Words from the Heart

Recently, I greeted an acquaintance with, "Happy Holidays!"  What I received in return was the most unexpected reply, "Come on, Linda, you mean Merry Christmas, don't you?" Since I knew that this particular person was Christian, it might have seemed more appropriate to wish a Merry Christmas as I left, but we were in a public venue with people who I knew did not celebrate the Christian holy day of Christmas, let alone the secular version.  So... the greeting of Happy Holidays as I was leaving seemed very appropriate. As you can see from the picture above, there are many Holy/holi days in the winter months.  The ones pictured include six that are not Christian. Since I work, live and communicate in a multicultural, multi-faith traditioned society, I believe wishing others a happy holiday is A. kind, B. thoughtful and C. more than appropriate. I also think about that adage that many use, "What would Jesus do?"  Well, first of all, Jesus wouldn...

As part of my final year in Graduate Studies, I am doing a Leadership Project. The project I am developing is a wiki for classroom teachers here in Massachusetts to use in order to help the diverse population of students in their classrooms find a connection in Language Arts Classes. As our classrooms become more diverse, we need to be able to access literature/poetry from the countries from which our students come. The "ideal" would be to find books/poetry that have been translated into English so that the teacher might have the ability to read and understand the same text as the student. However, less than "ideal" will work just fine. So, here is my challenge to any of my international readers...Send me the names (links to websites if you have them) of the poets and authors you loved best as a child or that your child loves best. Please tell me what country the author/poet is from and in what language they are writing. Thank you for your help!