MOTIVATION WEDNESDAY: CAN WE INSPIRE OURSELVES TO CHANGE?

     I've followed a fascinating blog, synthesis, by Shafeen Charania, a Microsoft engineer-turned-advocate-for-educational-change. (Okay, he has some other interests, too.) Other education blogs -- including my own -- should be so insightful.
     Some of you who are reading this blog do not know of a former time when it was believed we could make huge changes in schools. I was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, and I learned of Kozol. Kohl. Holt. Herndon. Perhaps it is that I am in the Midwest, but what I've basically seen since then -- definitely in the elementary classroom -- is what we've had for so long. Basals (or whatever their name of the day is -- anthologies? They are still basals). Worksheets. Some excellent novels and poems. Other excellent projects. But our basals still structure and rule the day.
     And the NCLB testing looms over us most of the year.
     Charania writes in his February 21 post of an education system that actually serves the public, not just offers shallow promises, a place where children from all levels educate together. He refers to the founder of a unique educational setting in California, a school that teaches by doing, by experiencing, by "becoming." This is no new theory -- I heard of it when I studied at the University of Wisconsin -- but then it was just talk and promises. In most places, it still is. Except at this High Tech High band of schools, from what Charania says, and a few other places.
     "We've made education complex -- it isn't," says Charania. I wanted to shout in agreement. "We've created a system whose rules require a book that's several inches thick...[Here he speaks of how school staff only cares about passing No Child Left Behind testing, and boy, is he wrong, but I doubt he has a clue as to what NCLB demands really are, so I'll forgive him.] We've forgotten that it is about graduating children whose future is profoundly more brilliant than anything we might conceive." Who could say it better?
     I call this post "Motivation Wednesday." I think I just motivated myself to change my reading classroom, to try to recapture why I came into education in the first place.
     I'll start right after we finish -- and pass -- NCLB testing.

GREAT NEW YA READS (AND ONE DISAPPOINTMENT)

   I just finished three middle grade/YA books. Two I'd highly recommend; one Iw suggest you ignore:


   Collins's The Hunger Games is about a futuristic America -- not exactly doomsday, but might as well be. Excellent, clever, creative -- good development of character, excellent sense of setting and intrigue  -- each time I thought I knew what would happen next, up to the very end -- well, I didn't.


   Brown's Hate List, the story of a school shooting, kept me riveted; I read until my eyes wouldn't focus, but I continued on until I finished the book. Characters very realistic and full of unique voices. I was also impressed that Brown didn't focus on the violence or (any) sex but rather the emotional turmoil and events both before and after the shooting.

   Now Grisham's Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer was a major disappointment. As tightly woven as many of Grisham's novels are, I was unhappy -- and concerned -- about his first venture into kids' books. He apparently underestimates the intellect of young readers; he brought in characters/events/ideas, then dropped them with little or no development. If I could get my money back from Barnes and Noble, I would.

RAINING FISH IN AUSTRALIA

     Now if anything will encourage creative writing and discussion, credible tales of fish raining down on Australia last month ought to do it.
     The fish were alive.
     Objects crashing down from the heavens apparently has its place in history. Spiders, hard boiled eggs, mice, frogs, crosses, blood, and more have been reported by reliable sources. Villagers in one town in Honduras take out pails each year to collect the fish that fall during the rainy season. Scientists guess why this occurs, but every answer has problems.
     It's a fascinating read for your students and children. Even more fascinating might be the stories they create to explain this phenomenon.
    
    

KIM: FOCUSING HER PARENTS, TOO?

https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fzenhabits.net%2Ffeed%2F

  
     Kim*, one of my younger students, lights up whenever she sees me.
     Okay, it doesn't take much to get most little ones to like you. Smile a lot. Tell a few jokes. (They don't even have to be funny.) Hold their hand -- if they want to -- as you walk down the hall. Show them you care. (How could you not?)
     No wonder people like to work with the primary grades. Such unconditional love.
     Kim, however, misplaces her assignments, her classroom teacher tells me. She loses books. And her reading lags far behind that of the other children.
     I listen to Kim as she reads. She skips words, misses others I just gave her, reverses the letters of "slap." Sight words she should know she doesn't.
     As soon as Kim joins my class, I see what the teacher has reported. Kim checks out a book from me but has excuse after excuse why she doesn't bring it back. "It's on my table," she says, or it's on her bed, or it's in the car. When she does finally return it after three weeks and checks out a new one, that, too, takes over a week to return. Meanwhile, the students talk in class, and I hear Kim is in dance class and something else, either Scouts or baseball.
     I try to set up a time to meet with her parents. One meeting is missed. A second one never quite materializes. Phone calls are exchanged, but her mom can talk but a moment. I run into her in the hallway, and I can tell she is frazzled. "I'll call you," she says, stretching her fingers into that unmistakable handset shape. Of course I don't get the call.
     Everyone today, it seems, is overloaded. This certainly seems to be Kim's family. But I'm afraid that by trying to do more for their daughter, her folks may actually be doing less. What Kim needs now is structure. A bit of playtime when she gets home. Chores. Homework. Reading. Dinner and family time. Packing her book bag for the next day. Bath. Storytime. Bed. Other activities saved for the weekend.
     And filling up with stories. Learning to read well.
     This prescription isn't for everyone. But for Kim, yes, Kim needs this. Her other things will wait while she catches up on her reading, while her life organizes a bit saner.
     Then it will be time for her to go out and conquer the world.
*Name changed
PHOTO CREDIT: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickz/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

