So the ning business is finally going to morph into a real business and stop allowing people to use their goodies without paying for them.

Wow, brings up a whole host of stuff when it comes to writing in the online world.

Is the sale of ad space really expected to power the entire forward progress of the whole world wide web? I don’t think so. Then again, if ning doesn’t give it away free first and foremost, do they grow into the company they now are? And if they now start to charge, how many nings fold up and think, “Well, it was good while it lasted”?

Is this what the next stage of the internet looks like? People give away items at no charge until they become apparently worth something, and then they start to charge for their services and people fold up their tents and drift off to the next latest and greatest thing. (You know, the one that people can use free of charge until enough people start using it to make these folks see “gold in dem dar hills” whereby the model changes to a fee based-structure… and everyone then flees again… and on and on and on?)

Jim Burke said… People need to wake up to the idea that they cannot expect companies to be non-profits. We have grown increasingly addicted to the idea that everything should be free, that we should have to pay for nothing. That is not sustainable.

Indeed. But as soon as Twitter starts charging me per tweet, I think I am gone.

And I think they know this… which is why they do not charge me for tweeting. Which is why so many millions of folks do tweet.

But charge even one dollar a month and, “Nah, I am not so sure it’s worth it” creeps into my consciousness. I mean there are so many other free things I can do on the web, with mobile technology and so on, that, on second thought, Nah, I just don’t think so.

The fact is, most human beings pretty much do not like paying for things that were once free. We feel ripped off. (Even if they are actually worth the money.)

If once upon a time you charged me, and you raised the price, then hey, I get that. But if was free and now you want money for it… that doesn’t really compute so well. I mean “I think I only wanted it because it was free anyway,” is what I tell myself. Then I move on.

And on the flip side, people tend to more highly value that which actually costs them more. Look at the diamond industry. DeBeers is absolutely brilliant in the way that they make us believe diamonds are precious stones worth X amount of dollars. And by controlling 85% of all the diamonds on the planet (they have vaults and vaults and vaults of them locked away so that they can manage world wide inventory and empower all these diamond dealers to say, “but they are rare and precious”) they create the illusion of high value – and the reality of high price – in the mind of buyers.

And we buy it.

Engagement rings, earrings, and so on. “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

Hook, line and sinker, we drank the Kool-Aid on that one.

But NY Times news? I think the cat is outta the bag on that one. Sure, some will buy it – older folks who grew up indoctrinated into the “fine journalism” being offered will stay the course. (They also have more disposable income.) But now, news and commentary are free… and if the NY Times wants to start charging for what they originally gave away online, heck, I’ll go to the Wash Post or L.A. Times or BBC and so on.

Heck, the Huffington Post will go out and scavenge the free news for me. And they are not alone.

And if they all decide to charge at the same time, they are gambling with their very existence… cause there is no guarantee to say enough people will pay to keep them afloat.

Are they willing to risk bankruptcy? Do they really want to know if they call our bluff and insist on charging us that we are actually going to pony up cash for their goods versus simply seeking another source for our news and bail out on them?

TIME magazine charges. Newsweek doesn’t. Is there enough of a difference that I buy TIME? Right now, not really.

The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety, Hollywood’s Trade Magazines, got it right. They charged for content right away (after giving away small teasers.) People were used to paying for print, they immediately got used to paying for online from the get-go and now, they more or less, seamlessly transitioned to the online journalism world.

Right now, newspapers don’t really have the guts to pull the “free” plug because they know if they do, we might not come back to them and prove them obsolete. (It’s any business’s darkest fear – to recognize that the world can get along just fine without them and have the world recognize that.

Of course, all of the newspapers are hoping Apple and the Kindle will help to save their butts… but ESPN.com does sports for me and the AP wire still provides news and Joe down the block blogs about the tree root situation plaguing the local sidewalks on my street and the idea of one-stop news shopping is something that is already dead to many of us anyway. (Like textbooks providing one-size-fits-all curriculum – that ship has SAILED!)

I get my news from 15 sources, not one and until all 15 charge, I can live with only 14.

So, I won’t get to read Friedman. But if enough people stop reading Friedman, he’s going to try and deliver content to his audience another way… or else he stops being Friedman and someone else’s voice will rise up to replace his. Books still make sense. (I want to read the writing of the folks I want to read: Stephanie Meyers, Stephen King, they could publish on toilet paper and people would read it by the roll.) Newspapers don’t. Magazines… they seem to be on an edge. Can’t call it one way or the other yet.

Ultimately, I am completely at a loss for how this will all work out but I do feel that it sure would be hard to get people to start paying for my blog now that I have been giving it away at no charge for a year and a half.

