I just got to Chicago where I am scheduled to speak at the IRA Annual conference with Alfred Tatum, Ingrid Law and Deborah Hopkinson on the power of using books in the classroom.

Awesome, right?

And even more awesome, upon checking into my hotel, the lady behind the front desk counter looked at me and said, “Hello, Mr. Sitomer. Welcome. We have decided to upgrade you.”

Of course, I immediately felt important and valued. I mean who doesn’t want to be upgraded?

When I got to my room it seemed to shine. The bed looked larger, the pillows looked fluffier and the towels in the bathrooms looked soft enough for a newborn prince’s bottom.

I felt good. I was upgraded!

Then later, needing directions, I went back down to the front desk, where I overheard the following.

“Oh, Hello Mrs. Jensen. We have decided to upgrade you.”

I knew my pillows weren’t fluffier. I had a feeling those towels weren’t hand-knit for the rear-end of a royal prince. Do-gone-it, that bed was barely a cot!

Wow, is that hotel using language effectively or what. Words create perception, perception creates meaning and meaning is what makes – and is what we take – from our experiences.

See, this is the value of attending national literacy conferences… you learn stuff everywhere.

Gotta go. It’s time to shower in that pathetic excuse for a bathroom. I mean really, they call that water pressure?

I think I’ve spoken before about how, as a writer, I spent years and years and years knocking out material only to be rejected and rejected and rejected.

I used to think, back then, that it was a sign of my own weakness, my moral shortcomings, my inability to be articulate and disciplined and witty and engaging and a good storyteller and so on. Essentially, I used to think that being rejected as a writer was a negative.

These days I realize how wrong I was.

Yes, being rejected hurts. Being rejected humiliates. Being rejected stings in a deep way that only someone who really lays it all on the line and then hears “Sorry Charlie, no thanks,” can understand. The “owch-factor” is brutal.

Matter of fact, the owch-factor is probably why so few people actually ever really attempt to reach for their dreams in this world… cause coming up short can be way more painful than not ever having tried at all because then you can always tell yourself, “I could have if I tried.” Which is Bullshit! btw.)

Of course, these days I am much more philosophical about rejection. Sure, it helps that I am now under contract for my tenth published book aside from having captained an immense curriculum project that represents the best teaching I have ever done. Plus, nowadays all kinds of major publishers are eager to work with me. Truly, I am one of the lucky ones. (And I work hard not to forget it.)

However, rejection is a giver of wisdom once you can learn to put your own feelings of having your ego bruised aside. Rejection teaches things. (BTW, I don’t know that success doesn’t teach things as well — I won’t go that far to say that the wisdom rejection offers is more profound than that of success because both, I’ve learned, are pretty profound if you are paying attention.)

But nowadays, I see more of a pattern to rejection. And it’s staring us all in the face if we pay attention.

For example, read this article.

Look at what Warren Buffet has to say about rejection in the piece.

“The truth is, everything that has happened in my life…that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better,” Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach “lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity.”

Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn’t have been a good fit. But at the time, he “had this feeling of dread” after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago.

And the other night, I was burned out so I turned on the tv. (Rare for me.) Lo and behold the biography channel was showing an episode on Rodney Dangerfield. Literally, what I learned about the man amazed me.

Rodney Dangerfield was once Jack Roy, a comedian who never made it. For 12 years Jack Roy toiled. Finally, he got married and quit showbiz all together. For the next 11 years after that he sold aluminum siding. (Middle class successful, too.) But he kept writing and writing and writing jokes. Finally, he couldn’t stand his life anymore and hit the stage again… with a new name. (Yep, Rodney Dangerfield.)

He ended up on Ed Sullivan.
He ended up being one of Johnny Carson’s favorite guests. (25 million viewers a night at the time.)
He opened a comedy club, did a few movies (Caddyshack and Back to School being all time classics, IMHO) and basically, Rodney Dangerfield became the man we know today. (Or used to know – he passed a few years ago.)

As it turned out, Rodney was a writer’s writer as well. The guy made it look so easy, “I tell ya, I don’t get no respect…” but Rodeny didn’t even hit upon that tag line til he was in his fifties.

Over 30 years after he started in show business!

And all the pros in the comedy business talked about how Rodney was so precise and meticulate with his lines. How he’d re-write and re-write and re-write jokes.

In the tv piece, Rodney talked about how it would talk him 3 or 4 months to write 6 minutes worth of material for Johnny Carson.

Four months to write 6 minutes? Wow.

Rodney knew rejection.
Warren Buffet knew rejection.
It taught them success.

And if we can teach our students this, we will have taught them something of great value.

Don’t give up. There is an Outstanding Plus Side to Rejection.

