. And that crazy show, as a kid I have such memories coming home from kindergarten and having my lunch in front of the TV to see which villain was on the Batman show that day, and I just... You know what I'm talking about, right? 

0:06:30.8 AS: Yes, I do. All the goofy like "boom"...

0:06:32.9 MM: Yes, it's "boom, pow" right? But then as I got a little older my superhero taste matured, I think. I've definitely become a Marvel fan, and when I started collecting comic books, 'cause I did that, it was always the Marvel book, so like X-Men, Spider-Man, those were just kind of, I think, such a key to my childhood.

0:06:54.2 MM: I don't know if you know this, but I'm the very first one to say that I think it's comic books that sort of saved my reading life. I was not an avid reader. I didn't like reading in school, it wasn't a huge fan of the books that we had in school, and I didn't like the way that you had to read and then you're just automatically quizzed on what you had read from a book, it was like a reading comprehension quiz. And it was reading comic books on the side that just sort of kept me reading.

0:07:18.5 AS: That's great. I definitely wanna come back to that thought because I have an art background and I think that there's a lot to be said about some of this, graph novels and all kinds of stuff too that bring other people into the reading and comprehension universe too, so we'll look forward to following up on that in a few minutes. What is your spirit animal? 

0:07:39.3 MM: Oh, that's a good question. I feel like it's gotta be some type of bird of prey. I feel like some sort of connection with birds of, birds of prey. So maybe like an eagle or a vulture or something like that. Not a vulture, that's kind of gross, but some kind of...

[laughter]

0:07:58.3 MM: Some sort of majestic, maybe a hawk, like a hawk might be good.

0:08:03.2 AS: Buzzard.

[chuckle]

0:08:03.9 MM: Not a buzzard. But I feel like if we could think about this in terms of a patronus in Harry Potter, like what would my patronus be, and I definitely feel like some sort of like hawk or eagle. Or like a falcon, something like one of those types of birds, I feel like.

0:08:18.9 AS: Those are very good.

0:08:19.8 MM: I don't know what that means or what that says about me, but that's just kind of what I feel a connection to.

0:08:23.1 AS: I know, I think we're gonna have to go to BuzzFeed to figure that out.

0:08:26.2 MM: Figure that out.

[chuckle]

0:08:26.2 MM: "What your spirit animal says about you."

0:08:30.5 AS: What do you think about ravens? 

0:08:32.3 MM: Ravens. So maybe that's my... There you go. Maybe like a raven would be my spirit animal. I feel like that fits with sort of the dark, brooding, mysterious. But I feel like I'm not any of those things, but I try to be or something. Or I wanna be. So maybe the raven fits.

0:08:47.0 AS: You were the Notre Dame Leprechaun. How did you feel when you first put on the suit, very first time? 

0:08:52.8 MM: That's a good question, and I really appreciate that you call it the "suit" and not the "costume", 'cause we're particular about that. That is not a costume, it is a suit, so thank you very much for recognizing that it's a suit. You sort of step out of yourself in that moment, and you just kind of recognize that this is something that's larger than you.

0:09:09.3 MM: There's this great scene in the West Wing, I don't remember when it happens, but President Bartlet, I think it's like his parish priest comes to visit him from home and knows him so well, and calls him him "Jed" and he's like, "Is it okay if I call you that?" And he's like, "If you don't mind, call me President Bartlet when we're in the Oval Office. It's not about me, it's just about the office, and it reminds me of the office."

0:09:28.2 MM: While a leprechaun is nowhere near the President of the United States, it was just one of those things of like, "Okay, this is something that's bigger than me and beyond me," and I think that was just affirmed over and over at sporting events or visiting communities and going out and doing service visits. Just people that would come up to you because of a Notre Dame connection, not because of a you connection, and just because of their love, their admiration, their joy for Notre Dame and wanting to share that.

0:09:49.2 MM: So just a larger than life feeling, I think. It was not something that I was prepared for when I became a leprechaun, but something that I just sort of very much grew to love as a regular part of the job. There was this one time when I was in the bookstore and I was just dressed in normal, my normal clothes, and there was this old man who was just kinda watching me, and I was sort of aware that he was watching me.

0:10:10.9 MM: Finally he just came up to me, and no joke, Audrey, he had tears in his eyes and he just said, "Thank you." And I'm just like, "What are you... What are you thanking me for?" And he just looks at me and tilts his head and he just goes, "Thank you so much," shakes my hand and walks away. And I was just like, "What was that?"