Most of them would probably say, “Hasta la Vista… it was good while it lasted but I am onto other things.”

Real businesses know customers value what they pay for much more than they value what is free.

Like the dot.com bubble, so is the Free bubble.

The book FREE proposed that free was the way of the business future – at least to get a foot in the door. Actually, I think the real way of the business future is to 1) provide something excellent and 2) charge for it right out of the gate.

People will always pay for quality and if you are giving it away at no charge, how much is it really worth anyway?

Nings seem to have blown it if they want to charge. Someone else is gonna fill their void if they do because most people will not pay for the same thing they used to get at no charge. They will pay for something new, better, enhanced and so on.

Nings aren’t proposing that. There is no Ning II that’s a platinum version they will be selling. Ning just wants money now… and I am not sure how many folks are gonna roll with that.

However, I would chip in a buck to keep this ning alive. And if we all did, maybe the ning folks would let us keep rolling, huh?

Testing season is coming up — and if I am ETS (or another test-making company of like ilk) that means, it’s time to pop the bubbly.

Why? Because we are about to become a nation of bubble test takers and that means, cha-ching… cash is gonna be flowing into the coffers of the people who make these tests.

It’s like being a pumpkin salesman during the month of October — business is good.

But here’s a question. As far as I can tell, every corner of the world of education has seen the current budget crisis play a major role in their operations. At my school district, we RIF’d around 20% of the district’s teachers.

Across the state, we’ve reduced services to kids, cut out extra-curricular activities, started charging parents fees to allow their kids to play sports and so on.

But have the test takers reduced their prices for us?
Have the bubble test makers given us a break on cost?
Do we get a volume discount for literally lining up millions of customers annually?

My school is out of copy paper… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
My school is out of toner cartridges… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
Major school districts are literally shortening the school year whereby they will be providing less instructional hours to our most needy kids in order to make ends meet… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?

Pop the bubbly if you make bubbles… cause it’s boom time in a land where so many others are going bust.

It’s good work if you can get it, right?

I am asked all the time about how to become a published author… so here’s some advice for aspiring writers.

Lots of people, it appears, have the desire to write a book one day. My thoughts: just do it.

Spring Break is here and summer is coming up. At some point in all our lives we must step up to do those things we one day had always hoped to accomplish so if there is a book living inside of you waiting to be born, you gotta ask yourself, “If not now, when?”

I say, do it!

And then do it and do it and do it some more. Will it be hard and aggravating and gut-wrenching and rough? Of course. But will it also be fulfilling, exciting, adventurous and rewarding? Most probably so. (I can’t promise, but it is for me.)

In my experience, the people who are most frustrated as writers are either 1) people who swear they are going to write a book but never actually do write a book or 2) people who do ultimately write a book and then come to believe that the world has failed to recognize their literary brilliance when they don’t sell as many copies as John Grisham while at the same time garnering the same critical reviews as Oscar Wilde.

Hogwash.

Real writers write because they can’t not write. If that is you, write, continue to write, continue to read and and continue to keep learning and learning about the craft of writing. Your publishing break will eventually come (mine took more than a decade) and when it does, it’s only going to mean that more writing will be expected of you one day.

This is a profession for lifers. The first ten years are school, the next ten years are learning the business behind the business. Write an average of 10 pages a week for 50 weeks a year (that’s 500 pages) for 20 years (that’s 10,000 pages) and then talk to me then about how no one wants to publish you. Cause you know what? You do that and I can almost guarantee, you will be published.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers talks about the 10,000 hour rule. (i.e. it’s takes a ton of time to get really good at something.) Me, I kinda think there is some wisdom in this.

Now sure, you hear stories all the time about first time-authors who just got paid $750,000 for their debut novel… and maybe that will be you. (You’ll never know unless you actually write your book.) However, if you are looking for a quick score, a lottery ticket, I am not sure book writing is the best path.

But if you are looking to write a book for another reason, such as possibly believing that you actually MUST write this book (even if only your mom will ever buy a copy; but don’t worry, my mom bought 16 of my first book thinking she was going to propel it to the bestseller lists all by herself. BTW, nowadays, she waits for me to send her a free one. Sheesh, times have changed.) then do it.

More about the writing process is gonna come next week. But in the meantime, think about tapping at the keyboard. The page is blank for all of us when the sun comes up in the morning. The only question is, are you going to fill it?

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.

So a kid breaks the school rules by say, ditching class, and what do we do? Suspend them for 5 days.

Oh, that really teaches them.

Maybe back in the old days being suspended from school carried a stigma but for oh-so-many of my kids, when they get suspended, it’s like a vacation for them.

