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.)

Houston is gonna measure teachers by their test scores — and fire the ones that don’t add up.

Interesting stuff.

I guess we always knew it would come to this, didn’t we? Nobody is questioning the tests; everyone is questioning the teachers that don’t deliver the test scores.

The article is well worth a read. Seems as though they have a sophisticated prognostication thing-ey which can generate a “value-added test score”.

As the article says…

The value-added score, based on a complex statistical formula, is a measure of how much a teacher’s students exceeded expectations on standardized tests (mostly the TAKS: Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). The formula projects how well students should score based on their own past performance.

If the formula is so good at projecting how well the students should score, then how come the formula can’t discern that there is no formula for knowing where actual live human beings will be 3-4 years down the line?

Can you guess what will happen 3 years from now? Sure you can. Let’s just go back to 2007 and look at some of the most widely held best “guesses” for 2010 from way back then.

The best minds on Wall Street. They took a shot in 2007 on a thing called derivatives. And they have Harvard MBA’s.

Oops. Not so good.

Okay, that’s not fair. I mean who could have predicted credit swap defaults and the recession? Let’s guess about something else. We’ll make it easy. A virtual lock in 2007 to do all sorts of unprecedented, amazing things in 2010. A man who was gonna approach if not break all kinds of records by one Golden Bear.

And the winner is… Tiger Woods.

Whoops! Wrong again.

Sure, we should fire teachers based on not measuring up to their “value-added” scores. Cause three years from now is so easy to predict — especially when it comes to student success — that there is simply no sense even doubting the veracity of this approach to professional evaluation.

Uhm, Houston, we have a problem…

Obama wants to address the school-kids of this nation and, whodda thunk it, there’s controversy surrounding the idea of such an address to our nation’s youngsters.

Now, obviously, (or maybe not, so I’ll say it here) I am of the opinion that a well-spoken President addressing our nation’s kids in a “you can do it” tone now that it’s back-to-school season is good for the kids, good for the schools, and good for the good ol’ U. S. of A.

So I wonder, is it just me, or does this brouhaha strike anybody else as artificially contrived, politically motivated nonsense?

I mean, and this is a quote I pulled off the AP wire:

Texas Governor Rick Perry says he understands the concerns of parents who don’t want their children listening to President Obama’s school-time speech next Tuesday on the importance of education, aimed directly at the nation’s school children.

Well, I am glad he understands the concerns… cause I don’t. Could his political affiliation actually be the cause of the concern?

I mean Obama is OUR president, of the entire country, and if he wants to fire up the students, I say, “It’s about time a President did this.” Nice idea. Come to think about it, we couldda used something like this many, many years ago. But the right wingers (and I mean the far right-wingers) are…

“…saying Obama is using the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the boundaries of federal involvement in schools.”

Huh? I mean is “work hard, set goals, aim high and strive to become learned” some kind of liberal agenda now? (I am only speculating that this will be the thrust of his speech.) I mean if it is, I am way more liberal than I thought I was. And trust me, I am a tax and spend, California, left-coast animal lover, who believes in things like universal pre-school, universal health care, and recycling.

To counter, Obama’s people say the reason for it is this:

“It’s simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they’re good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously.”

Ooh… sounds nefarious. I bet there are secret code words embedded in the Closed Captioned text too that will send messages to aliens about our nuclear codes.

Yet, folks like Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Steve Russell say this…

“It gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”

Like I said, “Huh?”

Why do I have a feeling that if this was an idea from the prior presidency, some of those folks who are now chirping would have been singing an entirely different tune?

Then again, it never would have happened with our last president because Dubya Bush was (at best) a C- student, so having him tell the kids not to “misunderstimate the value of a gooder education” really wouldn’t have helped anyone too much.

Come on, does politics have to taint everything nowadays? I mean can’t the President say one nice thing without it being politically motivated? Will Obama’s Merry X-mas wish be dissected by the pundits for the way he tries to abscond with the well-wishes of the season for Democratic gains in the House come the 2010 elections?

Truly, am I the only one sick of this nonsense? Really, at what point do we not all recognize that this kind of stuff is hurting, not helping, our nation?

You know, Freud once famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Well, “sometimes a speech to kids is just that… a speech to kids.”

Walking through the airport to go do some PD for a school in Texas this week (BTW, I’ve been on the road WAY too much this summer) I found myself, as all of us inevitably do when we travel, in a security line.

A security line that was going absolutely nowhere.

Goodness, I said to myself, don’t we all just love how efficient airports are these days? And with nothing to do other than to contemplate the inner machinations of brilliance on display and try to take a replicable lesson from the underpinnings of unparalleled competence and unrivalled excellence so clearly set before me, I started pondering “ways to improve the system”.

That’s right, I decided to take on TSA (Travel Security Administration) at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport and Cattle Car Corporation).

