Tuesday was Read Across America day, chosen as such because it’s the birthday of Dr. Seuss (who, btw, is probably one of the most influential authors to shape my own writing life).

Me, I read all of my classes GREEN EGGS AND HAM. Literally, I sat them all on the carpet (criss-cross apple sauce style) and these rambunctious, worldy, street smart teens immediately reverted into a crowd of 34 first graders eager for story time.

Never diminish the power of reading to your students. For the sake of modeling. For the sake of fluency. For the sake of fun. Wasn’t a kid in my room who didn’t just LOVE it.

Of course, it’s probably most fun for the teacher, though. Makes me jealous of all the elementary school teachers who get to read to their kids all the time.

Anyway, as a warm up, I wanted the teens in my room to think about their own early childhood experiences with books so I had them do a quick write on: Cite three memories you have about being read to when you were a young child (about the age of 4).

And of course, I got the hands shooting up… “But what if you don’t have any memories of being read to, Mr. Alan?”

Now whodda thunk that the kids with that question floating around in their heads were some of the kids with the lowest skills in my English class 10 years later? Must be a coincidence that these are my most “at-risk” students, right? I mean these kids are still trying to play catch up for the work that was never done before they even really entered “official” school. (I am thinking kindergarden as “official” because pre-school is not mandatory and thus, so, so, so many of the lower-economic students I teach never went to pre-k.)

And speaking of pre-K, my own daughter will, of course, enter kindergarden with two full years of pre-K in her belt (a private school, of course) — and at least 1-2 books a night having been read to her since the moment her dendrites started to form. (Okay, I am a weirdo and used to read to my daughter in the womb… laugh away but I drank the kool-aid on the value of reading long, long ago!)

So, for class homework on March 2? Go find a little kid that needs reading to. Cousin. sister or brother. Neighbor. They are plenty of little munchkins floating around Lynwood. It’s yet another way that I explain the importance of books and reading and literacy to my students over the course of the year. Hopefully, it will be a lesson they will value and pass on to the next generation when that time comes.

Perhaps they’ll even be womb readers!!

Happy Birthday Theodore Geisel (that was the real name of Dr. Seuss). Your work has shaped mine forever.

You are my Homeboy!

Last weekend I took my daughter to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). I hadn’t been in a decade and WOW, was I blown away by the incredible experience.

LACMA is a really good museum. And I like really good museums. Why I haven’t been in more than 10 years, I have no idea.

Anyway, LACMA lured us to their museum with an offer of free art for kids. (My daughter’s 3 1/2 so what a great way to spend a Sunday, right?) Of course, it was a home run. Of course, there were scores and scores of other parents taking advantage of the day. Of course, 10 minutes after I arrived I was thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I waited so long?”

And then the nice lady at LACMA asked my daughter if she wanted to become a member of the museum. She said “Yes!” without asking the price. (She does that a lot.) But as it turns out, the price was free.

As it turns out, they gave her a free membership until she turns 18. It’s called NexGen. And everytime she comes, we get one free adult admission as well.

“Cool!” I said. “What a great program.”

“Yeah, well, we have to develop the next generation of artists and kids people who appreciate art,” the lady told me. “Cause our stupid schools sure ain’t,” she said.

Owch!

It was an unprompted comment. She didn’t even know I was a teacher. She just blasted away with a genuine sense of nobility about what she was doing combined with contempt for what our schools are doing mixed in her voice.

And I could not have agreed more completely.

Is modern day education striving to stamp out the human spirit on purpose or is all this nonsense just a by-product of stupidity, short-sightedness and an a fear that if we do not create enough child-widgets, our country is going to turn into a widget-less adult workforce?

As the proverb says, “Man cannot live by bread alone.”

So here’s a fear I have about national standards. I think it’s going to create too much of a checklist system.

For example, I will be given a national standard to teach. I will teach it.

Then there will be a test. Scouring over the data from this test will be on a checklist of “tasks to do” for my school site administrators.

This data will be collected because collecting this data will be on a checklist for school site administrators. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the district. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the county. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the state. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the federal government. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone checks at the level of the federal government.