0:10:25.5 MM: It's just larger than life, he just feels some connection and there's some story there, and he didn't obviously wanna share the story in that moment, but enough to just say thank you and move on. So I just always think about that man, and that's just a great sort of a small example of regular occurrences kind of like that.

0:10:47.6 AS: That speaks to your personality too, and your warmth and you're, just exudes that and welcomes people to you, so they made a great choice when they chose you.

0:10:55.8 MM: Well, thanks Audrey. That's really nice of you. Thank you so much.

0:10:58.5 AS: Welcome. Okay, you care deeply about literacy, which we're gonna get into a little bit more, but speaking hypothetically about books, what would the title of your memoir be? 

0:11:06.8 MM: Oh man, it's so hard. I have no idea.

0:11:11.1 AS: It is a hard one.

0:11:14.7 MM: You wanna recognize all aspects of yourself and the ups and the downs, and maybe something like, "What's next?" I feel like that's kind of been, I don't know, something maybe I subscribe to. Whether I fail at something and whether I do well at something, just sort of thinking about, "So what comes next?"

0:11:30.1 MM: That just sort of came to me. I don't know if that's profound or if that's lame, but what is the next thing? And not to say that I'm moving on from one thing to the next, but just sort of like, "What's the next opportunity or what's the next challenge?" Or, "What's the next thing to do?" Right? So what's next? 

0:11:43.1 AS: Yeah, I like that a lot.

0:11:44.8 MM: Well, thanks.

0:11:46.5 AS: You're welcome.

[chuckle]

0:11:49.8 AS: I mean, it's not to say you're not reflective, but we're moving forward.

0:11:49.8 MM: Have you thought about your title? 

0:11:52.6 AS: Gosh. No, no, no, we're not turning any tables here.

[laughter]

0:11:56.9 AS: I am not on the hot seat. Can you take a minute to orient the audience to your connection to Notre Dame and to ACE, and help us understand what you're working towards right now? 

0:12:07.5 MM: Yeah, so I actually went to Notre Dame as an undergrad. I followed in the footsteps of my two older brothers. I was an English and Political Science double major in undergrad. From a young age, I knew I wanted to teach and I wanted to be a teacher. I flirted with a lot of things here and there, but I just kept coming back to teaching, and so when I came to Notre Dame, I knew about the ACE program already.

0:12:28.5 MM: One of my brothers was a senior at the time, and over the summer, a pamphlet about ACE came to the house. I kept it, even though I was not even a freshman yet, and I actually brought that pamphlet to my interview, to my ACE interview when I was... When I was a senior, just as evidence of I just really, I knew that ACE was something that I felt called to do.

0:12:47.9 AS: Oh my gosh.

0:12:48.0 MM: You know, with that I was fortunate to do ACE, I got to teach high school English in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I just fell in love with teaching, I fell in love with Baton Rouge, and I just sort of never looked back from there. It was also one of my goals, once I left my high school, to return to my high school and to teach English there.

0:13:03.9 MM: So after ACE, I was able to do that when I taught there for five years, I got to teach English and history and I just loved it, it was great. So I knew I always wanted to teach and that was an aspiration I had, but then when I was in ACE, two things happened. I mean, number one, I met Kati Duffy, who would eventually become Kati Macaluso.

0:13:21.8 MM: And then ACE just sort of introduced me to just the world of education, and I just wasn't... I just loved my undergrad experiences so much in English and Poli Sci, and I think it was really when ACE where I just thought for a minute, "Well, maybe there is something else for me." And so ACE really planted the nugget of grad school and maybe pursuing education beyond being a classroom teacher.

0:13:49.8 MM: But I absolutely loved teaching at Benet. I loved it there so much. I kinda joke with Kati that if we weren't dating and if she hadn't said that she'd marry me, that I'd be chaperoning prom still at Benet Academy. Which, I say that because I just loved it there. I really loved it. But we had...

0:14:03.8 MM: When we started dating, I think one of the things that sort of brought us together was we both had this sort of mutual goal or desire to pursue grad school, and so we just kinda held ourselves to that then, and when our first child came along, it was kind of like, "Okay, if we're really serious about grad school, we need to look into this." So it was really hard for me to say goodbye to Benet, but we went to grad school at Michigan State together.

0:14:21.1 MM: Notre Dame wasn't necessarily on our radar coming back here when we were then on the job market, but I think at the end of the day, it just made so much sense. And we loved Michigan State, they have a phenomenal College of Ed, but we just kept coming back to this idea of we miss sort of the anchoring and the centering of Catholic education, we felt like that's really what drove us as educators, and so when ACE called, it was kind of like "Yeah, this is kind of a no-brainer then."

