To Hell in a Handbasket

Like most teachers I know I've been spending a portion of these summer days preparing for next fall. I read professional books, look back over some of my notes from this past year, and dream about changes for this next group coming in. I hope to be a better teacher. And well I should, given the state of education today. Just today I read...

If you read the newspaper, you know the American education system has gone past the point where it is simply failing to educate our young, and is now actively reducing their intelligence. Hardly a day goes by when you don't see an article like this:

WASHINGTON -- The National Association of People Who Worry About These Things (NAPWWATT) today reported that this year's graduating high-school seniors are even dumber than last year's, many of whom are still stumbling around the back of the auditorium trying to get their commencement gowns off. NAPWWATT reported that 66 percent of this year's seniors failed a nationwide scholastic test consisting of the question, "What does a duck say?"

This is pretty pathetic. When I was in high school, we were expected to know what a duck says. Oh, sure, I've forgotten a lot of this stuff, but at least I used to know it, which gives me the right to express smug contempt thinly disguised as grave concern for the young people of today.

This is Dave Barry sarcastically poking fun at our education system. The fact that this piece, Why Johnny is Dum, is making light of the fact that the media feels as though American students are getting less and less intelligent each year isn't such a surprise. What gets me is that this was written twenty-six years ago. If our kids were on the downward slide in 1985 imagine how dim-witted they must be by now.

I, of course, would have to disagree - at least with regards to the kids I've known over the past ten or fifteen years. Each spring I see what my students are capable of doing and know full-well that they are much more complex thinkers than I ever was in grade school. Though that's not really saying much. I was in grade school back in 1985.

But like all of us, teachers included, Dave Barry truly wants to see our kids become better learners and achieve more. Although, his motives for this may be a bit misplaced:

Like any responsible parent, I want my son to get the best possible education, because I am sick to death of having to read his Masters of the Universe comic books to him. All the male characters wear loincloths, all the females have breasts like grain silos, and all the dialogue sounds like this (from The Stench of Evil):

SKELETOR: Stinkor, with your powerful SMELL, I would like you to spread your FOUL ODOR where the air is clean, and bring MISERY to a place that is full of happiness!

STINKOR: YES! YES! I revel in all that is FOUL!

Our goal as a nation must be to develop, by next fall, an educational system that will teach my son how to read this drivel for himself, ideally on his first day.

A lofty goal, to be sure. Maybe I oughta get back to work.

Young Authors

I had the pleasure of spending a day with a really great group of writers today. Sure, there were published authors like Lesa Cline-Ransom, Stephen Swinburne, Anthony Fredericks, and Sneed Collard III. But they weren't my favorites. No, the highlight of my day was the ten fourth grade authors who entertained and amazed me with their antics, smiles, and love of reading and writing.

Together we spent a little over five hours in Ballentine, South Carolina at the Young Authors Conference. This conference provides an opportunity for fine young writers around the state to spend a day listening to the life stories and advice of published authors from around the country. If they had anything like this when I was a kid I sure never heard anything about it. What an opportunity.

Here were a few highlights...

*   Not long after meeting one another we sat down to await our first author visit and wrote a poem together. Thanks to the inspiration from Deanna's story about a snake that once blew up in her uncle's microwave we wrote the following acrostic poem together. For those who are not familiar with acrostics, the first letter of each line spells out the topic of the poem as you read down.

Mice should never be put
In the microwave
Cause they will
Royally blow up and get
On your mother's
Walls
And she'll be
Vacuuming guts off
Everything

*  At lunch the kids had the greatest conversation about their favorite books. Since only two of them knew each other we were all pretty much strangers. This created the perfect opportunity for each of them to share the authors and stories they love most. "Oh my gosh, Blood on the River is THE best book ever written," exclaimed Autumn. "You HAVE to read it!" This went on and on so I pulled out a small notebook from my backpack and asked everyone to tell me one book that I just have to buy for my classroom. The list they created was great: Blood on the River, Savvy, Percy Jackson, Rainbow Fairies, Taste of Blackberries, The Hunger Games, Found, 39 Clues, How to Steal a Dog, and A Dog on His Own. "Perfect," I told them. "I'll get these and tell my readers how much you loved them. I'm sure they won't be able to wait!"