And then, the federal government will look at all this data. And they will provide feedback on their ascertained checklist. Then they will send it on… which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the state. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the county. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the district. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the school site administrator. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it back to me, the teacher. Which, of course, will be on a checklist that they expect me to check.

And what will that check actually tell me?

Something preposterously obvious that I am sure I could have already informed anyone along the chain of checklists if ever they had bothered to 1) ask me or 2) trust my professionalism.

Is this the new world?
Is this the current one?
Is it just me or are American schools becoming more and more dystopian?

The Checklist System, A Banquet of Preposterous Beauty

I took a weeklong cruise once — LOVED IT — and clearly remember talking to one of the “boat hosts” about how people change over the course of the trip.

On Day 1 of the cruise, people are itchy to check their emails, their blackberries, their “messages”… and the “news” from the world back home as well. They think about their jobs, their problems, and all sorts of day-in and day-out stuff like that.

By Day 3 they are doing the Macarena and talking about how Vanilla Ice wasn’t really such a bad musical artist after all.

It’s called vacation and while right now I am still knee deep in thinking about my students, the work coming up in January, the new projects I am going to try, the practices we are going to share as a department in order to improve our school-wide performance, and on and on. But by Wednesday of next week, don’t be surprised if you hear me talking about how intellectually stimulating I find the tv show The View and my new addiction to TMZ.com.

Stephen Covey calls it “Sharpening the Saw“.

And who doesn’t need it right about now?

Sesame Street turned 40 years old this week. To honor the show which game me my start as a lover of literacy, here’s a big ol’ shout out to Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie & Bert, and of course, the character that still represents to me the height of personal achievement and excellence, COOKIE MONSTER!

Here’s a list of 40 cool things about Sesame Street that is worth a moment if you have one.

And after I read #1 on the list (CBS and NBC rejected Sesame Street before it debuted Nov. 10, 1969, on PBS… I know, WOW! But then again, they probably would have smacked it up anyway so, as Pangloss would say, “All is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds.”)

But it got me thinking, passing on Sesame Street is an epic goof. Like historical. So, what are some of the most famous gaffes in history? (Goodness do I love these type of “predictions” — I mean people will shoot off their mouths about almost anything, won’t they?) And where would passing on Seasme Street rank?

Let’s put it this way, missing out on the opportunity to bring this show to kids across the world is a blunder of spectacular proportions. Anyway, in my opinion, it ranks right up there with a few other brilliant prognosticators.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Of course, there are more…

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”
– A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
– Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

And finally, some of the most famous…

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
– Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
– H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Thanks for everything, Sesame Street. My life, my daughter’s life, our world is a better because of you! I mean yours is a birthday that really warms my heart.

So what is to be done when a student farts in class?

Hey, don’t laugh, this is a serious academic issue.

The way I see it, there are a coupla options.

1) Try to pretend it didn’t happen. Of course, if it’s stinky one, the boys sitting in and around the — let’s pretend I teach in a church — the boys sitting in and around the “pew” are gonna keep disrupting whatever progress you want to make in your lesson with commentary and insights about the aroma.

Of course, when you try to actually teach an ELA lesson on the need to use precise, descriptive, vibrant vocabulary in English class, you get papers back that lay flat and are filled with bland vanilla. But let a kid break wind and all of a sudden, the vocabulary being bandied about the room would make a lovelorn poet from the Romantic era proud of its richness and poignancy.

2) Scold the perpetrator. Now for me, this one would never work. First of all, I am still immature enough to find farts kinda funny so to actually try and castigate a kid would probably result in me cracking a smile in the middle of trying to keep a stern face. (Note: I think there is a fart joke in almost every book of young adult fiction I’ve yet written. And the new books that’ll be out next year, well… let’s just say it doesn’t look like the streak is in any danger of being broken right now.)

3) Pretend nothing actually happened and keep pressing on with the lesson. Probably the best route, when all is said and done, but meta-cognitively, an educator must know that for up to 180 seconds after student cheese-cutting, a teacher shouldn’t relay any truly valuable academic information — or else you will need to make a plan to re-teach it. After all, one good blasting of some backdoor breeze from a kid in class is enough to render even the most diligent of AP kids out of sorts for a while.

