I have a Youtube playlist where I read aloud from 19th Century American literary texts, and I thought I’d share those here. In addition to reading the texts, I add my own commentary and analysis. I hope you enjoy them.
Category: critical engagement
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House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt, Ch 2c
I have a Youtube playlist where I read aloud from 19th Century American literary texts, and I thought I’d share those here. In addition to reading the texts, I add my own commentary and analysis. I hope you enjoy them.
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Learning is Your Responsibility
Learning is your responsibility.
Learning is your responsibility.
Learning is your responsibility.
How does that sit with you? Does the phrase stir a hallelujah in your soul, because you recognize you can and should navigate your way through daily learning? Or does the phrase rattle through you, convicting you of allowing others to determine your learning, or worse, paying no heed to your learning at all?
If your soul is singing an anthem of praise or a dirge of despair right now, as an educational enrichment community, LELA House is here to help you make learning a daily activity.
If you are in school, make learning a daily activity.
If you are out of school, make learning a daily activity.
Sometimes we need reminders to make learning a daily activity.
The article “8 Benefits of Lifelong Learning” urges readers to adopt the practice of intentional learning for the following reasons.
- Improving self confidence
- Fighting boredom
- Maintaining brain health
- Learning skills
- Modeling positive behavior
- Learning for the sake of enjoyment (of course!)
- Sleeping better
- Staying healthy
LELA House supports intentional learning as a daily activity through coaching, courses, and community.
Check out the LELA House enrichment tracks and sign up for what best fits your current learning needs.
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House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt, Ch 2b
I have a Youtube playlist where I read aloud from 19th Century American literary texts, and I thought I’d share those here. In addition to reading the texts, I add my own commentary and analysis. I hope you enjoy them.
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Why You Should Create Daily
Apparently I’m writing a series “Why you should…daily.” I didn’t set out to write a series, but here we are. Today’s topic is why you should create daily (as cleverly demonstrated in the title, a meta homage to unintentionally creating a blog series), but if you want to check the other posts in the series, please click “Why You Should Read Daily” and “Why You Should Write Daily.”
Let’s start with what it means to create. Merriam Webster lists the following definitions for create.
- “to bring into existence”
- “to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior”
- “to produce through imaginative skill”
Even if you’re a self-avowed uncreative, chances are good you already create something every day. Do you cook? Then you create? Do you doodle? Then you create? Do you engineer? Then you create. Do you play a sport? Then you create.
Like with daily writing, a key to reaping the benefits of daily creating is doing so with intentionality. Once you recognize and focus on the act of creating, and determine to incorporate it as a habit in your life, you open yourself to growing in the following ways.
- Improved problem-solving ability – Creating helps you see new and unlikely solutions in every aspect of your life.
- Increased discipline – If you can allow yourself to be creative for at least a few minutes every day, then you can allow yourself to do something else for a few minutes every day.
- Expanded creativity – The more you create, the more you create.
- Increased productivity – Recognizing that you have to allot time for creativity will help you examine how you spend time generally.
- Enlarged skillset – Not only will you learn how to do whatever you’re doing better, you’ll open yourself to learning how to create new things.
- Heightened self-awareness – Creating allows you to learn what you enjoy, what you believe, and what you think and then discover ways to express those revelations and share them with the world.
If you’re interested in learning how LELA House can enrich your creating, sign up for LELA House emails HERE.
And comment below with what you’re creating currently. My current creating projects are in the comments, too.
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House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt, Ch 2a
I have a Youtube playlist where I read aloud from 19th Century American literary texts, and I thought I’d share those here. In addition to reading the texts, I add my own commentary and analysis. I hope you enjoy them.
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Connect, Read, & Write at LELA House
Learn how reading and writing with others can help you learn, improve your discipline, push your thinking, and create lasting connections.
Stay connected by signing up for LELA House emails HERE.
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Why You Should Write Daily
Last week I posted about why you should read daily, and I thought I would follow that with reasons to write every day. Like with reading, a Google search yielded copious results extolling the virtues of a daily writing habit, so please seek out additional reasons besides what I will discuss in this post, if you are interested in finding out more.