0:14:45.6 MM: So we're back here. I love what I'm currently doing working with ACE teachers. I work primarily with our middle school and high school English teachers, along with Kati. I get to supervise some communities. I currently supervise our Plaquemine site and our New Orleans site, so one, I get to go back to Louisiana, which as I said before, I just fell in love with Louisiana, so now I get to visit there.

0:15:05.6 MM: Very involved in our undergraduate program, the Education, Schooling, and Society program, and then I also do some work through our Center for Literacy Education. So those three worlds I just feel like are worlds that I'm very comfortable in and just I love so much and I just, I'm very grateful to have a foot in each of those worlds. I feel like that sort of makes up really who I am as a whole person.

0:15:27.9 AS: Can you outline the framework... The Center for Literacy Education, ESS, ELA, can you tell me what those things stand for, how you're a part of those? 

0:15:35.5 MM: Yeah, so Center for Literacy Education is one of our centers here through the Institute for Educational Initiatives. And there's a number of things that the center does in terms of pushing out policy and research and working with local teachers. Any sort of initiative that is ELA or English language arts related, or literacy education related. And then Education, Schooling, and Society, so that's our undergraduate program here at Notre Dame.

0:16:04.2 MM: Some people don't know that we have an education program here. It's not a certification program, a certification for teaching, but it's sort of like a sociological perspective of education, so just a range of classes, fascinating classes. One of the things that's so nice about it is it's housed in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, but as a result, we have faculty from all over campus teaching classes through the ESS program.

0:16:32.3 MM: You can have it as both a minor or a supplementary major. We actually just became a major because our classes have been so popular and students are taking more than what is needed for the minor. It's one of the reasons why we did this, so now students have the opportunity to take it as a supplemental major. But it's just...

0:16:49.0 MM: I feel like that program is just so life-giving because it allows students the luxury to talk about education through a number of angles, through including the interdisciplinary perspective that students are coming from. So this semester in my class, I've got students in the College of Business, the College of Science, I've got a range of Arts and Letters majors.

0:17:09.4 MM: Some of them wanna be teachers, some of them just care about education, some of them are hoping to do education work in some way in the future, so they just wanna learn more. And so it just becomes this vibrant community of people who care about education in some way, and wanna talk about it in different ways and through different lenses. So it's just this... We're the most popular minor on campus, it's just become this really wonderful, vibrant community of professors and students that are talking about education in meaningful ways.

0:17:38.8 AS: Yeah, I think that's wonderful. I'm so glad that it's sort of gotten that promotion to supplemental. That's wonderful. So congratulations. What's directing you to be so interested in that literacy angle? You have so many important things that you're a part of because of it. Can you talk a little bit about that passion? 

0:17:58.4 MM: Yeah, I think what just sort of drove me was I just, I developed later on this kind of love of reading and of literature. And when I say "later on", I really feel like it was maybe later in high school, and then it's developed since then, of just kind of this love of reading or this appreciation for literature.

0:18:16.7 MM: The feelings that I have when I share that or when I talk to people about it, I think that's just always what has motivated me and what has driven me. That literacy element was always... It was my supervisor in ACE, when I was talking to her about grad school and thinking about moving forward, she got to know me pretty well and I got to know her and I really valued her as a mentor in addition to her being my supervisor.

0:18:39.1 MM: But she said, "I think it's more than just the literature that motivates you. In seeing you in the classroom, it's really about the teaching of this, and it's really about the teaching around this, that is what brings you joy and what brings you love and it's just what's... It's so apparent in the classroom." So that really helped me to see that it wasn't necessarily just about the literature, but just kind of like the animation of it in the classroom and helping students to see maybe the things that I appreciated or what could be appreciated, and really just to get students to enjoy reading.

0:19:09.1 MM: I remember my first year, a parent came up to me and she just said, "I don't know what you're doing, but my daughter loves reading this year, so please just keep doing it." I don't know what I was doing either. I just think that...

[chuckle]

0:19:20.0 MM: I really don't. I just think that it's something that I love and something that brings me joy, so to be able to share that with others, is just something that motivates me. I think that's something that comes across to the students that I teach now, whether it's my undergrads or whether it's the ACE teachers. I think sort of my zeal or my love or my passion, both for teaching and for what I'm teaching, is apparent.