I guess the question I, as the teacher, have to really ask myself before I go down the road of condemnation for public flatulence is, to what end am I going to reprimand a student for this stuff? Am I going to send a kid to the Dean? Am I going to give the kid detention? Come on, let’s be honest, the more I keep the main subject of the classroom on student gas, the more tickled the kids are that we are 1) talking about this and 2) not talking about things like appositive phrases. I mean I have boys that would gladly engage in a 20 minute analysis on the type of wind currents able to be generated through the human digestive tract — the tone, the pitch, the pungency, the types of foods best suited to achieve optimum results — and if I were to give fart homework, I have a feeling my some of my most reluctant students would suddenly turn into verifiable scholars.

You want student engagement in the classroom? Try a Socratic Seminar on bottom blasts from the big brown horn. Guaranteed participation from all kinds of kids.

You want to teach vocabulary? Use farts. They’ll never forget the definition of turgidity again.

And not to be sexist, but how come I’ve never once had a freshman interrupt class with the declaration, “Ew, Kimberly farted!”

I get, “Ew, Michael farted!”
I get, “Ew, Joesph farted!”
I get, “Ew, both Michael and Joseph farted!”

But never the girls. Hmmm… worth more investigation.

The Conundrum of Student Farts… in my opinion, it’s an issue that needs more high level discussion.

According to a new report by the Center for Disease Control, 9 out of every 10 teens are not eating enough of their recommended fruits and veggies.

You mean Hot Cheetos aren’t a vegetable?

Am I the only one that has kids walk in at 7 a.m. in the morning gulping down processed sugar? I mean we are talking about a breakfast that consists of a frosted Pop Tart, lunch that is a bag of salty chips and a soda, and then an after school snack of cupcakes or cookies — or more chips until dinner (which is so often, fast food). That’s the average teen diet these days.

As teachers, we see this every day. Thing is though, if you check the bottom left hand drawer of most desks (of teachers) you are probably going to find a Snickers Bar or a mini-bag of Chips Ahoy. It’s not just the students that are eating poorly — it’s the educators as well.

Me, of course I try to eat my fruits and veggies. Try, that is. Yet it seems as though I have to actively choose a pear while my hands just naturally gravitate towards peanut M&M’s without any real effort on my own behalf at all (peanut M&M’s cause they don’t make my keyboard too sticky when I blather on as a blogger, of course).

The fact is, the quickest way to get our ELA staff to buy into being engaged for an entire department meeting begins with good ol’ fashioned chocolate. Forget erudite discussions of Kafka, Orwell and Dickens. You want to get an our English department fired up, put out a tray filled with Oreos or Keebler Fudge Stix!! Then we’ll talk dis-aggragated data and methodologies to differentiate and accommodate for all sorts of learning styles in the classroom til the cows come home.

Fudge cake is the engine that drives a good meeting and really, I am not sure why more people don’t recognize this about teachers. We don’t really care about merit pay… but we all respond to homemade brownies.

Look, if we’re gonna nag kids about the junk food they eat, we’re pretty much the pot calling the kettle black. And if kids can smell anything, it’s the words of a hypocrite.

Why do I so deeply enjoy helping kids who are no longer my students? I mean, it’s more work for me, right? And it’s not like I already don’t have enough to do. But still, when former kids come in and ask me for stuff, I always try and help them out — and I do it happily.

I guess it’s because I like to see them. I mean we build such close relationships over the course of a year and then, once summer hits, we all disperse into a thousand different directions. That feels normal. But when the school year starts back up again, I miss those relationships. I miss those kids. And they grow so much — and change and get taller, and lose their braces and so on, it’s just nice to see. My students, well, in a way it’s like each of them is a story in progress and I always want to know more about how things are unfolding in their lives. And of course, when things are going well for them, I am glad to see it.

Yet often I don’t see former students when things are going well for them. More often I see former kids when they need something.

Some need a schedule change. Some need to chat about something personal. Some need advice, a smile or someone to talk college football with. (GO USC TROJANS!) And some just need to feel a real connection with a real adult on campus.