Sure, maybe they get in trouble at home. Perhaps their mother is angry at them or what-not… but what we’re inevitably doing is making a problem that much worse by keeping kids out of class.

I say, when a kid violates the rules and earns a suspension, what they should really earn is School Boot Camp.

That’s right… you have a major infraction, that means more time, not less at school working on your deficiencies of both character and academic ability… and you are going to be forced to contribute to both your own benefit and that of the campus at large.

Obviously, we are talking Saturday School here. (BTW, immediately we have a deterrent. Right now, being threatened with a 5 day vacation/suspension is not any kid of deterrent with teeth at all. But make a kid give up weekend hours and you’ll see a newfound respect for campus law.)

Instead of 5 days worth of suspension, I say we given them a month of Saturdays, from 8:00 – 3:00.

The “suspension time” would be divided up into two categories. Personal enrichment and campus beautification.

I’ll start with campus beautification. That’s a euphemism for grab a freakin’ broom, buster… you are going sweeping.

And wiping.

There’s gum to be scraped, graffiti to be removed, trash to be picked up and bathroom sinks to be polished.

You violate the rules of this community, you need to step up and improve the ambience of this community.

That’ll learn ya!

But there’s gotta be academic work, too. Clearly, there is often a link between low academic skills and behavior issues. How about if the suspended student’s learning profile was taken into consideration and if, for example, they showed a lack of proficiency with pre-Algebra skills, they were afforded the intervention needed to help them raise their mathematical abilities?

I know. Too sensible. Send ‘em home, let ‘em meander and pretend we all don’t ultimately pay for it later on once they are uneducated adults.

When you think about it, school suspension makes no sense.
A kid’s time could be used so much more productively to forge character as well as academic aptitude.
A month of Saturdays is a much better approach to trying to snap a misbehaving kid into shape.
I say SCHOOL BOOT CAMP!

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!

I am kicking around a new book idea about the need for single-tasking in a world where people sing the praises a bit too loudly about the ability to multi-task.

(But since I kick around new book ideas all the time, it’s probably best just to blog about it and see if the itch is still there to scratch at the end of this post.)

Multi-taking, in the modern world, is something we all do. Talking on the phone while googling an address as someone speaks to you from the other side of the room — come on, how many of us haven’t done that?

And yet, for some reason, white collar employees seem to think that there is merit to functioning like this all the time.

Sure, it produces voluminous work but the truth is, I want quality over quantity. And quality oh-so-very-often is sacrificed in this day and age at the altar of expediency.

With my students, this a growing subject of conversation in my class. (It’s also why I am such a HUGE fan of reading. Reading — particularly reading longer works, like, ahem, real books — is a single-tasking job. One simply cannot read a novel like The Alchemist and google, talk and change songs on your iPod at the same time.

Not that my students don’t try… but the quality of their comprehension will be sacrificed in direct correlation to the amount of attention they willingly divert from the task at hand.

And btw, when I am on the consuming end of the scale — when someone prepares a meal for me, when someone checks my cholesterol by taking a blood sample, when someone valet parks my car — I want them to be single-tasking at the time. I don’t want them talking on the phone while trying to find a vein in my arm. I want their focus… their single-minded focus.

Why? Because single-taskers translate to “better” taskers.

In my own class, one of the ways I greatly improve my students’ writing over the course of a year in English is that I make them concentrate on the small things. The details. The apostrophes, the spelling, the periods at the end of sentences and the such. It might not like sound much but when you see the quality of the work they enter with each year versus the quality of writer they have become by the time they leave, it’s night and day.

Because they concentrate. Because they pay attention. Because I force them to focus and they produce high quality sentences line by line by line.

Being slovenly is disastrous to a crisp thinker. And in the age of txt messages, Facebook, Twitter and so on, just slapping something out is all too easy.

Multi-taskers go a mile wide and an inch deep throughout their careers. Single-taskers go a mile deep… and then they go a mile deep again. They eventually get to breadth as a result of depth — and when all is said and done’ I’d venture to say that it all adds up to a lot more substance when the final tallies are tallied.

Multi-taskers are under the false delusion that they are going someplace quick but in my opinion, it’s intellectual laziness that keeps them flitting from one thing to the next all the time like a moth on red bull.

Single-taskers will cure cancer.
Single-taskers will take green energy to a whole new level.
Single-Taskers Will Rule the World!

And reading is the training camp for single-taskers. In my opinion, letting the red herring of “21rst century skills” undercut deep instruction that demands extended concentration will be a grave mistake. We, in our classrooms today, must overtly recognize this quicksand.

