The other day I described my visit to a juvenile hall in Austin and spoke about visiting the kids. Reaching them is tough work – as anyone who works with this population will attest – but the strategy which guides me is often from around two metaphors: M&M’s and ponytails.

Incarcerated kids are hard on the outside. They move about with cold looks on their faces, often in single file line, frequently trying to make sure that they do not shows signs of “weakness” to fellow inmates.

Smiling warmly, making kind, compassionate eye contact… that’s usually not their thing. Thus, they are hard on the outside.

But being kids, they are also soft in the center. Beyond that shell is a gooey middle. 14 year olds might like to think they are 30 year olds but they are not and often, it’s my experience that, like an M&M candy, kids in juvenile hall are hard on the outside but soft in the middle. (BTW, I don’t think this is an original analogy. I think I heard it applied somewhere else and adapted it along my own journey. Not sure – just want to be honest about that.)

And emotionally getting to these kids is like getting through the tangled ponytail of a 4 year old girl. If you just set out with a brush and start to pull, she’s gonna fight you and moan and complain and eventually win out. Ripping through the mess is fight waiting to be lost with this crowd. You have to move slowly, earn trust that you’re not going to hurt them (as they have been hurt before) and you have to go at the pace of the knotted ponytail… not on any schedule you hope to impose.

But ponytail knots often follow a pattern. First they are hard and seem impossible to work through and then, with slow, patient, gentle, thoughtful effort, you start to make a little progress and soon enough, you’ve earned the trust of the ponytail’s owner and you recognize that you’ve actually made headway.

And then, if you have any No More Tangles solution you can spray in, often this will be the thing that will lead to a genuine breakthrough.

But getting through the ponytail knots of 4 year olds is much simpler than getting through the emotional knots of incarcerated kids.

And if you can put their crimes aside (trust me, a VERY hard thing to do in a heck of a lot of cases) what you will find is often a kid who had so many emotional knots before they committed the crime that sent them to do time that you realize we nee more resources, more time, and probably most of all, a safe space where they can re-enter society.

Cause once they get out, even if thir ponytail knots were combed through, if they go right back into the environment in which they were, they will often end up right back behind bars.

M&M’s and ponytail knots: easy to talk about, much more challenging to really solve.

On Thursday, I was invited to speak at the Texas Library Association’s Annual Conference. (And what a great conference it was – a TON of true book lovers everywhere… a total blast.)
However, a few librarians from one of the local juvenile halls found out I was going to be in the Austin area asked me if I’d speak to some of their kids.

Now, if you have never been to juvenile hall, never seen and worked with incarcerated kids, let me tell you, it’s awe-inspiring and heartbreaking all at the same time.

12 year olds covered with tatts. 15 year olds with babies being watched by grandma. (It was a mixed-gender facility but of course, they kept the boys and girls very separate.) Kids who have been dealt some of life’s worst cards and kids who have done some truly unimaginable things.

But yet, these are still kids. I mean they walk into the room single file with their hands behind their backs and “hard” looks on their faces but after 15-20 minutes, it’s like milk-and-cookie time when I visit. (Note: I’ve done a bunch of these before and sort of know how to soften them up… plus, when you’re in lock-up, one of the few things you can do is read and my books are really, really popular with this crowd so I come in with a bit of a leg up.)

But truly, what I see playing over and over again when I make these type of visits to youngsters in juvee is that the adults working at the facilities trying to help these young people get an education and make good choices in the future (remember, they will all be getting “out” one day”) are doing almost Mother Theresa type of work. They have so little in terms of resources and support, they have such immensely tough “clients” sitting in their chairs and society, culture, whatever, certainly seems to be conspiring much more against them than it is conspiring with them.

That’s why I visit. A part of me knows my life is very blessed and has always been very blessed (comparatively speaking, it’s inarguable) and being able to give back in any small way to those less fortunate is just the right thing to do. And being that a guy like me can come in, make the kids laugh, make the kids feel, make the kids believe in their own future – make the kids think (through stories, Q&A’s, books, what not) well… if you can help someone, you should, right? I mean, not to over-inflate my own importance, but my visit to them might just be that thing, that one thing that lights it up for a kid who is prison to change their ways.