0:19:47.2 MM: And it's not like a put on, it's just that I love talking about English, I love talking about books, and I love talking about how do we teach students about these things and what sort of animates our discipline. So that really kind of is what drives me, I think in the day-to-day and in the work that I do.

0:20:01.5 AS: It's really obvious that you do just really enjoy it, and I think that genuine and authentic joy is, "contagious" isn't the right word, but I think people want to know more about that and they want to maybe have that be a part of their lives. That comes from you and your presentation of it. Is there an element to the importance of story that is sort of underlying those things, something to connect to? Everyone has a story.

0:20:28.0 MM: That's a great question. I don't know that I've thought about it that way before, but I do think you're onto something there. When you asked the question about fiction or non-fiction, I gravitate towards fiction, but I think one thing that I appreciate about fiction is being able to learn about others who have had experiences different from my own. And that's...

0:20:48.2 MM: One of the classes that I teach here is a Multicultural Lit class, and that's just sort of the whole framework of that class is like, we're gonna read as many books as possible from as many different perspectives, and they're all fiction books. Now, they are written from the perspective of the author, so presumably the authors had experiences like that, but the idea is just that fiction can allow us this sort of imaginative, this imaginative window into what life is like for other people and how other people...

0:21:16.0 MM: How other people experience events similarly or differently from our own. So to that point, everyone has, I think everyone does have a story, and I think story ultimately is... What's the right way to say this? Stories ultimately do push us forward and do make us think differently or make us want to experience something maybe that we haven't experienced before.

0:21:37.5 MM: I think there's also a just age-old idea of art imitating life, life imitating art, that I think you see in books. Just sort of always been sort of driven to or driven by and fascinated by the, just some of the moral and ethical questions that a book could pose, and sort of thinking through that with a group of students maybe who are just at a nascent understanding of some of these big issues.

0:22:01.7 MM: So I remember some of the books that I loved teaching when I was teaching high school, like Lord of the Flies, it's a dark book, but there's just so many good questions that arise from that, and I think helping or genuinely talking with younger people, younger students about, "How would you answer this question, or how are you thinking about this?"

0:22:22.8 MM: To me, I just think that's what's so enriching about those experiences, and when else are you gonna be in a situation where you have 20, 30 some people together talking around one text and enjoying that as an opportunity to just think and to just sort of imagine, "What does this pose?" There's this... Can I'm keep going? 

0:22:41.7 AS: Yes please. [chuckle]

0:22:43.7 MM: There's this wonderful book right now, the author is Neal Shusterman, and he's written this... It's called Scythe, and it's this... It's a whole series. I recommend this book series to everyone. It's so phenomenal. And it's a YA book, so it's written for younger... It's written for teens. But the moral and ethical questions that that book poses, it really just makes you pause and think and reflect.

0:23:07.1 MM: To be able to talk through this with young people, even though it's fiction, has real life consequences and has real life ramifications for how they think about other people, how they interact with other people, how they live their own lives. I just think that fiction very much has real life effects, and to write a book like that that is fiction, that is imaginative, but can have real life effects, that's what it's all about, right? 

0:23:33.5 AS: That's very interesting, actually. I know that some of the work that you are currently contributing to, I guess, is maybe a more diverse reading list. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, why that's been important to you, and what some of the focus and future of that work is? 

0:23:53.8 MM: This all came about because in grad school, there was a class, an undergrad class that was... I can't remember the exact title. I think it might be very similar to what I call it now, but something that along the lines of issues of diversity in multicultural literature or something like that, and it was a Young Adult Lit class that had all multicultural literature.

0:24:12.7 MM: And as one of my assistantships they asked me to teach it. It wasn't really an ask, it was just like, "Here's what you're doing," and it was basically like, "Well, you've taught... You've taught before and you've taught English, so this is what you're gonna do." And I had not... As someone who had taught high school English, I taught whatever high school English classroom teaches, so I just was, it was a whole slew of books that was unfamiliar to me, and it was just sort of...

0:24:37.5 MM: I don't wanna say life-changing, 'cause I think that might sound like trite or overused, but it just really changed the way that I think about reading, changed the way that I think about books, and changed the way that I think about what matters in terms of what we put in our young people's hands.

0:24:55.3 MM: So to go back to what we were saying before, just kind of allowed me to experience life through other people's perspectives. That's the whole point of the class, is this idea of perspective-taking. "What does this book allow us to think about or to understand in light of someone else's experience that may or may not be similar to our own?" So that's really what kind of then motivated this... I don't know what to say. If it's like a love of mine or a hobby.

