T.S. Eliot was wrong — October is the cruelest month, not April — which he should have known because at one point he was a schoolteacher. And not too be too critical of a Nobel Prize winning poet, but I think if he would have really considered the plight of educators in the month of October, The Waste Land might have gone in a slightly different direction.

As almost all teachers know, October is the part of the marathon race that is every school year whereby the end is so far out of sight it’s not even worth looking out on the horizon for it. Yet, the bloom is completely off the rose in terms of the freshness of a new year having started so that any sense of a “honeymoon with the new kids” is long since blam-o! And any re-charging or the batteries that was done over the summer has long since seen its reserves tapped, as well.

There’s no holidays. There are no breaks. The days get shorter and cooler and wetter. (I mean I love the Fall, don’t get me wrong, but even the weather conspires against us a wee little bit.)

October is a long stretch of road.

On one hand though, October is a great month for me though because I get a heck of a lot of uniterrupted teaching time in. It’s where the path of the year gets deeply plowed. On the other hand, teachers like me endure small little things like incapacitating throat infections which would sideline most mere mortals and yet, since I barely have enough time to accomplish all the things I plan to tackle even when I’m healthy, I certainly do not feel I have the time to call in sick — and so, inevitably during the month of October, I trudge on in, up before the sun, looking like a teacher that should really be spending their day in bed with a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and I suck it up and work through the themes of Frost, figurative language of Maya Angelou or the mood of Poe knowing that the weekend is only another 5 days and 188 essays away.

And this week, for the extra added bonus, we have Halloween in the air. Now, personally, I simply LOVE Halloween. One of the most fun times of the year for me. However, just the idea of it being in the air makes the kids both restless and mischievous. And for the students on campus who are not the most “academically oriented kids in the first place” Halloween week is almost a green light for them to cause trouble.

Ask anyone on campus this week and what you’ll find is people who are feeling stretched, tired, and over-worked. Now personally, I am a fan of these things because education is like muscle building and sometimes you have to do the sweaty, hard, strenuous work that stretches all the sinews in order to make productive gains. On the other hand, it’s easy to advocate for this type of workout but hard to actually get in the gym and be the weightlifter who has to pull it off.

October challenges me as a teacher. It makes me reach down, it makes me work hard and it forces me to keep my eyes on the prize and not become distraught over the insane amount of work which needs to be done in an almost un-doable amount of time under quite unreasonable circumstances.

Yet, like the Maya Angelou I am teaching this week, Still I Rise.

Some days I am a madman. I can crank out 2,200 pretty-close-to-publishable-words in a day’s work and then come right back and do another 2,200 the next day. (Usually in the summer when I am off from teaching.) Without a doubt, when I am in the midst of a novel and it is rolling, let me tell you, it can get rolling!!

And then there are the days when I know that to be a real writer, you gotta trudge through the sludge.

I actually happen to be in that exact phase right now. It’s hard. The work is laborious. It’s tormenting. Nothing comes easy and the fun is cranked way down to level “low”.

I mean, I swear I have re-written this freakin’ part of my forthcoming book at least 15 times… and it still isn’t right. And the thing is, a part of me doesn’t even know what “right” is. If I knew, I would just execute it. All I seem to be able to identify is what’s “wrong” and let me tell you, that part’s easy. It’s always much more simple to find the problems in writing — especially when you keep reproducing things “wrongly” in a variety of different forms — than it is too see the answers to the issues.

It’s a point worth repeating: it’s hard to figure out the solution if you don’t know the problem. (And welcome to my current life.)

However, I don’t really have any other options here. In truth, I must forge on. I mean I can throw a temper tantrum, smash my computer, kick a puppy (okay, not a puppy… a kitten! I can kick a soft, little fluffy meow-thing with big eyes and the cutest, most dainty paws you ever saw and… joking. I’m joking pet lovers. Please save me the emails please – I am still not over the wrath of Alabama). The point is, none of that is going to solve my “book” problem.

It’s like being on a mountain and base camp is just up ahead. There’s comes a time when climbing Everest — and writing what book isn’t, in its own way, like climbing some form of Everest? — when there’s no turning back and you must simply just find a way to put one foot in front of the other to get to the next plateau.