The first thing they needed, I realized, was an API and AYP score. I mean how could I truly begin to gage their effectiveness if I did not have a basis of comparison? So I recognized, right then, in order for me to truly assess TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some bubble tests.

Bubble tests to make the employees jump through a whole host of hoops to measure the qualifications of the aspiring employee before they were hired. (And if they didn’t get enough correct bubbles the first time, I’d send them back to choose more bubbles.) Bubble tests to measure the job these employees were doing as they performed their duties. Bubble tests, bubble tests, bubble tests. Trust me, I saw about a zillion places I could use them.

That lady frisking the mom with the 3 month old questioning the contents of the breast milk – had she been given enough bubble tests to administer such a rousting, I wondered.

(Note to self: invest in a company that makes bubble tests… it’s a growth industry.)

That’s when I realized that if I really want to improve TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some really good bubble test graders and bubble test makers, too. Yep, some psychometricians with fancy degrees in order to create fair, accurate and equitable bubble tests so that my bubble tests did not discriminate against any airport employees based on cultural, racial, gender-based, or sexual preference differences.

After all, bubble tests that aren’t fair might taint the reputation of bubble tests everywhere and being a public school teacher in the day and age of NCLB, I could never dare to take such a risk.

Of course, I’d go further! Does anyone realize that security folks in airports nowadays don’t get paid by the customer; they get paid by the hour. This means that whether or not they process 30 people in sixty minutes or 60 people in sixty minutes, they get paid the same either way.

Merit pay… that’s what this system needed (once the bubble tests were in place of course).

I was on a roll!

I cooked up all kinds of great ways to improve the system such as instituting a hierarchical system whereby the people who run TSA at LAX would never have had to actually work as a boots-on-the-ground TSA employee at LAX. (i.e. Real experience might muddle their thinking.) And then I’d make all passengers take off their shoes, belts, watches, cell phone and shimmery low-cut underwear. (What, you didn’t think I’d abandon their best ideas, did you?) I would come in and revolutionize TSA at LAX!

Then the line started to move and I realized, “Yo, Doof-o… you don’t have any idea what you are talking about… a system like that would never work.”

So I grabbed my low-cut shimmery underwear off security’s conveyor belt and jumped a plane to Texas.

Just found out a freshman of mine, Rosa, up and moved to Texas over the weekend.

No notice. No official checking out of school. No goodbye. Just Texas.

Also, no final exam, no final project, no completion of her last few assignments for my class or anything remotely tied to properly closing down shop. We have two full weeks left of school but not for Rosa. According to her friends, she’s left Los Angeles for good. And why?

Because her sister got pregnant. That’s right, her sister.

See, Rosa’s sister is/was a junior at our high school. Apparently, her mom blew a gasket over the weekend, kicked one or both of them out of the house upon hearing this news (details are fuzzy) and now they are off to live in the Lone Star state with their dad, a guy who hasn’t had any sort of presence in their life for a decade.

Of course the guy who contributed to the Rosa’s-sister-will-be-having-a-baby is a total no-show in all of this as well. Wow, that’s original.

BTW, I just checked my calendar and realized that No Child Left Behind is mandating that all my students are at 100% proficiency by the year 2014. Just how exactly do they expect me to deal with this kind of stuff? I mean Rosa was a C-/D+ student before her end of the year disappearance, struggling to even maintain regular attendance (though she did discover reading this year in my class. The book 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher really hit a chord with her.)

Now, I’m not sure if she’ll get a D, a D- or an F. (I’ve yet to do the 4rth quarter’s math but it ain’t lookin’ pretty.) And just Friday I gave her the ol’, “It’s the 4rth quarter, you need to finish strong,” speech. However, does her final grade really make that much of a difference anymore? Truly, is there applause and pride to be found in a D-, like “Yo, at least I didn’t get an F!”

Is Rosa even concerned in the slightest right now about school?

Education is an upper level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and when the bottom rung has been threatened, everything up above appears as a luxury.

School has now become a luxury to this 15 year old, a luxury I am assuming she doesn’t think she can afford.

Really, is Rosa going to enroll in school in Texas? And with NCLB ready to demonize schools who are not at 100% student proficiency in the next 4 1/2 years, are schools in Texas really going to be stretching out a set of open arms welcoming in kids who are almost assured of lowering their test scores and aggravating their dropout rates?

The school Rosa just left will be punished for trying to help Rosa because NCLB demonizes us for low bubble test performance. The school Rosa will enter, if she does enter school, will also be punished for trying to help because to think she’s not going to need some remediation, some extra assistance, some academic “love” is incredibly naive.

But she did make progress of some sort this year in my class. How do I know? Because 13 Reasons Why is a book about teen suicide and Rosa, after she read it, told me it made her feel better in a way that told me oh-so-much more.