0:25:17.5 MM: Or just, I've just really come to appreciate young adult books, and especially young adult books that are just from a plethora of diverse authors with diverse experiences, and that's really where that came from. And then in grad school, having the opportunity to think about that, and I was so happy to bring that class here to Notre Dame when I came over, and it was something that ESS had wanted to offer for a while, so I was just so happy to have that in our slate of classes here.

0:25:43.0 MM: But we really just read a lot of contemporary books. When I say that, I mean within the past five years or so, and we just come to every book talk, every kind of conversation of just like, "What is this book doing to maybe challenge stereotypes, or to unlearn things that we've learned just sort of in growing up, or as part of our experiences in the world?"

0:26:09.2 MM: And so it's really a fun time because there's just been this kind of explosion in this renaissance of young adult and middle grade books that are just being written right now by, again, a range of diverse authors, and so it's just an exciting time to just pick up a book right now and read about someone else's experience. And that again, huge ramifications and implications for what we think about in classrooms and in schools today.

0:26:33.0 MM: That's really kind of whats lit my fire and it's kind of insatiable, I'm always looking for a book and probably to my own detriment because I keep getting books from the library or putting books on my good reads that I just don't have... I don't even have time to read right now. Or I'll check out three books at once from the library, and I'm just like, "This is impossible? There's no way that I'm gonna get to this."

0:26:57.0 MM: But I'm teaching that class next semester, and like I said, it's almost like a new slate of books every semester because I try to update it and I really try to keep it current, but the concepts, the skills, they're all there in terms of just like, what does this mean for our schools, and most importantly like our kids today? 

0:27:14.8 MM: What potential and possibility does this have for a kid to be reading a book that maybe has a similar experience to their own, or what potential does it have for a kid to read that is so unlike their own, it helps them to understand how other people experience the world? 

0:27:26.6 AS: I like that a lot. And actually, you started sharing a little bit earlier that you are not maybe the greatest reader, maybe you didn't enjoy reading as a young child yourself, but can you talk a little bit about how that changed for you? And then, what you hope to spark in the people that you teach? 

0:27:44.3 MM: At the end of the day, what I care about for my own students, what I care about for the students that our ACE teachers will teach, especially our English ones, at the end of the day, we just want kids to read. We just want life-long readers. And so what are we doing to really inspire lifelong readership? 

0:28:05.1 MM: For me, that just wasn't the case for me growing up in school. Part of it, I think the main part of it was just like reading was treated as a means to an end for a comprehension check, and for someone who wasn't a great reader and didn't like it to begin with, that was just really taxing and not motivating, and I just, I didn't know to the extent about good things that were out there.

0:28:26.7 MM: So it was sort of like I had this reading life outside of school that really was supported by my mom especially, but my parents, of just kind of things that I think people knew would be interesting to me if they were passing me books. But it really started with those comic books. I don't know what it was that I had this attachment, but I remember my first X-Men comic book, I was like, "This is so cool. Where was this?"

0:28:52.4 MM: And then kind of weird, by the time I got to high school, and I took this class that was British Literature that everybody had to take, so much of comics is informed by our rich literary tradition. And the things that we were reading in this British Literature class were things that I knew from comic books, and kind of like allusions, or just like, I don't know, just sort of I saw very much this crossover between sort of my extra reading life and my in-school reading life.

0:29:21.7 MM: And that's where I think it just kind of fermented this, "Mike's gonna be an English teacher," because I finally saw this crossover and this parallel. But that was disrupted for me by the time I got to grad school and I got this... I had to experience this other whole set of books in terms of genre and perspectives with young adult and multi-culturally, and so now I'm in this track of, I don't know, maybe this non-fiction track will pick up, I don't know.

0:29:49.8 MM: But there's kind of been this weird, I don't know, this kind of... What's the word? I'm picturing like a DNA strand of where things cross over sometimes, just going in different directions. And so I think that just speaks to, again, this overall idea of the power of reading and the way in which our reading can take off in some cases, and just sort of the role that reading can play in our lives in the real world, and just how it makes us think or believe or act differently.

0:30:17.4 MM: I think about it as just kind of this larger story of how reading has shaped the next steps for me, which maybe connects to my memoir, right, just like it really is these different sort of eras of reading that have spurred on the next step of my life or my career or whatnot.

0:30:39.4 AS: I like it. See, it's all coming together Mike. [chuckle]

0:30:41.5 MM: It genuinely really is. Sounds subconscious, it's like, "Next steps," and then here we go.

0:30:46.8 AS: When you get home tonight, "Chapter One."