That happens to me every time I write a novel. Sure, seed ideas come easily enough and with them the excitement of the story’s promise, the vision of a smashing end result, the delusion that it’s all going to unfold perfectly without any problems in terms of plot, character, motivation, setting, dialogue, credibility, perceptive, insight, originality, and on and on and on.

Yet inevitably, you gotta trudge. That’s because the only way to solve the problem is to work the problem and in my experience, time spent giving it your best go is the only antidote. Sure, I sit down quite often not having any clue how I am going to solve some “pickle”. But I do know that the pickle isn’t going to solve itself for me — I am gonna have to have at it.

With my book Homeboyz, I finally realized what my problem was with a scene that took place in Juvenile Hall and the answer was that I needed to trim 16 pages from the book to solve the issue.

That only took me a month to figure out.

BTW, do you know how hard it is to trim 16 pages from a book — 16 pages you have already written? Well, actually, it’s not that hard once you identify the problem because once I did, the rest of the novel opened up for me. Homeboyz, btw, won an award from the American Library Association… an award I am not sure it would have won if I wasn’t willing to cut those 16 pages. Why? Cause you have to do what’s best for the writing — always! Follow that rule and there will be material left on the cutting room floor that was just delicious… yet if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. So axe it!

Sometimes I’ll rip off three pages in less than 2 hour’s time and they will be rockin’! Other times I will get into a knife fight with two sentences that take me 4 hours.

It’s just the nature of the beast.

However, I never, ever, ever feel like giving up. Why? Because I always wanted to be a writer and this aspect of that job is the fine print. Sure, I could give up. I could decide I don’t want to climb Everest anymore — or enter in knife fights with sentences that perpetually attempt to puncture my spirit. But the thing is, I made the decision to want to write a book when I was lucid, calm and rationale — so giving up my career when its midnight and I am tweaked on the end of a caffeine buzz, filled with too much candy and ready to kick kittens, well… it doesn’t make much sense.

I never know when the light will go on but I do know that “To Be a Writer You Just Gotta Trudge Through the Sludge”.

So how did I become a published author? I think the first answer I’d offer is, “mathematically”.

Here’s how I do it nowadays.

I am a full time high school teacher. This means I am up really early and am perpetually over-worked by the demands I face at school. But still, as we all know, so, so many teachers have 2nd jobs to make ends meet. I am no different. My school salary is not nearly enough to meet the financial demands of modern day life — especially in Southern California — so I, too, have a 2nd career.

That of an author. And to be an author, I have to write. Time (thus) becomes a professional tool which I must value and utilize well.

Here’s how it breaks down for me during the school year. (Note: this is a rough sketch, actual numbers

Monday through Thursday I make sure to put in at least 2.5 hours per night writing. Usually, my 3 year old daughter is in bed by 7:30 so between the school day ending for me a bout 3:45 p.m. and me allowing some time to get home, have dinner with my little “boo”, read her books, kiss my wife, exercise if I can squeeze it in and so on, I am usually “in the chair” by about 8:30. And I’ll go til 11. (Though I’ve been known to go to almost 1 on school nights which is nuts when you are up at 5:30 every morning but that’s another story.

All told, this makes for a minimum of 10 hours per week. (Friday nights are optional for seat time. Sometimes I work, sometimes I go out on “date night” sometimes I’ll rent a movie… but yeah, I’m a bit of an addict so probably twice a month I’ll do some stuff.)

Saturdays are 6 hours of writing time for me. Gotta do it. I need long stretches of uninterrupted time and the way I look at it, who doesn’t work 6 days a week. (Paper grading is the beast for me — avoiding it, that is. I bust my butt to get it done in the M-F wndow though, of course, some Sunday afternoons are spent with student compositions in hand.)

However, Sundays are also family day. I mean no writing at all. No computer, no email, no blogging. I will read some newspapers online if the moment allows but family day is family day. For example, this Sunday we’re all going to a pumpkin patch to prep for Halloween.

Add it all up and I do an average of 16 hours per week which equals 64 hours per month… and if you multiply that by a 9 1/2 month school year that’s 608 hours of writing time per school year.

