I have a stack of stuff to do on my desk… but no matter how much stuff I do, it seems as though the stack remains at the same height.

And I swear, I do a lot.

I mean it’s just a wee bit before X-mas and New Year’s and I am still cranking at full speed, as if it were mid-May or something.

Question: If I stop actually doing work, does the stack of work for me to do stop growing? I mean it’s clear that doing work doesn’t reduce the stack so maybe not doing work will not increase the stack.

It’s Alice in Wonderland logic, for sure… but perhaps we’ve all got it wrong. I mean slackers never really have much to do and highly productive people (who do a lot) always seem to have a lot to do.

There’s gotta be a law here, somewhere, Murphy style.Here’s my first stab at it – I call it Sitomer’s Preposterous Law of Work. (Why not, right?)

To not do work will result in there being less work for you to do, but to do a lot of work will result in there being a lot more work for you to do.

In other words, “Work or Work not, that is the question.”

Do you remember Golden Books? Well, I scored a The Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature a long time ago at a garage sale – like this musta been in 1988 or something – and I’ve had it in my life a long time.

Last night, I busted it out for bedtime reading with my 4 year old daughter. (I’ve been waiting years for this day.) And let me tell ya something, those who say that the smell of books is a meaningless, BS reason that printed books will be able to stick around in the onslaught of eReading probably don’t have many editions of text from 1947 laying around their house. Cause let me tell you… that is one cool book.

I can’t even begin to rave about the attention to detail. High quality paper. Unique, interesting drawings. (Everywhere! I mean what art! And what character!) Not a page left unused. Matter of fact, not a page left unloved by the publishing house.

The book rocks and the first thing I noticed when I took it off the shelf was… wait for it… the smell. That’s right, the splendiferous odor of literary fumes. It hit me like the soft punch of a childhood pillow in my face. You know the kind, the one that makes you instantly think, “Hit me again.”

My daughter noticed the smell immediately as well. No prompting, either. And she found it delicious. What a nice memory in the making for me, each of us taking turns to sniff the soothing scent of the spine.

As for the content, it’s spectacular. Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Winnie the Pooh, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s fables, Grimm’s fairy tales, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, stories from the Arabian nights, and on and on and on. 544 pages worth of magic.

Indeed, it’s gonna take us years to get through the whole thing. And I don’t think either of us minds that one bit.

Yep, I am a giant fan of the iPad but I gotta say, printed books and eBooks are going to co-exist because there is something special about what Johannes Gutenberg pioneered that has immense staying power. And moving into an either/or world is just not where I want to live.

Golden Press Publishers, they don’t make ‘em like you used to. As Edith and Archie Bunker used to sing, “Those were the days.”

So today in class — as if I needed any more proof – my students showed to me for the zillionth time how and why they should never be underestimated.

Find one minute and 14 seconds to check this out and you will see that inner-city kids at a Title I school are NOT the stereotype that society wants to perpetuate.

Click here: http://thebookjam.ning.com/video/brilliant-student-alice-in

(I just posted the video under BRILLIANT Alice in Wonderland in case the hyperlink doesn’t work).

Once you have viewed this, please take into consideration how our own expectations of students dictate the realities of ou modern day classrooms. And what’s the prevailing belief at schools like mine? Unfortunately, it’s best evidenced by the educational publishing companies who keep providing silly scripted curriculums and dumbed-down, watered down textbooks to “serve” the educational interests of our students.

These people have no idea what our students want. And frankly, while thy may say they care, it’s rare that I see how. What they do care about is the sale. The moola. The contract that seals the deal on milking the district cow. That’s why they bend over backwards to create materials that simply meet “criteria” and vest very little if any interest in effectiveness.

The video that was made shows a depth and scope of comprehension as well as a knowledge of technology in concert with a litany of critical thinking that is SO RARE to find in our nation’s classrooms. And did it come from a textbook assignment? Did it come from scripted curriculum seeking to differentiate instruction. Did it come from Intervention? Of course not. It came from a group of students who simply WANTED to make it. The fact that they showed it to me was only because I try and do PBL projects all the time and they thought I might be interested.

Interested? I want to broadcast their capabilities all across the planet and show the world that Lynwood is not a ghetto school and we have plenty of kids on our campus that can innovate with the best of them if only given the chance.

So keep your boring worksheets, stuff your 5 pound textbooks where the sun don’t shine and start bringing real books, real stories and real engagement back to the classroom. Our nation’s kids are starving to be challenged and far too many powers-that-be are simply busting their brains and emptying their wallets trying to teach to a silly bubble test.

I know I am preaching to the choir on this ning when I yap about this but we have got to start somewhere, right?

You go, Esther! (She’s on this ning.) Students such as Esther, Maura, Mary, Danielle and so on are the reason I stay in the classroom. They make me better a better human being.