[laughter]

0:30:51.8 AS: The Double Helix. For some reason I'm...

0:30:52.6 MM: That's what it is, yeah, yeah.

0:30:52.9 AS: I'm picturing The Double Helix, yeah. I have to maybe follow-up on one thing. You said you just want people to read, but do you really just want people to read, or you want people to broaden their minds be able to see points of view of other people? Is there really sort of an underlying deeper hope for you? 

0:31:11.7 MM: Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think you just hit on two of them there. 'Cause it's kind of subversive for me, 'cause I know with the reading is gonna come other things, and so if they're willing to pick up a book, then with that book may come... Even if it's just like from an English language arts standards perspective, like vocabulary development, or seeing a sentence written in a way that they hadn't seen before, sometimes even if it's something as minuscule as that, just kinda what reading is gonna do to push you further, to help you think differently.

0:31:49.4 MM: And then I just keep coming back to this idea that I do think even fiction books, I think books just have real ramifications in the world, in terms of how people think, behave, act, believe. And so that's really what it comes down to for me. I have a picture in my office that, "There's no such thing as a kid who hates reading, there's only kids who haven't found the right book yet."

0:32:06.8 MM: And so I really do believe that, that it does come down to just sort of helping, not just kids, but anyone just sort of like find the books, the books that are pushing them, or the books that are tapping into their interests and helping them to think differently or encourage them or motivate them or inspire them.

0:32:26.7 MM: Every time I read a Pat Conroy book, I'm just like... So he just writes so beautifully that I'm just inspired to write after that, even though I have no ambitions to write or whatever, I just need to sit down and I need to write something, because... So anyway, so even just something like that, this is what books do, they have real ramifications.

0:32:44.0 AS: I'm seeing a real future for this memoir.

[chuckle]

0:32:47.2 MM: Keeps coming back.

0:32:49.9 AS: That is Betsy's, "We are all readers and writers."

0:32:52.2 MM: "All readers and writers." So poetic there.

0:32:55.4 AS: Okay, I appreciate all those thoughts. I do wanna talk about another exciting element that's sort of tied to all of this, is the new award that you guys have created for new books. Actually, so I'm gonna let you tell us about it. It's called the Alexandria Award. We please tell us the genesis of this and what you're trying to do with it? 

0:33:14.6 MM: Yeah, I'm so excited about this project, and I feel like people are getting annoyed with me because I just keep talking about it, and I just wanna tell everybody about it because I just am so excited about it. So this award came from a couple of things, so number one, there's a lot of good research out there that says that teachers need books in their classrooms. Not just any books, but contemporary books, highly engaging books.

0:33:37.6 MM: There is a big push right now for thinking about social justice in the classroom, having diverse authors in the classroom, because we just haven't seen that in English classrooms to a large extent before. What's being taught has traditionally what's always been taught. And then with that, we also know that Catholic school teachers, especially English teachers, will use books to animate the faith as well and to talk about our faith.

0:34:00.6 MM: As we all know, the teachers lead very busy lives and they just don't have time sometimes to vet books or to find the new books or to find the right book, and so as I was reading some of these really good books, I was just like, "Man, this book should be in a classroom. There's no doubt in my mind."

0:34:17.1 MM: I read the book, Front Desk, which is about this girl in 5th grade who immigrates to America, into California from China with her parents, and it's just a phenomenal book, and I'm just like, "Why are we not... " 5th graders should be reading this book, there's no doubt in my mind. It talks about big issues like racism and immigration in such simple terms, that are just like, this is, even for me as an older person, it's just helping me to relearn things that I never knew before. Or to un-learn things I didn't know before.

0:34:46.9 MM: So that was kind of the impetus then behind this, and, "What could we do?" And I'm like, "What if we establish an award that would do this work for our teachers?" We would vet these books, we would pick a book, and then importantly, two important aspects of this, we would create some sort of short curriculum guide that would help teachers think about this book, in terms of everything we're talking about. Some framing of Catholic social teaching, some big questions, how they might go about teaching it.

0:35:14.6 MM: And then secondly, actually give them the book and get the book in their hands with the potential that they might take it up in their classroom, they might give it to a student. So that's the award then, I was like, "That's what we need to do here, is we need to just gift books to teachers with the curriculum guide that addresses social justice issues, that can talk about our faith, so it's not just literacy formation, but faith formation."