But I get holidays, Spring Break and X-Mas, and summer. Let’s call it an 7 week “working summer” for me of a 35 hour per week writing week. (I work harder but it’s summer so let’s pretend I chill out more than I do.

That’s 245 more hours of writing. Add it all up and we are at 853 hours per year.

Now let’s imagine I am only good for 1/2 a page per hour of writing time. (Trust me, I am way better than that but I also put in a lot of “think time” for my books — despite what my critics may say… LOL! — which doesn’t translate into actual page production yet counts as “writing time”. So 1/2 a page per hour seems fair.)

Do all this math and you are talking about 426.5 pages of production each year from me.

All in all, writing a book is like eating an elephant; there’s only one way to do it.

Bite by bite.

If you want to be a writer, you have got to find the time. Writers, as I have said before, write.

So I have been getting lots of notes and the such as of late asking me to let a few people backstage, behind the scenes, into the kitchen to see how books get written, vetted, sold, and published.

Yes, I am a regular ol’ high school English teacher working at Lynwood High in Los Angeles but I also moonlight as an author having published books with Disney, Scholastic, Recorded Books and, coming soon (I just inked a new contract for a new YA title), Penguin, as well.

I write books for teens. Or for people that work with teens. Right now, that’s “my thing”.

The truth is, there are a great many similarities between student writing and professional writing. And there are scores and scores and scores of pages I can write about the process of becoming published. So going forward, I am going to start flavoring this blog with insights from the “other side” of literacy (i.e. the book writing side as opposed to the book reading side) and then work to make connections back to the kids, the classroom and so forth.

In a way, the writing/publishing process seems as if it’s kind of secretive to others. People ask me all the time, “How do you get a book published?”

Really, it’s not all that cryptic. Write a good book. Do that first and foremost.

Wait, let me re-phrase that, because we all know that there are lots and lots of books out there that are hunks-a-junk.

So what’s the rule?

Write a good book. Yes indeed.

See, I don’t really need to re-phrase the advice at all. Everyone is going to have an opinion on what is “good” and not everyone is going to like your stuff no matter who you are. (Just ask Stephanie Meyers who has some folks swearing she’s the cat’s meow and other folks complaining that if they read about one more “crooked smile” on the face of some sexed-up teen vampire hunk they are going to heave her Twilight tome into a furnace!)

You, as the writer, must believe in your own work. If you are not ready to stand up for your own effort, to declare that “Yes, this is worth reading!” then why-oh-why do you expect anyone else to waste their precious time investing what you yourself do not believe is really worth a hoot. Reading takes time, effort and mental energy and there are lots and lots of options out there for us all to digest.

So if you want to become published, write something you believe is worth reading. Write a good book! Human beings are hungry, starving for things that “speak” to them… and I have yet to meet anyone who has said, “Ya know, that’s enough for me. I’ve had my fill of hearing good stories, meeting great characters, vicariously experiencing new predicaments, settings, circumstances, triumphs and so forth.”

Look, for me there comes a point for me where I hate every book I am working on and think it’s the worst piece of crap that has ever been stroked on a keyboard. (Homeboyz one of my most successful and highly acclaimed books to date was, in my opinion, an absolute train wreck at times and I literally wanted to pull out the hair of my main character — as well as my own — because he was torturing me like you don’t even know. And yet, with time in the chair, my butt in the seat and a steely determination to “crack this nut” I finally broke through — stuff that no one really knows about this experience of writing what has become a real student favorite, particularly with reluctant reading kids.) Then again, if you are a writer, you have to know that by nature you are a dramatist and therefore, you can’t fall prey to the daily roller-coaster whims of “this is going to be the best piece of literature ever!” on Tuesday to ” I knew I should have become a CPA… why-oh-why did you ever think you become an author?” on Wednesday.

Neither extreme is true.

You put your butt in a chair and work day in and day out and give it your best — and then, after you string a few hundreds days in a row like that together, you have something. What do you have? Well, that’s up to you. But before you can be a writer you must do the work of a writer. You must learn your craft and the only way to do so is by applying your craft.

Writers write.