NCLB may not think Lynwood High School did anything positive for Rosa, and they are certainly on track to take our school out to the whipping shed next year due to our inferior bubbles, but those of us who do this day in and day out know there’s a flip side to the flip side of this coin.

State testing ended last week but school doesn’t end for me until June 26. This far-too-easily sets itself up to be an educational dead zone, a time whereby teachers can simply fluff through the last few weeks of the school year and count down the days til summer.

And the truth is, the kids kind of expect us to do this. Well screw that! Unless each and every kid is being courted by Harvard, there’s work to do. (And even if they were being courted by Harvard, there’d still be work to do.) Besides, what am I going to do, show The Lion King for the next month?

Now don’t get me started on our math department. (Okay, that was a cheap shot. I mean we certainly have a few extremely hard working folks crunching numbers down the halls, but still, ask around… there are some peeps…)

Anyway…

So a student named Laura just came up to me in class after I assigned our final year end project. We’re going deep into propaganda with an Animal Farm and The Giver unit I am just starting right now whereby my students will write, produce, star in and direct their own 30-60 second commercials before we say hasta la vista to this section of their academic journey. (BTW, these projects are going to be wicked. I’ll be sure to post some as they come through but seeing as how we now have more tech tools available than ever before, I am fired up about how cutting edge these things are going to be… or so I hope.)

However, Laura just asked me about timetables for the project. Well, her vocab wasn’t as sophisticated. She didn’t use the word “timetables”. Her exact words were, “When’s this due, by June 12, cause I’m going back to Mexico then?”

“Like, for the rest of the school year?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“But school isn’t out until June 26th. Do your parents know this?”

“I dunno.”

“What about your other teachers? Have you told any of them this yet?”

“No.”

“So it’s May 27 and you are going to be leaving in 2 weeks and you haven’t spoken to any of your teachers about small little academic things like missing finals or anything like that. When were you going to tell them/us?”

“I dunno.”

“Laura, let me ask you a question,” I said trying to remain composed. “Do you think that leaving school 2 weeks early is going to impact your grades?”

“I dunno.”

“Laura, let me ask you another question. Do you think a person should ever be paid full time wages for part-time work?”

“I guess, not really,” she answered.

“Laura, I think you need to go think this through a bit more. Maybe have a discussion with your parents, your other teachers and so on… and then create a plan. I mean you can’t just leave school for the summer whenever you want.”

But the thing is, she can. And probably will. This happens every year to teachers like myself. It’s a scene that has played itself out many, many times for gobs of teachers in California, Texas and so on. Matter of fact, it’s so common that I literally pilfered the scenario from my real life as a teacher and used it in my latest YA novel The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez, a book about a teen latina who is literally and figuratively caught between both two worlds and two cultures.

But in fiction, I get to solve the problem with a-learn-from-your-mistakes-inspirational-and-happy-ending. As a real teacher, I don’t. Laura and her family are going to make their own decision about when summer begins and my input probably will not carry much weight.

Aaarrgghh!! If only they could see what I see. School is a life-raft in America and we have got to get more of our kids to recognize how fiercely they need to clutch it.

A quarter is 9 weeks long. 2 weeks early means Laura will only have completed about 78% of her required attendance. And Laura is, at best, a C student in my class, so if you do the math (75% of 78%), she’s gonna be at about the 58% mark minus taking her year-end finals.

Extrapolate that across the board in all her classes and she goes from being a C student to an F student.

Well, there’s always summer school, right? Oh wait, she’s gonna be in Mexico. Hmm… now I teach in a school with over a 45% non-graduation rate and Laura is gonna bail out on the last two weeks of her freshman year of high school. I wonder how this is going to play out when the numbers get crunched in 2012?

Just when testing is knocking at the classroom door and the point to all of your educational efforts seems completely lost on the powers-that-be in the corridors of state decision making, along will come something that will restore your faith in why you do what you do and trigger a sense of hope.

School: too easy to give up on, too hard not to try and give your best yet again another day.

To wit, I cite this. It’s what the book report of the future will look like. (Heck, not the future — the book report of NOW!) Sent to me from Texas by a fan of one of my YA novels — a book report on Homeboyz.

Click here and turn up the volume.

Can you say, summer reading project? The sooner we start to blend text-to-world in a way that better connects text- to-technology, the sooner we are going to get more kids more actively engaged in their own educations. Truth is, the kids are eager and ready. It’s the adults in our school system who are holding the students back from doing this kind of stuff as book report.

The times they are a changin’.

Warning: This Ain’t Your Momma’s Summer Reading Project.

Just when state testing is knocking at the classroom door and the point to all of your educational efforts seems completely lost on the powers-that-be in the corridors of state decision making, along will come something that will restore your faith in why you do what you do and trigger a little chuckle.