0:35:39.3 MM: And then one day I was reading The Daily Saint, and I read about Catherine of Alexandria, who was martyred at the age of 18. So automatically, I'm like, "We have a young person here." And then she loved school, she was a great student, she was a great orator apparently, and she was able to just with her oratory skills, she converted a bunch of people in ancient Egypt.

0:36:03.5 MM: She lived during ancient Egypt and was able to convert hundreds of people at a time to the faith, even to the point where it got to, I think it was like the emperor's wife, she managed to convert the emperor's wife, and at that point he had had enough and he's like, "You've converted my wife, now you gotta go," and so she's killed then.

0:36:20.3 MM: But talk about a, just like a tenacious teen who stands up to injustice, recognizes what is wrong and unfair and speaks out against it, knowing that this could have consequences for her own life. And for me, then that just clicked. I'm like, "We're gonna call it the Alexandria Award, it's gonna be named in honor of her." But there's also this layer of, Alexandria was the home of the great library, so it has this other added element to it.

0:36:43.3 MM: I love that anyone could pick this up and thinking like... I don't want them to dismiss the book because it maybe has a faith component to it, so by calling it The Alexandre award, I just feel like we're checking a bunch of boxes here. So that's where it came to be, and when I presented this to the folks that be around here, it's funny, the reaction that I got was, "You're thinking too small," or, "You've gotta go big with this."

0:37:07.8 MM: And so I just met with so much support over here, which I'm so grateful, grateful for. John Staud, Fr. Lou, Ernest Morrell, they were just all like, "We really need to take this to the next level." The book that's chosen will commemorate St. Catherine in some ways, in that we might see in the book iterations of St. Catherine in sort the young adult or middle grade protagonist, that is the award either.

0:37:32.5 MM: It's been in the works for a while now, and we're so close, December 1st, we're gonna make the formal announcement of the winner. Which I'm so excited about because it's been...

0:37:41.8 AS: It's just exciting.

0:37:43.2 MM: It's been a long time. My point with this though, is that this will... I'm confident that this will change classrooms. The fact that we are giving schools books, we're getting this into teachers' hands with a curriculum guide, this will change things. That will help teachers to really think about, "Is this a book I can feasibly bring into my classroom?" It's got Notre Dame and the Alliance for Catholic Education behind it. If we give them those pieces, then maybe this will actually change the literary landscapes of our classrooms.

0:38:15.2 AS: And I love the idea of you're trying to make concrete change. I love the word "tenacious", and I think maybe you have a little bit of that spirit in you.

0:38:26.2 MM: Thanks. [chuckle] That's what I mean. You were probably annoyed by the tenacity sometimes. But you know, Catherine, she just didn't care, she was just speaking up and she's like, "No, this is wrong." And so I think there's elements of that that we've lost today too. I just think in when we think about the current political climate, someone sometimes needs to stand up and just say, "No, this is wrong," or like, "Guys, this is a no-brainer."

[chuckle]

0:38:53.4 AS: Mike Macaluso, no-brainer.

0:38:54.2 MM: I know, right? Could I have... We got the medal. This is the actual medal.

0:38:57.2 AS: It's so pretty.

0:39:00.1 MM: I know. Isn't it beautiful? And I love how it's so shiny. So it's got Catherine on there. On the back it says, "Faith, courage, virtue, tenacity and advancing gospel values through literature." But wait, are you ready? This is where, listen. Did you hear that? 

0:39:14.6 AS: Oh my gosh. Yes.

0:39:16.3 MM: It's a heavy metal.

[chuckle]

0:39:18.5 AS: That's hilarious. First of all, for the audience members who have heard little sounds the whole time, Mike's Italian hand gestures may or may not be hitting the desk, etcetera. But that is a heavy metal. I could feel that from here.

0:39:32.6 MM: It is, right? So heavy metal with kids, right? Yeah.

0:39:36.8 AS: I don't see how it could lose. When you were thinking about doing something, why was an award something that was important? 

0:39:44.8 MM: When I say that teachers sometimes don't have the time to really vet books, I mean, one thing that... I think one place where teachers look and value and trust is awards, right? So when we think about famous awards, like the Newberry Award. The Caldecott, that's a picture book one. The Prince Award is for young adult literature.

0:40:01.9 MM: So awards matter when it comes to English language arts, and there's a lot of faith and trust in awards. And there's been a proliferation of awards too lately that focus in on specific angles, or an award that is looking for some specific aspect of an experience or topic or whatever in books.