Like I tell my students, there is no magic pill I can give them to improve their reading ability or improve their writing ability. There are no literary steroids. What there is is true effort. Intellectual sweat. Mistake making, hard work and time — lots of it.

Really, I am not sure anyone becomes “good” without having travelled along the road of having been “poor”. Is there such a thing as talent? Sure, but talent will rarely reveal itself nor fulfill its own potential until work ethic plows its path.

You may not like Stephanie Meyers, you may love her, but one thing no one can dispute is that she sits her rear-end in a chair and cranks out 600 plus page books. That takes effort, discipline and endurance.

And those are the elements which real writers cultivate.

Writers write.

As for me, currently I am proofing a new book. The title is still under lock-n-key as I haven’t yet sold this book — my agent just finished it, really, really, liked it, and we are going to “go out with it” and try to sell it in the next few weeks. (I’ll keep ya posted.) But I will tell you this, it’s a comedy, it’s for YA readers and my wife thinks I am cuckoo because she hears me late at night typing away at my computer laughing out loud in a room where I am sitting all by myself. (In my own defense though, if I am not laughing, who will? — even if it does mean I might need to be fitted for a straight-jacket at some point going forward. I mean some things, like being published, are worth the price of admission, right?)

Now, I’ll circle back to the genesis of ideas (my students supply me with SO much material — all I do is work to be a listener and entire universes unfold), the process of actually writing (often late at night when others are sleeping — but you have to find the time no matter what), character, plot, motivation, antagonists and protagonists, setting and more — at a later date. Right now, if there’s a take-away today it’s this.

Writers write. It’s the only way to advance.

I’ll never forget the time I heard Neil Simon say,” The page is just as blank for me when I wake up in the morning as it is for you.” That stuck with me.

Writers write. He knows it. I know it. Now you know it.

Writers write.

David Letterman has made a fantastic living ruthlessly roasting people over their foibles. Their issues. Their own personal “affairs”.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost for him, aren’t they?

Now I am a fan of Dave. Or was. And I don’t want to be smarmy or display schadenfreude. I started watching him in 1985 when he was on from 12:30 – 1:30 and used to do bits like “Network Time Killers” which were literally designed to simply kill network time (cause the writers were on strike). The man has often been, imho, really funny.

Yet now the “hurt to his own family” caused by him sleeping with his staffers is the punch line of all punch lines and all his fellow comedians are… taking it easy on him?

I mean Leno dined on Bill Clinton’s affair for Clinton’s entire presidency… and he still does it. And Conan and all the rest of the comedigensia… they are practically giving Dave a free pass right now.

And why?

Cronyism.

If this were a Congressman, forget about it. Remember when Dave made all those sex jokes about Palin’s teenage daughter? Borderline out of bounds — maybe entirely out of bounds. I mean look, I’m no Palin fan but the sense of arrogance and entitlement shown by Dave to do sex jokes about other people’s kids while thinking he’s above the law, will never be discovered, is “of rank” to do material while simultaneously “behaving like” the people he is ridiculing is shocking.

If Dave were the CBS Network President who’d been schtupping staffers he’d be gone.

But Dave’s above the law, isn’t he? I mean he’s media savvy so he knows the mea culpa route works, he pokes a wee bit of non-scalding fun at himself as if to play, the “since I give it out, I gotta show I can take it, too” card, but does he ravage himself? Does he go for the jugular?

Do the other comedians show any teeth?

John Edwards, Bill Cosby, all those Congressmen in Florida, and countless others have literally been the butt of Dave’s jokes, his bread and butter, for years. Really, think about how many side-splitters Dave has made about all the extra-marital affairs.

Now think about being on the receiving end of those jokes and think about all the people who Dave has has made squirm, cry, weep, hurt, writhe and so on.

At least now we know why his fellow comedians don’t roast Dave the way they do other folks in the limelight. It’s cause they know he’s a real person with real feelings who is in real pain as a result of his own real shortcomings — and the women in this guy’s life are hurting bad as a result right now.

Great time to show a heart, huh comedy folks? (NOTE: A few folks did do some lukewarm Dave stuff but no one has really taken off the gloves on-air.)

