Same Sun Here Author Visit

Each year, the St. Michael’s College Education department has a common read for everyone throughout the department, and typically invites the author to visit for a talk at the school. This year, we read the epistolary novel Same Sun Here written by Silas House and Neela Vaswani, and had the chance to listen to Neela Vaswani talk about the book in mid-October. At the talk, she discussed the process of writing the book and why she included certain aspects of the plot, but she also mentioned how to teach the book to students and was also open to ideas about other possible ways to teach the book. One aspect of the event that I really appreciated was learning about how she and her co-author wrote the novel, which consisted of sending letters back and forth to each other, without discussing their any of the content in person. The novel itself is written through letters between a young girl from India living in New York City and a young boy from Kentucky, and each of the authors, according to Neela, has a personal connection to each of their characters. Silas House wrote as the young boy from Kentucky named River, and Neela wrote as the girl living in New York City named Meena. As a reader of the book, I really like that they chose to take this genuine approach, and as an educator, I really appreciated the thoughts shared by Neela Vaswani on different ways to teach the book.

Attending this event allowed me to draw connections between the Vermont Educator Performance Criterion and the St. Michael’s College Education department mission statement.  One performance criterion that this event connects to is 10.1: Candidates are prepared to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure student learning. At this event, she welcomed new ideas to teaching this book and we also looked at more specific ways to teach the novel in our education classes. We were split up into groups to come up with a learning activity based around this book. My group decided that one engaging and purposeful way to examine this book would be to stage a debate around mountaintop removal, which is something River, as a character, struggles with in his hometown in Kentucky. This Performance Criterion is also connected to this event because, in my opinion, one of the most influential demonstrations of learning and growth from a student is through student activism, which was also a topic discussed at the author’s talk. River portrays an example of a student activist in the book by standing up to the governor at the State House fighting for tougher environmental regulations to protect the beauty of his hometown, and Neela touched upon how this book could inspire students in our classrooms to become activists in their own communities. One way we as educators could facilitate this type of student activism would be to allow for a opportunity for students to perhaps write to a local official, or even a state congress or senate official. This aspect of education connects to the St. Michael’s College Education Department mission statement, which states “Our graduates are change agents committed to social justice and sustainability”.

After the event, there were two main themes that stood out to me which I will take away with me as a future educator. These two themes were the importance and value of interdisciplinary learning and the collaborative process it took to compose the novel they wanted. After reading and analyzing the novel Same Sun Here it is apparent to anyone in the field of education that this book could be used to teach from multiple different perspectives, and from multiple content areas, as well. I think novel’s like these are serve students well because this type of book doesn’t compartmentalize valuable learning concepts. One could look at many different factors, from friendship building, to mountaintop removal, to fixed housing prices. Studying a book like this in a class does not put student thinking in a box, but rather would assist in sparking young student’s imagination due to all of the different angles an educator could take while teaching a book like this.

The second takeaway from this event that I value as an educator was gaining insight on the collaborative process the two authors went through to produce a genuine novel of letters.  The two authors knew each other quite well before beginning the novel, so they knew if they wanted to create the book they both had envisioned, it had to be done by actually sending each other letters and really pretending to be their characters. I may not be a co-author of a book anytime soon, but I do plan on collaborating with colleagues inside of my content area and outside of my content area with other teachers and school professionals to ensure student learning and growth. One key point she had for working in a pair like this was that she had to respect his ideas (and vice-versa), even when the book was not going in the direction one of them may have wished. This makes me think, as a future educator, how important it is to always add your opinion, but most importantly, how important it is for you to listen to other’s opinions and try to make compromises when differences arise.