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.)

As the NCTE buzz of awesomeness wears off, most attendees are left with the afterglow of energizing exhaustion.

So many great ideas. So many fantastic educational insights. So many tremendous authors. Too much in too little time and yet, so happy to head home.

For me, as always, it’s the real people that make the conference so special. I have made friends – the likes of which I only see once a year at the Annual Convention – and yet, as I get older, and we see one another year after year, our bonds become more deep and more special. (I know, I know, it’s a revolutionary idea that you can actually be friends with someone that you actually have met face-to-face… especially as I type this in blog-post format to be read by many online friends I have, the likes of which I have never met face-to-face.)

I’ve never been part of any real “organization” and yet, being a part of NCTE year and and year out feels like a right fit for me. And the idea that it’s an organization started 100 years ago by a group of semi-outraged English teachers sick of the buffoonery of the policy-makers, well… maybe that is why I feel as if for an oinker like me, this is my kind of mud.

Next year we convene in Chicago. I say that to plant the seed now. If ever you have had the itch to attend the National Conference, next year is your year. Chi-town is a great city, the talent, programs, and people who are gonna come in from all over the country is sure to be fantastic and when it comes time to say goodbye 12 months from now, you too can experience the afterglow of energizing exhaustion.

NCTE rocks! Officially.

Do we forgive Michael Vick?

For anyone who missed one of the biggest stories in sports this decade, Michael Vick was convicted of some pretty hellish animal abuse charges related to dogfighting. Like the dude was just financing some pretty sick, violent illegal stuff.

Pit bull cock fights, that type of thing.

Vick lost tens of millions of dollars, had his name dragged through the mud everywhere and did time in the Big House.

But he’s out, he’s playing in the NFL and this past weekend he looked like an absolute all-star stud.

So, do we forgive him? Now of course, this brings up conversations about second chances, about how far too many professional athletes are morally bankrupt infants with too much cash and a “rules-don’t apply-to-me” mentality and on and on.

But no matter what any of us think, Mike Vick is back in the NFL being paind over a millio bucks a year to play football.

And by the way he’s playing, I have a feeling that he’ll be looking at a HUGE contract in the off-season, worth tens of millions, essentially putting him back into an echelon of income that very few people on the planet ever reach… much less twice.

So, do we forgive Michael Vick so we can watch him throw an run and score?

All I know is that if a teacher ever got busted for running an underground ring of dogfighting, they’d never let them anywhere near a school again.

We sure love our sports more than our educators, don’t we?

In a “what’s old is new again” type of teaching thrust, some schools are going old school and dividing kids by gender in the classroom. Here’s an article from the L.A. Times about an academy in our city that seems to be happy with the results of separating kids in this manner.

Me, I am not really sure how I feel about this.

Now first, let me say that I was able to teach an all-girls English class and and all-boys English class two years ago in an attempt to see if breaking kids into this type gender-based class alignment actually offered any benefits. (NOTE: we had a teacher that had been doing it for almost 30 years — a woman I greatly respected; an educator who swore by it — and she was retiring so I decided to take over the idea for just two of my sections.)

For me, it worked out really well… for the girls. That class blazed. Really, the girls were just on fire that year. It was amazing! I mean I never had so many kids do homework… so consistently.

And do the reading. WOW! We blazed through so many books it was remarkable. We did projects, had debates, almost NEVER had classroom management problems… the girls just tore it up.

The boys… not so much.

Now I am of the opinion that, in general, today’s girls are very often kicking the butt of today’s boys in school. I see it with my own eyes every day. More boys drop out. More girls go to college. More girls are at the top of the class whereby more boys seem to be barely scraping by. Of course, these are generalizations but if you’ll allow me to speak in generalizations, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the efforts of the women’s rights movement, feminism, birth control, call it what you want… have not only brought a healthier degree of equity to the role of gender in education, but the scales have actually been tipped in favor of the young ladies.

Girls today are leading the charge in our schools and personally, I have no problem with this. (BTW, this phenomenon is also part of the subplot of my book The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez. Having a proactive, strong female protagonist who valued her own schooling and was determined not to become “dependent” on a man plays a solid role in the novel and hits, I believe, a very true note with today’s teenage, girl readers.)

Yet, I didn’t teach all boys/girls classes again the next year. And why? I think it’s because I discovered that the boys needed the girls… much more so than the girls needed the boys. I mean we are definitely having “issues” with boys in our schools today — especially in Title 1 schools like mine — so for all the benefits I found the girls were getting, well… a part of it felt like they were coming at the expense of the boys. The boys found a pecking order. There were leaders, there were followers and there were wallflowers… and for sure there was a bit of the Lord of the Flies aspect to their interactions. But most troubling was that boys, once they found their pecking order, didn’t seem to feel any drive to break out of their roles once they had settled into them. It was as if once they all became socialized to a certain means of operating, they stayed within those confines no matter what I did to shake it up.

The girls perpetually pushed one another… and they supported one another (for the most part) as well. But the boys… well, like I said. The class was kind of like a kite that never really took off and flew the way I had hoped and the reason why – at least to me it seemed, the reason why was, in part, due to an absence of girls in the class.

Maybe it makes sense to divide kids up by gender? Maybe there is a bunch more I need to learn about teaching in a single-sex class? Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if this type of gender-based classroom assignment will catch on more in the future, that’s for sure.