For example, here’s Dave on Elliot Spitzer. Just on Elliot:

“Spitzer’s going be out of office, he’s going to be looking for a job, and I’m thinking, ‘Whoa, isn’t that what got him in trouble in the first place?’” –David Letterman

“Don’t kid yourself, ladies and gentlemen, this is serious. We’re having a lot fun here now, but it’s really serious. Eliot Spitzer could go to jail, he could go to prison, think about that. The former governor of New York could go to prison. And, well, that’ll be sex he won’t have to pay for.” –David Letterman

Here’s Dave on Palin’s teen daughter:
“There was one awkward moment during the seventh inning stretch. Her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

There are so many jokes Dave has made about other people having “illicit sex” that if someone were to post all of them, it would require a really thick, thick book to reprint all his little funnies.

Now maybe I am getting old but the humor of Dave from this point forward seems kinda as if it is going to live under a shadow of such immense hypocrisy that it’s not worth it to tune in for the “all is forgotten” laughs. As a teacher, as a parent, as a person living in a world of shrinking values, giving another pass to Dave simply because he knows how to crack a good joke, gets paid a lot of cash, or whatever really feels like just simple enabling.

He thought he was above the rules, he acted as if he was above the rules, his spineless peers give him a free pass on the whole matter and to let him just roll on as if life is normal proves that Dave knew best all along — he really is above the rules.

It’s good to be the King, right?

We all have our shortcomings and no one wants them held up to a microscope. But when you making a living doing it to other people, you gotta expect the tables being turned is fair play.

Turns out that Bill Gates lost 7 billion dollars last year. That’s billion with a B. I gotta say, he’s a better man than I cause if I had lost even a mere 7 million last year — that’s million with an M — I’d certainly be doing some very vocal complaining to whomever would listen right now.

Funny thing is though that I don’t really get a sense that this loss affected his life all that much. I mean did he suddenly start carefully selecting where it makes fiscal sense to eat based on the prices in the restaurant? As a teacher, I do this all the time. I mean I’d love to eat sushi WAY more often than I do, but I don’t simply because well, hey, it’s kinda expensive. And does Bill Gates now have to think differently about the type of car he drives, the cost of gas per gallon, or the price tag of a new shirt?

Probably not. So here it is that this guy loses 7 billion and it doesn’t impact him all that much (it’s probably a quaint little joke; Ha-ha, lost 7 billion this year… only 50 billion left, time for coupon clipping!) and yet my school district gives us a 3% pay cut and raises our insurance premium and I suddenly have to go through my entire lifestyle to see where edges can be trimmed.

And I am a salaried professional with a Masters degree and 2 full time jobs (teaching and writing — 3 if you count speaking). Makes me kinda wonder how folks making an hourly wage with no health insurance are actually making it in this world.

Actually, they are not. Nickel and Dimed is a a great read for those who want to explore more on this but let’s face it, when it comes to getting by in America these days, the older generation has left us in a less advantageous position than the generation prior to theirs left them.

And we have got to turn this puppy around because it’s bad for all of us when the children of our nation have “less” than what we ourselves had.

Of course, where does it all start? In my opinion — D’uh — education. Gotta love those school budget cuts, right? Good for today, great for tomorrow.

I just scored a new car this past weekend — had to do it. (Hey, I live in L.A., the land of cars and when it’s time, it’s time). But what is so remarkable, is that the salesperson lied to me and I still bought the car from him.

And not just one salesperson lied to me — at every dealership I visited, I was lied to. No matter make, type, design or whatever, I’ve just experienced firsthand how it’s an industry filled with people who believe that they are allowed to tell their customers half-truths and self-serving semi-falsehoods — they say what they feel they need to say in order to make the deal — and then when you call them on it, they tell you it’s nothing personal, you shouldn’t take their words literally, that’s not what they meant, it’s just the way that business is done, blah, blah, blah…

For example, the salesperson uses a lot of words like “best” and “most”. I was given the “best” possible price. But then, after 25 minutes of silly haggling, I was given the real “best” price. And then another 20 minutes after than, I was given yet another “best” price.

Their best keep getting best-er… and then, when I offer them a number I am willing to pay for the car, they acted insulted. As if I were taking food out of the mouths of their children. They had the nerve to quote me a “best” price that was thousands of dollars over the “best” price that they offered me 50 minutes earlier and then when I counter-offered with a reasonable price, well… at the end of the day, it all felt oily to me.