0:40:29.6 MM: And so to me, that's why the award made sense here, 'cause this is something that people will recognize as it's been talked about, it's been vetted, it has a value to it. And again, coming from Notre Dame, coming from the Alliance for Catholic Education and the Center for Literacy Education, it will not be overlooked in that way, and so again, I just wanna say we're trying to do some of that work for our teachers, to just make it easier for them to adopt it for their classroom.

0:40:56.6 AS: Wonderful. I think you're a hopeful person, I think you look forward with hope. Is that true? How do you feel right now? We're heading into Thanksgiving and the Christmas season.

0:41:05.8 MM: Thank you for saying you think I'm a hopeful person. That's really nice. I mean, I think as we all know, it's been hard lately in the world stage, with everything going on, but ultimately I think that's who we're called to be, and I think that's who we are and we think about our faith.

0:41:21.1 MM: I think that's just like the story of Christ, of just sort of this ultimately hopeful image of we do resurrect. I think it's all the more special at Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon, I would like to think that I'd feel the same way even if Halloween were on the horizon. But it's just a special time of being even moreso thankful and grateful and hopeful, and the anticipation that comes with the holiday season.

0:41:50.2 MM: But yeah, I just think that's who we're asked to be and who we're called to be, is just a hopeful people, and I think there is a lot to be hopeful, and I think you can wanna think about young people and our students, there's just so much to look to in, in today's youth, that's inspiring and that's hopeful moving forward. I think that we're in good hands moving forward, when we think about the good folks that are out there.

0:42:15.5 AS: I love it, and I love the idea of sort of we're all readers, we're all writers, we're open to the possibilities that a book offers for all of us. What does literacy mean to you? Growing up it might've been like, "Oh, just reading," but I think it's larger than that. Can you help us understand? 

0:42:35.2 MM: The idea of literacy, I think has come a long way, and that originally it was just sort of pencil to paper, alphabetic writing, reading, but I think to what we've pointed to throughout this conversation, or I've pointed to throughout this conversation, is that literacy is not just decoding words on a page, it's not just something that is fixed or neutral, but it is something that matters in terms of how we interact in the world, how we know and understand the world, how we come and know to live in the world, and what it means for us to be literate beings, as opposed to just someone who can read words off of a page.

0:43:16.9 MM: All of that has implications, literacy has implications for the ways in which we know and understand the world, and therefore then live in the world and act in the world and be in the world.

0:43:28.2 AS: Thank you. I think that's a different way to consider it then maybe a lot of people think about literacy.

0:43:34.6 MM: And that's something I sort of just take for granted now, is like that's just the way that I think about it, so I don't articulate that. But that might be a good way.

0:43:41.1 AS: I really appreciate that, and I think the idea of literacy will continue to evolve. I think it's critical that people see themselves, as you say, as literate beings, and that doesn't just mean how fast you can read or your vocabulary. It means much more than that.

0:43:55.9 MM: Yeah, values, beliefs. All that comes down to how we are instructed to read, to write, to think, to be.

0:44:03.5 AS: Absolutely, and I think that that helps inform why some of these things are so important to you and others, and all of us here working on side by side, open minds, connectivity, tenacity, all kinds of good stuff. No-brainer.

0:44:19.8 MM: No-brainer.

[laughter]

0:44:22.2 AS: But thank you so much, but...

0:44:24.3 MM: Oh my goodness, thank you.

0:44:26.0 AS: I really had such a fun time chatting with you. No surprise there. Thank you so much for your energy, for all of your hard and passionate and your genuine authentic self is just wonderful, so thank you so much for everything, Mike.

0:44:35.6 MM: Well, thank you, Audrey. I do wanna say too, I do appreciate this series, it's really fun. I work with these people on a day-to-day, so it's kind of fun when I'm doing stuff to have the series playing in the background and just kinda learning a little bit more about my colleagues and to see what pushes them and how they think about things. So I love the series. Think-Pair-Share.

0:44:54.8 AS: That is so kind of you. Thank you so much. What an enormous compliment that is.

0:45:00.5 MM: Oh my goodness. Well, I love the work that you do and so appreciative for you, Audrey. So thank you so much.

0:45:04.2 AS: Thank you so much, Mike. Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.

0:45:08.5 MM: Okay. Can't wait. Can't wait to listen to this.

0:45:09.3 AS: Thanks, Mike.

0:45:10.8 MM: Okay. We'll see you later. Thank you.

0:45:10.9 AS: Bye bye.

[music]

0:45:12.8 AS: And thank you all for joining us for Think-Pair-Share. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. Check out our website at iei.nd.edu/media, for this and other goodies. Thanks for listening, and for now, off we go.

[Closing music]