Recently, I perused the top MOST VIEWED stories on the website of the Los Angeles Time. Here’s what they were…

1. Nigeria’s shaky balance of power takes a hit as new president is sworn in
2. Legislation proposed to raise maximum fines on U.S. auto industry for violating safety rules
3. Grisly Corvette crash in Van Nuys; 4 killed
4. Death sentence for gunman in 2008 Mumbai attack
5. Russian warship opens fire, takes oil tanker back from pirates
6. Russian warship opens fire, takes oil tanker back from pirates
7. Gunman sentenced to hang for Mumbai attack that killed 166
8. Mumbai gunman sentenced to death
9. Russian special forces rappel onto oil tanker, arrest pirates
10. Widow is overwhelmed by grief

And what do they all have in common?

Fear. Or tragedy. Pain and hurt. Blood.

What’s that old news saying: “If it bleeds, it leads!”

But this was the MOST VIEWED section, not the section the editors chose to highlight – these were the stories the viewers most frequently selected to read.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the disproportionate amount of “news” stories that are rooted in negativity or the people’s mass desire to read “news” stories that are rooted in negativity?

I am often aggravated that I do not hear more good stories about all the fine work teachers are doing on the news. But when educators screw up, they splash it as far and as wide as they can.

Once, a journalist explained this to me by telling me, “It’s not news when you do your job; it’s news when you don’t.”

Cause that is, after all, what it certainly seems the people want to read.

I love being able to use contemporary pics in my class… and in my blog. Today, let’s have a little class debate. Here’s our pic.

Backstory: A teen at a baseball game (supposedly NOT drunk or on drugs) calls his dad to ask, “Uhm, Hey Dad, should I run on the field? It’s like a once in a lifetime chance.”

Dad said, “Uhm, doesn’t sound smart, son.”

Son says, “Okay, Pop.” And then runs on the field anyway.

He avoids security for a wee bit and the above picture captures the moment.

Steve gets TASERED.

Question: Did Steve deserve it?

Here’s my class?

For side: Hell yes! What a bonehead. You run on the field at a major league baseball game in this day and age and you deserve whatever you get.

Against side: No way! Far too heavy handed. Cops always use too much force.

Not sure which side: If he was black or brown, they wouldda used real bullets!

Not sure which side: I hear dat!

For side: I tell you this. People are going to think twice about running on the field at the Phillies home ball park in the future. It’s a good deterrent against future idiots.

Against side: The U.S. government should not condone this type of brutality. I mean this isn’t a country where we string people up and attach electrodes to their genitals in order to get them to submit to our will.

For side: Actually, we do do that? In Gitmo.

Against side: I thought they closed that down.

Not sure which side: No, that was the Bay of Pigs.

Not sure which side: She never pays attention in history class.

Not sure which side: I don’t eat Pigs, Bay Pigs or any kind. But I’m not a Muslim. Just a vegetarian who eats chicken and sometimes steak.

Not sure which side: Bueller. Bueller.

Okay, so I made this whole whole conversation up.

But as you can see, Steve, the Phillies Fan Who got Tasered, certainly has my imagination going.

Here’s an article on the 20 Best Prep Schools in America, as decided by Forbes (I assume. It’s their article.)

Here’s what they say about #1…

The top prep school in the U.S. is the Trinity School, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in New York City. Founded in 1709, this co-ed day school has an average enrollment of 960 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. There’s one teacher for every six students, more than 80% of the faculty hold an advanced degree and the school’s $40 million endowment helps assure the facilities are first-rate. Tuition for one year of schooling in the Upper School (grades 9-12) is $34,535, though the school offers financial aid.

And here are all the things my school has in common with #1.

• We were both founded (at some point, though they have a few hundred years on us, I think).
• We’re both co-ed.
• We’re both in the U.S.

And in what ways is your school similar to the Trinity School, I ask?

Should I feel bad that my school is not more like The Trinity School, I wonder?

Are articles like this designed to make me feel inferior about the school where I teach/the schools where I will send my own children or is that just my insecurity showing?

No, I don’t think all America should be held to this standard, but I do want to know, if you are teaching at a 6 to 1 ratio where tuition is $34K a year, which inconveniences you more: classroom management issues or your pedicurist canceling without providing you sufficient notice.

No, no, I jest. I am sure the teachers who work at Trinity are plagued with all kinds of issues that stem from holding the job of being an educator in modern America. See, that’s the one thing: kids are kids are kids.

And parents are parents are parents.