I guess I live in perpetual empty nest syndrome. “How come you don’t call? You don’t write?” I become like a nagging mother with kids that have gone off to college and only touch base when needs arise.

And the thing is, I’ll take it… cause it’s better than nothing.

Let’s all get on the same page about something… kids cheat. Maybe not all of them, but certainly most of them do — for sure.

Oh, you doubt me? Look, I’m not trying to slander anyone here but let’s look at a literal, dictionary definition of the word “cheating”.

Cheating: to defraud; swindle: to deceive; influence by fraud: to elude; deprive of something expected: to practice deceit: to violate rules or regulations: to take an examination or test in a dishonest way, as by improper access to answers

Hmmm… do I have a leg to stand on? (Well, if you are going to get all literal…)

Now obviously there are gradations to the violations here. Some kids simply steal answers outright from their teachers to the tests. Some students mildly glance over at the paper of other students during examinations. Some kids copy homework. Some students plagiarize. Some students write answers on their hands before tests. Some students have their parents do so much work on their homework assignments that its the parents who are most deserving of receiving a project grade.

Like I said though, if we get all literal about it, kids today cheat. Most of them.

Now of course, with cheating comes rationalizations. For example, for the parent who does far too much of their child’s homework assignment, they’ll tell themselves that 1) they are just trying to help 2) this is what good parents do 3) the silly teacher is giving way too much work and my kid needs to get to bed, and on and on and on.

Kids who cheat will also rationalize their deeds. From the pressure of competition to the unreasonableness of the educator from the justification that, “Hey, everyone is doing it,” kids today could come up with a million reasons to legitimize their actions.

And you know what? Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones because when I was in middle and high school, if you want to go all “literal definition of the word on me” I cheated, too. I copied homework problems, I glanced at answers on the paper of the kid next to me, and so on. Was it wrong? Of course. Do I “regret” it? Let’s put it this way, I don’t live in a world of guilt and remorse thinking my soul has been eternally stained because I edged my score up a bit with the unwitting help of Gary the science genius when it came to memorizing the periodic table I had not fully memorized back in 1983.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong, though. It was. But life goes on.

So how do I handle cheating? Well, I see “wandering eyes” all the time when I give tests. I usually throw a out very firm sounding, “Eyes on your own tests please” and that suffices. Of course, some of my tests don’t allow for cheating, such as when they write essay responses — but some of them do. Being that I give cloze tests, multiple choice tests, single sentence responses and so on over hte course of the year — and some kids have me for period 1 and some for period 5 — there is simply no way for me to foolproof my assessment system. Kids will have their chances to cheat and I know that I am not going to catch many of them.

But this school just uncovered an epidemic of cheating — and the whole community is paying the price. First, graduation was cancelled. Then the media drags their name through the mud so that anyone associated with this school is tainted. Furthermore, every teacher and administrator on campus appears to be a bumbler, a dupe who should have known.

And the district is dropping the hammer on the non-whistle blowers as if they do not understand how demonized kids who “snitch” are in our modern school systems.

On one hand, it smacks of foolishness and naiveté to think that MOST kids have not cheated in some way, shape or form on their way to a diploma. (And I love when parents take the high road and say, “Not my kid!” Uh, yeah right.)

On the other hand, being that we do not overtly teach values (i.e. they are nowhere in our standards) and we simply list things like THOU SHALT NOT CHEAT in the “rules of school”, why is it that we should expect anything less?

If you want a student to learn something you have to teach it to them and right now, our schools (and our society) are littered with places where we are “assuming” somebody else is going to teach what’s critical. I mean who was Centerburg High School counting on here to teach its student body that cheating would not be tolerated and for those found complicit the punishment would feel draconian if you did not come clean? The parents? The neighbors? Did the Superintendent ever mandate a symposium on cheating for the student body?

Are the kids really to blame? Yes they are. However, could this school not have done a better job in terms of not setting the table for this type of mess to happen?

Of course it could have.

I am sure all of them had detailed lessons in the use of an apostrophe as well as how to find the slope of a Y intercept on a graph, though.

Where are the simple lessons on character? It’s undermining our entire society when we do not teach this stuff.