I am immensely proud of this picture. The people you see include 1) Jacqueline Woodson, an author who has won the Caldecott Medal, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Newberry Honor Medal, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement as given by the American Library Association 2) Ann Martin, President of the American Association of School Librarians 3) me, and 4) Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak among other books (and if I listed all her accomplishements and awards, you’d be reading for a hell of a long time — what hasn’t she won is really the question?)

And why do I post it? Because we just got together in Chicago this past Saturday to go to bat for librarians and go to bat for students.

It rocked the house!

It also packed the house. Check out this photo I took from the stage just moments before I took the microphone.

Cool, huh?

But the big point I want to make is that librarians and English teachers are joined at the hips. We are simpatico. Peeps. Homies. Personally, I adore librarians and I have a feeling if I took a poll, there are a heck of a lot of people out there in the world of the Language Arts and public schooling that would have a heck of a lot of good things to say about librarians.

But our brothers and sisters in these of-so-hallowed halls are under assault.

Don’t pretend it’s not happening. Don’t think to yourself, “Well I got my problems,” or “We, in the world of English Language Arts and school are under assault as well,” and don’t throw up your hands and think, “Get in line, Buddy… who ain’t having their screws turned right now?”

Our libraries are being massacred and it’s a freakin’ tragedy!

Let’s be simple. American libraries are a core pillar of democracy. (I truly believe that but if I go off right now to explain what I mean, well… ultimately, I think the statement is self-evident in a way so I am not gonna waste the words right now.)

And as I have said many-a-time, if you want to really judge a school, go check out their school library facilities — and the extent to which the students on campus use the library. Of course you are going to see an over-worked, underpaid, under-appreciated library staff… that’s par for the course. But a school with a run down, out of date, woeful library is almost always going to be a school that is under-performing. There is a direct link.

And it’s not the librarian’s fault. It’s the lack of recognition for the value of a school library being evidenced by the school board, the administration and the parents in the community. Those folks need to own up!

For our own part, Lynwood High School lost their librarian quite a while ago… and we are now a school expected to function without a school librarian. For some reason, the powers-that-be think that a few well-meaning aides can do the job. (NOTE: Our aides are pretty outstanding — I will say that. They have saved my butt more times than I can count. Just rock stars!) But it seems as if the school plan is to let core content teachers direct student learning and cover the gap that a person with an advanced degree in Library Sciences/Media Specialties would typically be expected to provide. And what we can’t cover (huge chasm that it is) is apparently expendable.

And the thing is, this mentality is happening across more and more locations across the nation.

Public libraries are reducing their hours. Or closing their doors. And the notion of “library as a luxury” is starting to permeate in public policy making.

It’s BULLSHIT!!!

Support our libraries. Check out the ALA website to see how you can do more. (Even being aware is a step in the right direction). And they have so much valuable “stuff” available, it’s just incredible!

Truly, the library’s contribution to America is incredible. And it’s under assault from short-term thinking bean counting ignoramuses!

Maybe Bradbury was wrong. Perhaps it will not be book burning that gets us. Perhaps it’s library closures.

I was a featured speaker on the President’s Panel of AASL this Saturday for the American Library Association’s annual conference. (Took place in Chicago this year… what a town!)

So much great info, so many great people and so many great, mind-blowing ideas came at me from so many different directions that it’s virtually impossible to keep up.

Yet, through the speaking, the book signings, the chatting, the schmoozing and the eating I did in Chi-town (did I mention what a great town Chicago is?) I was FLOORED by a few things. For example, I heard that…

Google handles more questions in a second than a reference librarian will answer in a career.

That stat alone is enough to make me stop blogging at this very moment because I think I need to digest the implications of what this signifies. I mean everytime I think I realize that things in the world of books and education and learning and information have changed I am confronted by something new that makes me say, “Goodness, do I really understand how much things have changed?”

Do any of us?

There is no way to work in a school today without the very clear recognition that the cracks are expanding. The question is, how do we prevent ourselves from cracking up amid the crumbling?

Kids used to just fall through cracks. But “kids”, at least as the phrase’s original connotation indicated to me, implied single kids (despite the use of the plural which I took to mean “one at a time.”) Or it meant a certain type of kid. It left one with the impression that a “kid falling through the cracks in the system” was an anomaly, a rare, but sad and regrettable bird, one that someone somewhere was diligently working to prevent in the future.

But nowadays, this expression has taken on (and is about to take on even more so) a whole new meaning.

Not just some kids, not just a bunch of kids, but many, many, many kids will fall through the cracks in the system in the next few years because the system is officially cracked and these budget cuts are taking a drill bit to the fault line.

For example, my own school district has forecast a projected 16 million dollar deficit after the operation of the 2009/2010 school year so something like 18% — 22% of our district’s teaching force was just pink slipped.

We’re still going to service roughly the same amount of kids, though. We’re just going to do it with 20% less educators (and a slashing of “fluff” classes like computers, art, music, and so on).