Or maybe it won’t. But how will any of us ever know if we don’t try.

And though the room was full, what if I only got one of them? (Which, statistically, would be an abysmal ratio.)

What if I only got one? Well, it still would have been worth it, right?

(Side note: many props to Disney – one of their team came with me and is going to be sending a bunch of my books – free of charge – to fill the library’s shelves. Very cool, stuff y’all! Thanks.)

I think there’s a ton of really great lessons schools, educators and administrators can learn from this behind-the-scenes look at Pixar studios. In six minutes, I really saw a lot that left me salivating.

A couple of ideas come up from the various interviews.The physical design of Pixar says volumes. It’s an environment orchestrated for people to have “creative collisions” with one another because the braintrust believes in the notion of spontaneous productivity. Two people collide in the hall, have a non-planned “meeting” and BOOM! something clicks and solutions are born.

Schools are designed to divide, divide, divide. It’s architects have focused on keeping people apart from one another. And in many ways, that’s to our detriment.

One guy talks about how research is so, so important to the Pixar filmmaking process. He says, “People think we just push a button and a movie comes out. We believe in research.” Another guy talks about how fun is embedded in the fabric of the atmosphere. People are supposed to enjoy themselves because Pixar feels that when they do, they will give their all. And as another gent says, “We don’t have parents saying DO YOUR HOMEWORK to the kids… we have parents saying GO HAVE A SOCIAL LIFE because the work is so engrossing, meaningful, and purposeful that people will hunker down more than might be recommended.”

All in all, I think there are a lot of lessons to be had in this short, informative, piece. And you can’t really argue with the results. Pixar is at the top of its game right now and is the envy of the entire business. They value their people and they get great results. It’s a blueprint for education going forward… and they don’t take bubble tests.

I’ve been in my current classroom for more than a decade now. And across the hall from me has been one of the most fantastic, supportive, wonderful teachers I know at my school.

She’s retiring this year. After 34 years teaching English at Lynwood High, she’s hanging up her spurs.

I am sad.

School, of course, will roll on. It always rolls on. As teachers, we like to think that we are so important, so critical, so essential to the success of the campus – and in a way, we are.

But in a way we are also not.

I am happy for my friend across the hall. Really happy. A new adventure begins for her in less than 2 weeks. (I scored her chair – nice!). But for me, a bit of the rock-solid foundation that has always been in place for me will no longer be there when the 2010/2011 school year begins.

That unsettles me.

Life is change and those who best adapt, most prosper. I get that. But there are some changes I think I’d rather not make.

Losing the person to whom I feel most close on campus represents an unfillable hole for me next year.

Melancholy is the order of the day. I am thankful, but I am sad.

The teacher down the hall from me hasn’t been at our school very long. And while I know her name, my high school has well over 150 educators and, some years, more than 4,000 kids on campus. Additionally, our professional turnover rate is exceptionally high and, truth be told, after years and years and years of seeing people come into our English department, and then leave our English department for one reason or another (i.e. the work is too hard, the environment is too challenging, this “inner-city teaching thing” is just not for them, California is just nut-so and they are moving back to a more sensible place, and so on) you just don’t get to know everyone the way you ought to until they have been around a couple of years and made it past the dragon.

What dragon? Let’s be honest, Title 1 schools can be a buzz saw and no matter how much you try to help someone, at some point each of us has to face down the creature that lives in the belly in the public school beast ourselves and determine, “Am I going to continue on here or am I going to move on to another world that makes more personal sense?”

There’s no one on my campus who has not confronted such a monster. Some of us confront it monthly.

So when I saw the teacher down the hall at the CATE conference this past weekend, my eyes lit up.