And the truth is, even if I got a good deal, I still feel as if I were taken to the cleaners. It’s as if getting them to say yes to a purchase price means I screwed up somehow because they somehow got me in a way I still do not know and I overpaid for my vehicle.

And of course, car buying is an industry that has felt this way for decades. So what is going to cause this industry to change? I mean some have tried it but obviously, it hasn’t yet caught on. At least that’s the question that I asked myself as I signed all the final papers. (You know, the ones where the literal definitions of words actually matter for the first time in the car buying process since they are on binding legal documents).

But ironically, just as I was thinking this, the finance guy, in order to fill the space of the room with some small talk as he typed, told me, “So you’re a teacher huh? Boy, talk about a system that needs to change. What is up with our schools?”

Goodness, how low have we sunk when people who spend their lives trying to deceive others to fleece them of as much cash as they can get look down upon us for the work we do in our classrooms as if all educators are a bunch of charlatans trying to pull one over on the parents, community, government and kids the way that car salespeople are trying to pull one over on legit customers who only want a fair shake?

I mean when the New Car Used Car Salespeople think they can take the high ground over teachers, geesh… what in the world is going on?

People who work in schools moan and moan all the time about how “the kids don’t read” but you know what… the people who are moaning aren’t really reading either. At least they’re not, in large part, doing the professional reading necessary (IMHO) to stay up to date with what’s going on the world of literacy and language arts.

I’ve got administrators screaming about how we need to make “data-driven decisions in the English Department” but these folks aren’t reading what I consider to be some of the best, most useful, most insightful books about the world of ELA Instruction — works that are replete with not only data, but reflections upon that data so that the reader/teacher/educator can make methodological decisions based on something other than “I am doing this because it came from above — and I must always do what comes from above — where it appears they simply pulled it out of their butt” mentality.

Here’s a list of a few books NOT read by the folks who are barking at my department with orders as to how to improve, of course, our test scores:

Readicide
Holding On To Good Ideas in Times of Bad Ones
The Reading Zone
Disrupting Class
A Whole New Mind
I Read It but I Don’t Get It
Why Students Don’t Like School
Outliers

Now I could go on. And please do not ask me how I know that most of the top-ranking folks have not read these books because I’ve surreptitiously tested them in my own nefarious ways. However, the point is not to embarrass anyone. The point is to question how can anyone taking on the challenge of improving ELA in the 2009/2010 school year really be considered seriously if they haven’t done this type of reading. (And yes, I know there are more titles as well.)

Sure, it’s hard, time-consuming and dense. But not having the time is, to me, just an excuse. I mean me, I teach, I write YA fiction, I blog, I spend good time with my family and I try to exercise… but I also read! Why? Because I find it absolutely necessary to the development, implementation and application of my professional craft. And I am not drawing an administrator’s salary, either. I do this as a regular ol’ classroom teacher.

So when these folks come to me with “strategies for success” that seem to have ben taken right out of some field book from a Master’s Class in the 1990′s to deal with the problems we are facing in the here and now, I just gotta shrug and say, “Yo, before you open your mouth, open a book, huh?”

Time to be spooked. Parents should be spooked. Teachers should be spooked. The national workforce should be spooked. And kids (who are going to be on the wrong end of this stuff) ought to be very, very very spooked.

I mean, is this the wave that is inevitably going to wash over us all?

Really, how long before all of us — and by all of us, I mean ALL of us — are being mandated to teach this type of curriculum?

Essentially, it’s a curse of study — oops, I mean a course of study — explicitly designed to teach to the test. As the news article points out, all 29 elementary schools in one district are now being mandated to use the same literacy materials. (What a sale for the publisher of these materials though, huh? Betchya the commissions on that purchase order set a few heels to clicking!) And what literacy materials, you ask? Well, as the article says — and this is a direct quote — Reading Street (catchy name, I’ll give them that) uses, “workbooks” by means of “prescribing set amounts of time for different activities”.