And all this as we face the oh-so-gentle stick of NCLB. Lest anyone forget, my high school is sinking towards Probation Level 4 in the DoE Circle of Educational Hell. I’m sure that less people actually trying to remediate our issues is going to help a heck of a lot, though. Wonder if they’ll take that into consideration when evaluating our bubble tests next year?

They raise the bar. They slash the resources to achieve the targets. Then they paint the people who work there as imbeciles who couldn’t teach a hungry monkey how to peel a banana.

I mean from my Superintendent on down to lil’ old me, what’s a fella to do? I know, I know, roll with the punches… but how many more punches can we all be expected to take before we are considered to be too punch drunk to soberly and successfully go about performing our jobs?

And it ain’t just Lynwood that is cracked. As this report states, nearly 60% of this Chicago school’s students will not be graduating from 8th grade, to the great shock of both the students and parents, of course. I mean I too could clearly see how my child was all beefed up on books and ready for Harvard but then voila, turns out she’s flunked 8th grade (along with the lion’s share of her peers) and here I was totally clueless about my kid’s — or her entire graduating class’s — performance. Totally believable.

Not that the school is above reproach, though. I’m sorry, but if 60% of your entire 8th grade is failing, guess what folks? The people working at the school are failing, too. Take some freakin’ ownership!

In that spirit, are Lynwood’s shortcoming my own fault as well? Absolutely. I must, if I am to accept any credit in the areas where we achieve, accept culpability for our shortcoming’s as well. After all, am I not my co-teacher’s keeper?

Usually, I’d crack a smarmy joke right about now in this point of the blog. Go for the smile with a small twist of the knife to boot. But guess what. These cracks are serious business and where the hell are our kids going to be in 3 years if we continue down this path.

Crack. It’s like we’re smoking it.

I don’t think it’s any great Einstein-ian insight to say that public education is dependent on the community in many, many ways. And when the community surrounding and supporting public education is dysfunctional, flawed, lacking, and so on, it’s really hard to be productive, excellent, amazing and wonderful in our classrooms.

Not that it can’t be done, but it becomes exceptionally challenging.

It’s almost self-evident that the first ally in our aim to excellently educate the students of this country is always the parents. For a kid that comes to first grade knowing how to write their name, read, identify letters, shapes, colors and has been socialized to working in classroom environments by having attended pre-school, teachers and schools can be rightfully expected to well educate that child. However, for the kid who did not have the “at home” pre-instruction to instruction, the kid who can’t write their name, doesn’t read a lick, struggles with elementary numbers and has no b.g. with books nor has been socialized yet to the demands of working well in a classroom environment, our schools are just not set up well to serve that kid — especially when mixed with other kids that are both above and below their individual level.

And then, as these students move up in grade level, the gap in skills and competencies — as all the data shows — grows and grows.

So yes, we need institutional change and yes, “there is something fundamentally flawed with the structure, management and compensation of the labor force in the public education system,” as was mentioned in another post on this ning but school readiness and community support are adding fuel to the fire and lots of us are quite sick of the fact that we’re viewed as if it’s all “our dysfunctional fault” that public education is in the state it is in.

We need better support! No matter how we are organized or re-organized, until we are better supported by the parents and community we are going to be extremely hard-pressed to meet our objectives because this lack of support is very much a weight on our back, an almost insurmountable albatross in many ways. Without real support from outside the school walls and halls, it’s spectacularly difficult to create the kind of wholesale change we’d all like to see. Sure, anomalies and success stories will always disprove any sweeping stereotypes but on the whole, turning around Washington DC, Oakland, Philly, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and so on is going to take the communities of Washington DC, Oakland, Philly, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and so on. Without the parents, without the local business owners, without the support of the alumni and the local governments, schools are going to be hard pressed to achieve the results that we all want to see.

When Barack said “parents” during the campaign, he knew exactly what he was talking about. We need the parents to be more involved, dedicated and committed.

More and more attention is being paid to the notion of writing in the 21rst century. This report just came out and it’s got some stuff that is well worth reading. However, the irony that I am posting this on a digital thread on a ning, well… in a way, if you are already reading this, it’s like preaching to the choir.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the world is changing under our pens and keypads. The idea that students in the next era will have to be competent writers using 3,000 words, 300 words, 30 words, 3 words and no words to express their ideas is somewhat of a leaping off point for comprehending both the opportunities and challenges of the era ahead.