She was there because she wanted to be there. No Dept. Chair muscled her into a Saturday attendance. No one bullied her into seeking some professional development to improve her classroom craft. No one mandated that she do some extra hours to stay job-eligible. She was at CATE because she paid her own way to attend. Nope, the school district didn’t cover her conference fee (a few hundred bucks) or her transportation or her parking or her lunch. (BTW, how many superintendents ever visit a conference on their own dime? Don’t ya get the sense that if they even had to even pay for their own bottle of water they’d take a pass and say, “Naw, not worth it”? But teachers… another story entirely.)

Just by seeing her at the conference, I feel closer to the teacher down the hall now. I feel as if she has faced the “dragon” and found a way to say, “Bring it on, Mo Fo’, cause I got something for ya, too!”

It really takes that kind of attitude in a way to do what it is we do everyday. And even though I try to be supportive of all the other teachers on campus, I think I am going to make sure I give a little “extra oomph” to helping the teacher down the hall. There are a few personal books from my own professional development library she might want to read, there are a few “mazes around our campus” I might be able to help her better navigate, maybe she just needs someone who has been around here for a while to acknowledge the good work she is doing in a public way, like at our next department meeting. Who knows?

But schools help people who help themselves. It’s a rule that is just as true for teachers as it is for students.

When Peers Face the Dragon and Come Out on the Other Side, you can see it in their eyes.

I am at CATE today, at the The California Association of Teachers of English Annual conference. I love this event. Why?

1) Awesome authors.
-Nikki Grimes
-T.A. Barron
-Michelle Serros
-Joy Harjo
-Sonia Nazario
-Junot Diaz

2) Tons of folks sharing best practices
-Writing workshops
-Reading workshops
-New Media workshops
-Assessment workshops
-Workshops on how to do a Workshop, they have it all!

3) The Exhibit Hall
-Call me a dork but cruising the Exhibit Hall is one of my favorite things to do at conferences. From the t-shirts I buy (how many people here own an ERACISM t-shirt… that guy’s gotta be a millionaire by now) to checking out the latest and greatest that publishers have to offer — and seeing how badly some of the stuff stinks. I mean some materials that people today are peddling just look so old and tired and “been there, done that” don’t they, to the books I inevitably purchase (I always leave carrying more stuff out than I brought with me in), I just LOVE the Exhibit Hall!

4) The friends, old and new
-CATE is really such a warm place. It’s the people that make this conference rock! Getting to see folks I haven’t seen in a year (since last year’s CATE conference usually) is always fun. But the truth is, I just love chillin’ with English teachers. They make the wittiest of references, too. Gotta stay sharp to run with this crowd.

Much love to CATE.

And a great many thanks to all the hard-working people who toil so fabulously to put it on year after year.

I am all FIRED UP for Philly! The truth is, I just love NCTE. It’s simply a home-run experience every time I attend the annual conference and I always leave a better teacher as a result of having made the trip.

Why? The people. It’s that simple.

NCTE provides me a chance to be in the same room with some of the best minds in the world of English Language Arts. I mean where else can you go to hear Carol Jago, Kylene Beers, Jim Burke, and on and on and on and on? (To even start a list like this is to risk leaving people off of it but trust me on this one — the BEST and BIGGEST and MOST BOLD thinkers in our field will be in the City of Brotherly Love determined to share some of their brotherly/sisterly love with everyone else. It smokes!)

A search of this year’s program is tortuous though. I mean I want to go see this, but then I want to go see that and then I am scheduled to be over here but I really want to go over there as well… and on and on and on.

(A little shout out to Carol Jago for that one, too — as the prez, I guess she gets to get mentioned twice in this post — and her “team” of course… can’t forget them. So many people work so hard for so long to put this event on that I gotta give the unsung heroes need a shout out, too!)

BTW, have you ever seen more rockin’ authors made so accessible to dweebs like me gathered in one place? Look, when it comes to writers, let’s be honest… I am a bit of a groupie. Jeff Kinney, Sharon Flake, Junot Diaz, Gordon Korman, Tracey Kidder, Laurie Halse Anderson, Sharon Draper, Patrick Carmen… I could type for hours!

And they all sign books in the Exhibit Hall. Where else can you find that?