So, is there a possible book here? I think so, if I fleshed it out more, did some research, flavored the whole thing up with anecdotes, provided an 8 Step recipe for Single-Tasking Success, and so on. But do I feel the need to spend a huge amount of time writing this book at the expense of a what could easily be a new work of YA fiction for me? Probably not.

This is why I blog. It allows me to multi-task. (wink-wink.)

Does it happen to everyone in education that they lose touch at some point, like an athlete that doesn’t know when to hang it up, and they hold on for too long… to the detriment of those they have been hired to serve?

Thing about this issue though is that age, oftentimes, has very little to do with the matter of when someone should hang up their educational spurs. Truly, some people ought to take their chips off the table after but 3 months in this profession — and for a few, that’s 90 days too long in this field! Others need to stick around for another 2 decades even if they have already put in 35 years of service. (Let me tell ya, Boca Raton, Florida retirement with dinner served at 4:30 p.m. can wait.)

For a boxer, as the years roll on you lose hand speed. And you get punched in the head too many times and it becomes clear to even the most casual fans when a once-ferocious fighter simply needs to stay out of the ring.

Football players, baseball players, NBA superstars… Father Time and Mother Nature conspire to do ‘em in. As ticket buyers we see it and we let ‘em know.

But in schools, it’s not really the same. Like I said, some of the best folks we have in education are people who have been in this field for 30 years or more.

(If only they could NEVER retire.)

However, as I also said, some of people should have hung up their educational spurs when Nixon was president.

All in all, the big point is that time and age don’t necessarily translate to “excellence” in our profession. As too many of us well know, some of the best folks we have in our field have been in their jobs for less than 5 years.

And they are the ones who are first to get chopped when the budget cuts roll in.

Ouch! We butcher our most promising seedlings.

Yet, some folks in our field (no names — or organizations — mentioned) quite wrongly equate “years in the classroom” to “quality of work being done in the classroom” — as false premise as ever there was.

Age before beauty… it’s not right! And when common sense returns to public education — or finally rears its head, as some may argue — the idea that quantity of time in a class trumps quality of time in a class will be expeditiously bounced.

So how did your kids spend their holiday break. Mine, let’s see.

–They slept.
–They ate.
–They watched tv.
–They played video games.
–They were bored.
–They “chilled”.
–They did “too much” homework.
–They did no homework.
–They went to the mall.
–They partied. (This is where my “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy comes into play).

A few of them travelled, some of them caught the flu and some of them went to the movies.

All in all, they got to be real people. Fine. Cool. Glad you enjoyed it. But after reading their papers (so sloppily written, I might add) and hearing their words, I am more determined than ever to “bring the heat”.

January is a time when there is so much good work that can be done but I also know that if I spend the first week back allowing a honeymoon mentality to sink in — as so many people often do — I am just wasting valuable class time.

Class time I desperately need.

Yep, we are up and running!

But what scares me is the knowledge that across this great country not every educator in the U.S. thinks this way.

Mentality matters… and it starts with the person at the front of the room.

Our latest problem is that kids are coming to school with Gatorade bottles… filled with vodka drinks. Does every next generation of teen have to take the level of prior “defiance” of school rules and cultures to a new level? I mean once upon a time it was unheard of to chew gum in class. Now kids are swigging berry martinis in the middle of math class making a mockery of, oh… just about everything.

Of course pot has been an issue forever. The other day I joked to a colleague that I taught on Weed Hall. Then again, as TIME Magazine points out, smoking wacky tabacky is up. (Though cigarettes are down.)

We don’t even have the budget to do small things like hire a school nurse, staff a school librarian, and so on… and now we need people to screen through all their Jonas Brothers lunch boxes? (That’s a joke — Megadeath, Slipknot, The Game and so much more how my students roll — boy bands get very little play around here.)

Really, think about the kid that comes onto campus with a Tequila cocktail. Do you think they also have their homework? Do they also have an eye towards being well-prepared for the SAT?

Are they not an inevitable anchor on our school test scores so that when NCLB slams us for being an “underperforming high school”? When folks blame our campus teachers for being a bunch of lame-O’s are we allowed to say, “Well, I tried to teach to the difference between literal vs. figurative language but my student was too sloshed from the rum and coke they sucked down at lunch?”

If we caught any of the teachers drinking on campus, they’d be fired in a heartbeat, their professional reputation tainted terribly forever. But the kids? They just get a few days of slap-on-the-wrist suspension where they — I assume — just go home and drink.

I mean it ain’t like we expect them to be doing homework, right?

Students: we want them to take a deep drink FROM THE WELL OF KNOWLEDGE. Some are drinking, but they are missing the point.