As if Timmy at one school, Johnny in another, Sara in yet a third, Joe and Jackie in another and Paul in yet another school (I am too lazy to type up the names of 29 different kids) are all going to benefit equally from being fed the same mental nutrients as served up by a corporate behemoth who hasn’t even met Timmy, Johnny, Sara, Joe, Jackie and so on.

In the search for equity, are we not being unfair to almost everyone? If you are going to try and pull this off with every student in all 29 elementary schools in one district, will not the top get slowed down, the bottom get passed up and administrators concentrate most heavily on working towards the great, glorious movement to the middle where everyone understands the same concepts at the same time in an equal and measurable fashion?

And though I have not seen Reading Street in person (their website has lots of good buzzwords though with lots of fancy sounding near guarantees for success) I guess this also means if the test doesn’t test it then the question will inevitably arises as to why a teacher might teach certain content? (Forget the fact that their professional experience tells them it is of value… I mean, this is exactly how the test makers are shaping the direction of America’s schooling. He who makes the tests, makes the rules. (The new Golden Rule of Education.)

Good way to manage the widgets, that’s for sure? The folks in North Carolina are nervous… and in my opinion, rightfully so. Yet like I said, I have not seen Reading Street, haven’t touched it, haven’t used it, hadn’t ever heard of it til this week… thankfully!! But when I read this quote from a parent of a child at the magnet school in the district (and aren’t magnet schools supposed to be our shining lights in this haze of mediocrity we call U.S. public education?) I get spooked.

“I don’t feel that a top-down, corporate, admin-heavy approach is what’s going to improve learning for our children. I feel that our children learn from qualified, inspired teachers,” said Julie Maxwell, a Club Boulevard parent.

Really, who is going to argue with that? Other than the top, down, corporate, admin-heavy supporters of course… of which there are few — but they have power… a frightening amount.

Like I said, He who makes the tests, makes the rules!

Be spooked!!

I think there is an interesting parallel to be drawn between this recent TIME Magazine article titled, “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” and a longer school day and year.

Don’t really have a clue as to what it is, but hey, I gotta type something right now, don’t I? I mean if a blogger blogs in the forest and no one is there to comment… aw, forget it, I am WAY off track.

No, seriously, the point is, that exercise without attention to diet will not make one thinner. And so it also goes that longer school hours and more days in the classroom will not automatically make a student more student-y. Applying poor teaching strategies, using drill-n-kill worksheets, having kids read the textbook then answer the textbook questions in the back of each chapter and then have them do it over again for longer durations of time — well, simply put, these are not the answer to our educational ills.

Yes, I firmly believe we need more time in our classrooms. I do think the school year is too short. (After all, having the summer off was an agricultural need of society back in the day; these days the prime agricultural involvement of a teenager’s summer, if there is one at all, revolves around the agricultural product known as weed). The school day could use more hours as well. (I mean, as all studies show, the “witching hour” — that is, the time when kids get into the most trouble (i.e. fights, sex, drugs, shoplifting, and so on) — is between 3-7 p.m. A longer day that doesn’t start as early — so the kids aren’t as groggy — doesn’t strike me as such a bad thing. Sure, there are details to work out — and the inconvenience to all of us would be tremendous — but if we are seeking to best serve the kids, we do, in my opinion, need a longer school year and a longer school day.

But what goes on during these extended hours has got to become more productive. That’s the real issue. Doing something poorly for longer amounts of time isn’t going to make one any better at it. Doing it better will.

The jogger that eats jelly doughnuts doesn’t lose as much weight as the non-jogger who does not eat jelly doughnuts (and all akin junk food). Okay, I get it. And as much as we need to change our schedule (which we do), we moreso need to improve our intellectual nutritional offerings… that’s where we’re gonna make the real “weight” gains.

So what’s the answer? PD!!

PD — professional development — is the lynchpin. Without better preparing our nation’s teachers to do a more efficient, effective, more productive job, we are just re-arranging deck chairs. I mean let’s not mistake activity for productivity (to borrow a phrase).

And really, who does not need PD? I mean without people showing me how to bring things like nings into my classroom this year, it ain’t just gonna appear under my pillow the night before school as delivered by the Teacher Fairy.

PD: the national conversation not enough people are having.