Karen Olson's Page

As we move more and more into a digital world, young adults today need to be familiar with the literacies of the 21st Century. As librarians and teachers, we need to be even more familiar with them so that we can teach our students about them. It can seem very daunting, this task of learning new literacies so that we can pass this new found knowledge on to our students, but it is vital that we do so. Students are dependant on our instruction to see them successfully into their… Continue

As I thought about what place the teaching of war and peace has in the classroom, it ocurred to me that you really can't teach one without teaching the other. Students need to be taught what both peace and war encompass so that they can compare and contrast the two. By doing this, students gain the ability to choose what they believe. When only one aspect is taught, students are essentially told what to believe.



History is a vast area of study. Every event in history can be told from… Continue

From and educational view point, I think that sports can enrich the education of young people, not just through participation, but academically as well. Sometimes students will read about someone they look up to and are interested in, when otherwise they wouldn't read at all. In this sense, biographies about famous athletes are great. These biographies are also good in that they talk about more than just the sports part of the athlete's lives and lets the kids see them as real people too.… Continue

The article "Multicultural Literature and Young Adolescents: A Kaleidoscope of Opportunity" by Susan M. Landt was very informative and got me thinking about how important this type of literature is for the students who utilize the secondary level school library. Prior to reading her article, I had never given that much thought. Landt mentions that it is sometimes difficult to bring literature about non-mainstream cultures to the attention of young adults. I will need to find creative ways to… Continue

I found the article "Finding Refuge from Life and All That" by Michael Cart very interesting and thought provoking. It got me thinking about when I used to read as a child and as a young adult. When I was small I liked the age old fairy tales where good overcomes evil and the heroine lives happily every after with Prince Charming. As I got a little older and entered adolescence, I liked stories that grabbed me from many different genres. Some of them were fantasy, some were mystery, and some… Continue