*  "Have you read Little Women," Deanna asked me. I hadn't. "Well, it's really good. I only just started it and haven't read much though. We have to take an Accelerated Reader test after each book to earn points and we have to have 4.2 points every week. So I can't read too much of Little Women at a time because I have to keep reading shorter books to get my points." "How sad!" I responded, trying to bite my tongue and not make a judgmental statement about her teacher. "Yeah, but when I get my points for this nine weeks then I'll be able to read it more."

* On our way back from lunch Jonathan, one of only two boys in our group of ten, told me "I'm writing this series right now called 'Framed.' It's about...". He joyfully told me all about it. You could tell it was important to him. "I've only just finished the first book but I'm going to be starting the second one soon."

*  "Do you publish books here?" Ezekiel asked. "What?" I asked. "Do you publish books here? You know, when you finish them?" "Oh," I said. "I don't teach here. But I'm sure they do. At least I hope so. Don't you? My class actually publishes their writing to a blog on the internet so that everyone can read it and respond to it." "Cool," he answered. I later noticed him writing during one of the presentations. He was jotting something down in the back of his writing notebook. During a break I asked him if I could see it. He had created a list of his favorite songs and was adding to it each day. He was currently on #73. Jonathan grabbed the notebook from me and started rifling through Ezekiel's pages. "Chris, you've got to see this!" he said. "He's writing this really long story." Sure enough there was a story titled Jake the Spy. The cover page read A slight of comedy...A lot of action. Flipping through it I saw that it was seven chapters long and consisted of twenty or so pages. "Wow," I said. "Yeah, I've been writing it since I was in second grade. I'm in the fourth grade now."

*  "When are we going to write?" Jaden asked during lunch. "Yeah," someone else joined in. "Is this all listening or will we get to write, too?" I didn't know for certain but I was  pretty certain it would be all sitting and listening. As great as these authors were, the kids wanted to show what they could do as well. I didn't blame them. During one of the sessions Jaden sat at my side writing poems and passing them over to me to read.

Cats like to
fidget with playtoys
in stores and
cages that may
not hold
gorillas
but do hold
peacocks

She also wrote an acrostic using the word "Boring." I'm not sure it was so much the authors she was frustrated with but the lack of opportunity to write together. There were others sneaking away small moments to write. I saw Autumn working in her notebook as well. I asked to read it and saw that she had a descriptive piece about a lake. A passage from her piece read "Out of the reeds a family of swans glide silently behind each other breaking the lake surface into a pond of ripples. Dragonflies play hide and seek darting behind the reeds." The whole piece was really cool and she was proud when I asked if I could jot some of it down into my own notebook. "I want to share this with some other writers I know," I told her.

* Kylie told me "I'm going to write these two books called Crime Scene Kate and Medusa Vacation. One is a about a girl who solves crime and the other is about Medusa going to the beach and turning people to stone." "Oh my gosh," I said. "Can I write that down? I'd like to share your ideas with my kids. Those sound like they'll make really interesting stories."

*  Annelise shared with me a list of "bad" words she had memorized. With the help of Autumn she explained that they weren't really BAD words so much as WEAK words. Words you should avoid in your writing. The list she recited included: very, absolutely, am, is, are, was, were, be, been, bring, do, did, does, have, has, had, may, might, must, can, could, shall, should, will, would, really, bad, a lot, and all right. Hearing this, Jasmine responded "Absolutely isn't a weak word. It's juicy!"

*Kylie shared the drawings of horses she had made a few days ago. They were truly amazing. Everyone was in awe of her artistic abilities. She's clearly going to illustrate her own stories. Her favorite type of story? Animal fiction.