You already write daily. Building on a practice you already have is much easier than starting afresh. At some point today, you will write a text, an email, a to-do list, a grocery list, a reminder on a post-it, a journal entry, something. Since you already write every day, the next step is to do so with intention and build on your good work.
You will write with intention. Now that you recognize you write every day, you can start to focus on outcomes from your writing besides the obvious boons of communicating with a friend or colleague and making sure to buy all the ingredients for your recipe.
- You can write to learn about the world. What do you want to know? Make a list. What do you already know about that topic? Make a list. What connections can you make between two seemingly disparate ideas (eg: falconry and the color wheel)? Writing helps you investigate, categorize, define, and explain concepts.
- You can write to learn about yourself. Keep a dream journal or a log of your daily activities. Write down what frustrated you today. Write about what you’re grateful for. Writing helps you reflect, clarify your thinking, and keep a record of how far you have come. Don’t believe me? Look at something you wrote a few years ago and what you write about that same thing today. You’re not the same person you were then, and your writing can help you see your growth.
- You can write to relax. This closely aligns with writing to learn about yourself. Writing down your frustrations, fears, anxieties, and ideas gets those concepts out of your head and onto the page. Once you’ve corralled them, those thoughts no longer take up valuable mental space and energy, leaving you room to unwind and destress.
You will become a better writer. Writing is a skill you can learn and practice. The more you do it, the better you will become at it.
You just might change the world. Entire world shifts and revolutions have been sparked by the written word. Of course I mean famous documents such as the bible, the Declaration of Independence, and Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb,” but I also man the notes and scribblings and journal entries that daily inspire people to live boldly and courageously. Writing is a transformational tool with the power to reshape individuals and entire societies.
If you’re interested in learning how LELA House can enrich your writing, sign up for LELA House emails HERE.
And comment below with what you’re writing currently. My current writing projects are in the comments, too.
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House Behind the Cedars by Charles Chesnutt, Ch 1b
I have a Youtube playlist where I read aloud from 19th Century American literary texts, and I thought I’d share those here. In addition to reading the texts, I add my own commentary and analysis. I hope you enjoy them.
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Why You Should Read Daily
I googled “Why you should read daily” and got 3.5 billion hits in .99 seconds. I recognize you don’t need me to tell you why you should read every day, but I feel like I have a little something to add to the discussion.
You’ll have fun. If you read what you enjoy, you will enjoy reading. Often we think we should read this thing or that thing, and that’s when reading becomes a chore. Sometimes we are pressed to read things we don’t like, but just because you’re reading something you don’t like doesn’t mean you can’t find something you do like.
You’ll discover what you like to read. The more you read, the wider your reading selections become. And in broadening your reading diet, you’ll learn you enjoy more genres and styles than you previously imagined.
You’ll learn about yourself. Reading puts you in the middle of situations you may have never encountered in your real life. Through these opportunities, you learn how you feel about certain topics, how you believe you would react in certain situations, and how much stress you can take before hurling a book across a room.
You’ll learn about others. Reading puts you in the middle of situations you may have never encountered in your real life. Yep, I just said it, but I’m saying it again. Through these opportunities, you’ll learn about perspectives that differ from your own, about mores and value systems you didn’t know existed, and how to empathize with people who aren’t like you.
You’ll become critically engaged. Reading forces you to examine writing patterns and styles. You may not recognize you’re doing so, but the more you read, the more you recognize what works and what doesn’t work in writing. You learn what persuasive arguments look like, how to describe a beautiful sunset, and how to keep an audience engaged. And as you learn these things, you begin applying them to your own writing. Additionally, you learn more about topics that matter to you and about the world more broadly. Reading makes you an informed citizen of the world, all without leaving your comfy chair.
You’ll change the world. Reading helps you learn, and learning changes you. Once you’ve learned something, you live differently based on the knowledge you’ve acquired. The new way you show up in the world affects those around you and around them and so on and so on, until your circle of influence reaches infinity.
Do you want to learn your unique design, become critically engaged and change the world? Read a book. Who knows where it will take you.
If you’re interested in learning how LELA House can enrich your reading, sign up for LELA House emails HERE.
And comment below with what you’re reading currently. My current reads are in the comments, too.