Ah, the Exhibit Hall. (Deep breath!) Can I tell you how much I love that part of the conference? I get to shop and browse and dream and think and weigh and consider — and get free stuff! (Yep, just work it, people… that’s how it’s done… work it!) I swear, the NCTE Exhibit Hall is like an amusement park ride for English teachers and I wish we all got to take it more than once a year.

Of course, at the end of the day it’s the other “real teachers” like me that I get to meet from across the country that makes it the most special. The workshops may fill my brain but chillin’ with English teachers fills my soul. Attending NCTE is a chance to listen and learn and exchange thoughts, ideas, gripes and possible solutions with so many other “front line” educators that it never fails to create in me a sense of real professional camaraderie. (And how rare is that?) NCTE is a feast for the human teaching spirit and unfortunately, I believe that our profession is, in a way, suferring from a crisis of morale. But those who attend NCTE get that shot of teacher juice which energizes, refreshes and reinvigorates them — and it just can’t be bottled or obtained in any other way.

You wanna know how I always feel when I leave NCTE. This kinda decent writer I once ran across probably says it best:

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more!

NCTE reminds me why I love this job. It rejuvenates my batteries and inevitably, I return from the conference just thrilled by the idea of returning to my classroom.

Get there if you can or try to link in via social networking, their website, their twitter hashtag, the blogs, whatever.

It’s an important event for the profession — and for our communal spirit.

NCTE has got the WOW factor… and I am so FIRED UP!

See ya in Philly.

AAaaaaaaaaarrrgghh!!

I had a school-wide faculty after-school meeting this week on Wednesday afternoon — one that we were not notified we’d be having until Tuesday afternoon. (As if we don’t have actual lives outside of this place.) And why?

Cause there was some really important stuff to go over. Like hall passes.

We literally spent 23 minutes discussing the proper implementation of granting hall passes. Which hall pass to assign. When they should be assigned. When they should not be assigned. How many of them can be assigned. How we are now supposed to keep track of who we are granting hall passes to so now, when a kid asks to use the restroom, we are supposed to stop everything we are doing, get out our “Accountability of the hall pass” sheet of paper, and note who took the pass so, in case someone absconds with the hall pass, we know who the last kid to have the hall pass was.

Because apparently, hall pass abduction is on the rise. And sophisticated classroom discussions on the theme of oppression throughout the ages as evidenced in a cross section of texts by international authors easily afford the opportunity to start-n-stop to do menial book-keeping like making sure that I note that Jenny took the hall pass because she is menstruating!!

AAaaaaaaaaarrrgghh!!

(But at least she’s not pregnant… alas, I drift.)

Never mind the ditching on campus. Never mind the fire alarms being pulled. Never mind the graffiti, the truancy, the tardiness, the lack of homework, the immense need for more parental support, the fact that there’s always a 15 minute line to use the faculty photocopier (when it’s working) and on and on and on.

Hall passes are now a major concern and damn it, we are going to beat this problem… as a team!

It was practically a surreal experience for me, sitting through this hall pass certification training process. But trumping the fact that our admins were spending our precious planning/professional/life time so ludicrously was the shocking sight of seeing so many teachers with their hands up waiting to ask questions about hall passes once the admins had concluded their section of the day’s preposterousness.

Will we be getting special hall passes for the nurse?
Are the library hall passes good for more than one student?
Can we color code the hall passes so that we know which department issued the hall pass?

Every time I think the admins are acting foolishly I look out to my peers and think, Aw Geesh, please put your hand down.

Am I the only one who knows that the golden rule of long, silly staff meeting is to NEVER raise your hand to ask a question because it only prolongs the pain?

BTW, school started six weeks ago, I have about 10,000 hours of work to do in terms of grading and lesson planning and trying to bring in a new unit on Body Language to tie to some oral presentations I want to have my students give later this month and we’re talking about freakin’ hall passes for 23 minutes well after 4:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon after I’ve been at school since before the light of day?

My Freakin’ School is Wastin’ My Freakin’ Time!!!

AAaaaaaaaaarrrgghh!!