By the end of the day I was a bit exhausted from waking up early on a Saturday and sitting for such long periods of time. However, I hated for it to end. We had a great time together, heard a lot of great advice on writing, and had some wonderful conversations around reading and writing. Best of all, my daughter Harper was there to share it with me. She loved the group just as much as I did and was quick to jump in with her own favorite books and stories. On the way to the conference she sat in the back seat working on a biography she's writing about Paula Deen. After the conference she was anxious to buy a book or two and jump in line to get autographs from the authors. Not athletes or movie stars. Authors.

At some  point the kids asked why I was writing down so many of the things they were talking about. I told them I was going to go home and write about our day together and post it to the internet. "All these authors told us to write about what we know," I said. "That's what I'm planning to do." I gave a few of them the address to this blog so they could read about themselves. So here it is guys. I hope you enjoyed it. You all are truly amazing and I hope to see you again next year!

The Worst Kind of Teacher

I had a bad day last Thursday. I don't mention these all that often because they tend to be minor blips on a much grander screen, not-to-mention the fact that there's something to be said for being positive. Still, I came into school really exhausted from a late night at class and a variety of responsibilities and concerns, beyond teaching, looming over my head.

The morning went well enough. My buddy Tim, who teaches next door, stopped by to talk with us about a favorite book of his that we had just finished reading and loved as well. There were visitors who enjoyed hearing the new Revolutionary War song we are writing and watching the kids discuss and reflect on their reading.

Our day is broken up into two instructional halves by a break in the middle that includes lunch, a special area (such as art or pe), and recess. When we returned from recess the next two hours included: a broken ruler, someone calling a friend "a jerk", another person completely tuning out all of a math demonstration, a group that refused to work with one another, a number of people who didn't listen to directions, and a loud outburst immediately following a small talk about our expectations for one another when working on a particular project.

These types of days are inevitable when working with humans, not to mention the nine-year-old variety. Not so surprisingly these days often occur on the very day when I've not had enough sleep, I'm beginning to feel sick, or I'm feeling a bit anxious about something outside of school. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the thirty-six year old variety is to blame as well. It happens. Fortunately, though, only about three or four days a year.

Perhaps for Natalie Munroe, though, it happened much more often. If you've not heard of her she's a high school teacher in Central Buck, Pennsylvania who, like me, keeps a blog for her friends and family to enjoy. Recently this blog has gotten her into a whole heap of trouble. It seems she took her bad day at school and made it public. Very public.

"They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy lazy, LOAFERS."

Ouch.

"[They] are out of control," she wrote. "They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

That seems a bit inappropriate.

Listing comments she'd like to write on report cards, she wrote "I hear the trash company is hiring"; "I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son"; and "Just as bad as his sibling. Don't you know how to raise kids?"

Now she's gone completely overboard. Oddly enough I shared an article about her blog with my class on Thursday morning, before our problems.

"Maybe the kids are bored because of her," Jillian suggested. "You have to be interesting."

This, by the way, is very true.

"You can't talk about kids that way," argued Brandon.

"Yeah," said Patton. "That's really insulting."

"High schoolers are sometimes...well, they don't listen," suggested Atira. "She looks interesting and fun in the picture but they're all talking. She has the right to share this but not be all insulting."

"Yeah," said Skyler. "She could have not said it in a bad way."

"I don't know," I said. "Do you think sharing this helped to solve a problem or just make it worse?"

Skyler later asked a great question, "Why would she even teach them and then insult them?"

"We were discussing that too," said Jenna. "Why is she even a teacher if she feels like that?"

Why is she even a teacher if she feels like that? I'd love for someone to ask her. Sadly there are droves of people who support her. There are websites being erected praising her for "tough love" and holding the kids accountable.

As for our bad day, we had a twenty minute talk before going home to see if maybe we couldn't find a solution that would ensure a better tomorrow. A few kids talked about consequences but many others suggested helping one another by letting them know when they are starting to head down the wrong path. This made sense.

I finished the day by warning the kids that I would be blasting them on my blog. I tried to dream up some well chosen words that might spark an uproar from students, parents, and community members. They laughed knowing I'd never do such a thing. Perhaps that was the best medicine for the day. Laughter.