KEVIN: TERRIBLE TIME WITH READING COMPREHENSION, BUT MAYBE....

     I knew going in to the testing -- the No Child Left Behind testing -- that Kevin* might not pass. In fact, there was every reason to assume he wouldn't. His answers during reading class, during science and social studies and anything that required reading comprehension were all over the board, and usually they showed how little he really understood what he read. How did he get some of his bizarre answers we never knew.
     Of course his score wouldn't really affect him personally. It would not be posted in the grade book, and we didn't have to tell him whether or not he passed. Or we could always lie.
     But his passing, of course, did matter to the school. There was very, very little room for kids not to pass or major money would be lost to the district. With our large population of minority students, we were always on the edge.
    And Kevin's parents were so concerned about his abilities. He had often enough scored Ds or Fs. They vacillated between encouragements and reprimands.
    I could always use more training -- I'm always open to that -- but I did had one major strategy I had practiced over and over with the students: read only 2-3 lines, stop, paraphrase the reading. Do not, do not, I lectured, continue until they could restate what they had read. Do not. Work through the passage, no matter how painful.
     But at the testing, I couldn't tell Kevin what to do. I couldn't stop him when he barreled through a passage, not stopping once, typical for my students. Besides, if anything, we teachers want to know if what we are doing with the kids works. Stopping every few lines doubles the time it takes to read a passage. Was it worth it? Besides, sometimes this seemed to help; other times, he still missed so many.
     Wonders be, Kevin followed through. Stopped after the first three lines. Looked away. Tried to recite. Couldn't. Reread. Still couldn't. Reread. Never once looked over at me with his usual questioning face, just looked ahead and recited to himself. For each passage he may have reread it  4 times, sometimes 5 or 6. Amazing his inability. (Hadn't it improved any with all our practicing?) Amazing his tenacity. Exactly what was he thinking about the first 3 or 4 times he read the lines?
     And when he came to the questions, he only looked back twice to check his answers. No! That had been my second strategy I had hammered into the students. I was ready to, well, bang his head a bit -- a lot! (If only doing so would help!)
     But wait, he was getting the answers. Really. Well, almost all of them. Usually, by now he would have missed half. Hey, were we on to something? Could Kevin actually be taught to read -- and concentrate -- at the same time, something so basic for so many of us, yet apparently so out of his reach?
     And would the solution be that simple? How could it be?
     * Name changed.

BABIES -- WHY DO THEY SPEAK LIKE BABIES?

     For those of you interested in the early development of language in children, you might want to look at the article by J. Hartshorne in Scientific America or the recent one in the Boston Globe on J. Snedeker's work. Both discuss the current theories of how children acquire language. Hartshorne separates the discussion into that of language learned by native speakers, language learned by adoptees (ages 2-5), and  adult immigrants. Hartshorne argues that it might be the strength of the speaker's eventual vocabulary, and not developmental age, that determines the acquisition speed and complexity of her language skills. But the limited skills of immigrants brings into the discussion of a critical period for learning language efficiently; i.e. before a certain age. It appears a fascinating line of research.

WORD GAMES, JAMES LIPTON, AND A CHALLENGE

     For those of you with children around you who enjoy word games,  James Lipton of "Inside the Actor's Studio" tells of his foray years ago to unearth the terms we use for groups of things -- a gaggle of geese, a pride of lions, the charm of finches. He discovered more in 15th century texts (adding a few of his own): a charm of finches, a parliament of owls, a cry of players, an outback of Aussies, the unkindness of ravens, a quicksand of credit cards, a rash of dermatologists, the superfluidity of nuns, an acre of dentists, the acne of adolescents, a  queue of actors. He added some of his own and filled over 300 pages in The Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition. What a challenge for those around you, to create their own...