Yet, while writing changes, shifts and morphs I am not fearful because the importance of critical thinking rises with these new mediums — instead of diminishing. In my estimation, thinking seems to be more important than ever as weighing, evaluating, synthesizing and applying brain power appears to be more important than ever to the writers and readers of the 21rst century. I mean so many folks are bemoaning the demise of newspapers but it’s not the black ink which smudges on our fingers in a semi-hard to navigate linear, non-interactive transmittal of information in an environmentally unsound paper-wasting business model that people are decrying… what they really fear is the art of real journalism is being supplanted by bloggers who have no training in the art of effectively verifying information. If newspapers die, I am not sure we care. If journalism dies then democracy is at risk. Now on one hand, the first hand twitterers and bloggers who are on the scene at things like the Mumbai bombing provide some of the most insightful information into what happened at the scene of the disaster — so the bloggers and twitterers certainly have their place. On the other hand, if people don’t pay for their news, then the NY TImes, Washington Post and so on, do not pay real journalists to go investigate, illuminate, and communicate the salient facts (i.e. the perpetrators, their motives, the impact on a geo-political scale and so on). Twittering an analysis of the international complications which arise from destabilizing governments through attacking civilians seems as if it might be a bit lightweight. (Huh? 140 characters isn’t enough space to get Kissinger-style insight into the circumstances? You are just so old fashioned, Mr. Alan!)

Now I am not so quick to defend traditional journalism because they let a buffoon like George Dubya pull the wool over our eyes with the whole WMD farce which really cost America… well, I am not going to go there. But traditional, mainstream media drank the kool-aid for the neo-cons who were hell bent on invading Iraq under a cooked up WMD scenario so all the things which I fear traditional journalism is supposed to defend us against and represent is on shaky ground with me. However, if world news devolves to the point that a 15 year with a blog is on equal footing with a pulitzer prize winning Chicago Tribune reporter in terms of disseminating our news, I do feel there is some cause for concern.

So what does 21rst century writing look like? That’s easy — it looks like a lot of things… and it’s evolving. But how do we effectively think about writing — both while we are doing it and when we are reading it? These, seem to me, the real questions.

Let me clear… I LOVE CLASSIC LITERATURE!! It’s why I became a writer and a teacher. Books have been nothing less than a spectacular and irreplaceably special part of my life. They’ve shaped my career choice, my social circles, my overall outlook on life and the manner in which I am raising my daughter. However, no one takes value from books they do not read — it’s that simple — and being that I teach in a school where we sport a near 50% drop-out rate, the ol’ “my way or the highway” methodology when it comes to text selection overwhelmingly results in kids saying, “Okay, I’ll take the highway.”

And it’s happening in Chicago, Oakland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas, Tuscon and on and on and on…

Sure, kids are cutting off their noses to spite their collective face but on the other hand, thousands of them come into our nation’s classrooms every day with a salty, bitter taste when it comes to the thought of reading and if we, as educators, remain so immovable (as we overwhelmingly have in the past 20 years) when it comes to embracing the idea that a kid must first view a book as an object which potentially holds great pleasure and possibility for them, as opposed to only great shame and punishment, then we are complicit when it comes to the miseducation of America’s youth.

For the teachers who think they are defending the honor of the canon by remaining intractable when it comes to getting kids to first like books — something legions of kids today have never had anyone do for them — before they ask them to wrestle with deep, meaty texts, well… it’s a recipe for not only academic, but societal, disaster.

BTW, I am in no way, shape, or form alone in this quandary. As a matter of fact, I’d venture to say that there are SCORES of teachers across our nation who are facing the very same hurdles I am on a daily basis. They are asking themselves, “How do I take kids who overtly make no bones about the fact that they do not like to read and get them to first and foremost, engage openly and honestly with a book, start to finish, reading the whole darn thing.”

Just having kids complete a book — that’s right, just reading one whole book — is a success that a huge amount of middle and high school ELA teachers today across our country are not enjoying. Nathaniel Hawthorne is great but he’s not being gulped down under the covers and being read by flashlight long after mom said, “Go to bed,” and at my school, the English teachers routinely laugh at the idea that more people do not read The Scarlet Letter than do when it is assigned.

And what can they do, fail the kid? Well, get in line. Turns out that kid is already failing math, science, and history.

But there is another way. It’s called winning his heart. The YA books that are being trashed on this board for not being of “high enough literary merit” is how I do that.

I tell you this, hundreds of pages of adolescent literacy research clearly illuminates the immense benefits, if not outright, fundamental necessity for, engagement in the classroom. However, nowhere have I ever seen any research which supports the idea of dis-engagement as an instructional strategy. And when you are staring out at 37 teens armed with no prior history of almost any sort of positive interaction with books and all you are provided with is the canon, it’s a freakin’ tough road to hoe.

That’s why we build bridges using relevant, accessible, gripping, popular (goodness, did I just validate popularity — gawd, I must be a heretic!) YA novels.

And for those who disagree, all I can say is I hear that inner city Detroit has a few teaching positions open. Go bring your theories of high fallutin’ literature as a sole academic diet to where the rubber meets the road — particularly in urban America — and see how well you fare. Suddenly, Speak, The Outsiders, Monster, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid provide a whole new meaning to the term “being a text with literary merit”.