School: too easy to give up on, to hard to not try again another day.

To wit, I cite this. It’s what the book report of the future will look like. (Heck, not the future — the book report of NOW!) Sent to me from Texas by a fan of one of my YA novels — a book report on Homeboyz.

Click here and turn up the volume.

Can you say, summer reading project? The sooner we start to blend text-to-world in a way that better connects text- to-technology, the sooner we are going to get more kids more actively engaged in their own educations. Truth is, the kids are eager and ready. It’s the adults in our school system who are holding the students back from doing this kind of stuff as book report.

The times they are a changin’.

So today I am back (at least at half speed) after burying my grandmother. It was a remarkable experience, a time filled with more smiles than tears, more laughs than anger and more warmth in my family than almost any other time I can recall in the past decade. Nothing like a funeral to remove a few shoulder chips — including my own — huh?

Crazy how a trip to a cemetery can put a few things into perspective.

And then I get a phone call that says this…

The American Library Association has named The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers 2009. (Homeboyz was a top ten ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers for 2008 so I just went back-to-back with my last two books of young adult fiction. Incredible, huh?)

And then they said, please make sure your publisher puts it on the cover. I have a feeling they won’t forget to mention this small little detail. Just a hunch. Too funny and too cool. Librarians are the BEST!!!

And then I get an invitation that says this…

The Convention Director of SPEAQ (SPEAQ is the Society for the Promotion of Teaching of English of a Second Language in Quebec) has formally invited me to be the keynote speaker at their annual conference in Montreal, Canada this November and is really hoping I’ll be able to say yes. (For really good pay, too including all travel meals and lodging.)

Not bad, I think. Not bad at all.

And then I check my email and get this…

Hi Alan,

I will do my best to keep this email brief. I have seen you speak several times and am always inspired by your passion and your drive. As a very new teacher, I need all of the inspiration to stick with it that I can get. I bought your book “Teaching Teens & Reaping Results” and started reading it tonight. I head back to my Master’s program Wed, and therefore, there goes my own reading time. Anyway, I saw the quote “Fall down seven times, stand up eight”and it really resonated with me.

I was lying in bed and I just kept thinking about that quote and how cool it would be to turn that into a poem – to write about 7 times we have fallen and the 8 times we get up. I am going to copy/paste my poem at the bottom of the email (I’m always wary of attachments from strangers). It was a profound writing experience for me. I wanted to share my idea with you since you inspired it!

Thanks for your wisdom and your genius!

Emily

P.S. The numbers were just for me to keep count. It’s too late for editing that before I send it! Cheers!

7 falls – 8 stands

1. I once fell when I stepped on a neighbor’s remote control because I let my anger get the best of me.

I stood up because I still wanted to be friends.

2. I once fell when my father died because I wanted him to help me figure out just who I was supposed to be and how.

I stood up because I know that’s what he wants me to do.

3. I once fell when we moved from Ohio to Wyoming because the boys who had finally reciprocated my crushes were going to be left behind.

I stood up because I figured there would be more romance ahead.

I once fell when Nick died that day in August because he was my best friend, we loved each other, and 18 year old boys are not supposed to have their heads’ crushed in car accidents.

I stood up because if I didn’t, the pain would crush me forever.

I once fell in Texas because I was so painfully lonely; two years and not a single friend to show for it.

I stood up because I knew that that was not how I wanted to live my life, and I knew I had the power to change it.

I once fell when my Mom was a suicidal pain medication addict for years because of the intolerable back pain the surgeries caused; she thought I did not love her because I told her she should not drive under the influence of the drugs.

I stood up because I loved her and wanted my strength to overwhelm her and become her strength.

I once fell when I was terrified of committing myself to my husband for the fear that he would also die, and I would be left with the grief.

I stood up because fear will not rule my life, and I will never stop believing in the powers that be.

The Book Jam ning is jamming, I can’t wait to get back to school and start rockin’ again with my kids and my literary agent just came to terms with Disney on a children’s book I submitted to them — my first children’s picture book (something I have always wanted to do). Plus, my real goal for the next, oh, rest of my years on this planet, is to bring authentic books back into our classrooms, get rid of the ridiculous scripted curriculums and let our kids read some awesome YA literature so that educators can simultaneouesly cover the standards, engage the students and build a bridge to 21rst learning projects so that America doesn’t get left behind much in the way England got smoked by folks like us due to their hubris about 150 years ago.

It’s our time, people. We MUST revolutionize our nation’s schools. And who better than us?

Remember when I said I was back at half speed? Screw it — full steam ahead. After all, one day we’re all gonna be gone anyway. What seems to me the matter the most is the way in which we spend our days while we’re here.

I am back on the roller coaster… and thrilled that you are coming along for the ride.