Some of the kids will make you click your heels in joy. Some of the kids will make you cry out in frustration. Some of the parents will make realize that being a teacher feels like one of the most noble and fulfilling jobs on the planet. And some of the parents will make you feel like dog-doo.

Yes, the Trinity School and Lynwood High might be millions of years apart in some ways, but in others, I am sure there is more common ground than mot people would, at first glance suspect.

I’ve heard that it costs the United States Treasury more than one cent to produce a penny. Obviously these people went to American schools because where else would you come up with the idea to spend more money creating an item than the item itself would ultimately be worth?

And then, complicating the irony of it all is the fact that this is currency we’re talking about. We are losing money making [literally] money.

But worse yet, why do we still continue to do it.

Once upon a time, copper was cheap and the U.S. penny actually possessed the ability to purchase something. Not much, but something.

Nowadays if all you have is a penny in your pocket — or two or three — you ain’t got squat. I can’t think of anything that a penny will buy. (Except “your thoughts” and for some people’s, that’s over-paying… another issue entirely.)

And yet, the U.S. Treasury is coming out with a new penny. Never mind the fact that there was a campaign I’d heard of a few years ago to get rid of the penny entirely (because of its out-dated-ness, the folly of its cost, and so on) and just kick the lowest form of U.S. currency up to a nickel. (BTW, I’d sign that petition.) So essentially, they are going to continue to use taxpayer money to create new money that is less valuable than the expenditure it took to craft the money in the first place.

From the moment it rolls off the production line it’s an exercise in silliness. And yet, they continue to do it. Why?

Cause that’s the way it’s always been done. (I guess.) I only wish they would take a lesson from our schools.

D’oh!

Anyone notice that we, in education, still seem to do a lot of things for what seems like the “cause that’s the way it’s always been done” reason.

I guess those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at the penny makers, huh? I mean, I could bash and bash this new penny idea on and on but at least the U.S. Treasury has money.

Schools, we certainly don’t. Matter of fact, we’re so hard up that to us pennies look like benjamins.

Nancie Atwell recently published this article in Education Week about THE CASE FOR LITERATURE. It’s well worth a read.

Perhaps one of the most telling parts of the article comes from this passage where Nancie writes…

In 2007, fully 70 percent of U.S. 8th graders read below the proficient level on the NAEP exam. Our 13-year-olds aren’t reading well because they’re not reading enough: The National Endowment for the Arts has reported that only 30 percent of students in this age group read every day.

Now, I am not sure about a heck of a lot of things in this world, but I am pretty sure that if English teachers are not going to require that their students read books, then very few others are going to step up and fill in the gap.

And as I see more and more of, English teachers all over are foregoing book reading as an essential, core component of their classroom. Some claim that teaching “skills” is where they focus. Some claim that reading annotated passages and excerpts is good enough. Some claim that their “district won’t let them” teach real books.

We all look out on the horizon of public education and see troubles. We all see silliness and problems. We all see Herculean challenges. But if we, in this nation of ELA teachers that we are, do not also see the need for us to be making sure that we are having our young students read books then we, as ELA teachers, are complicit in the demise of student achievement.

We can blame others for the dysfunction, the budgets cuts, the campus shortcomings and the national calamity of over-testing. But we have no one to blame but ourselves if we allow the reading of real books to die.

We are their torchbearers and if we do not seize the reigns and more loudly stand up for the fact that real books need to be a core part of the academic lives of all American students then we are as complicit in the demise of U.S. public education as are so many of the others at whom we so often point our fingers.

All heed Nancie Atwell – and ignore her work at our collective peril.

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.

Sesame Street turned 40 years old this week. To honor the show which game me my start as a lover of literacy, here’s a big ol’ shout out to Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie & Bert, and of course, the character that still represents to me the height of personal achievement and excellence, COOKIE MONSTER!

Here’s a list of 40 cool things about Sesame Street that is worth a moment if you have one.

And after I read #1 on the list (CBS and NBC rejected Sesame Street before it debuted Nov. 10, 1969, on PBS… I know, WOW! But then again, they probably would have smacked it up anyway so, as Pangloss would say, “All is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds.”)

But it got me thinking, passing on Sesame Street is an epic goof. Like historical. So, what are some of the most famous gaffes in history? (Goodness do I love these type of “predictions” — I mean people will shoot off their mouths about almost anything, won’t they?) And where would passing on Seasme Street rank?

Let’s put it this way, missing out on the opportunity to bring this show to kids across the world is a blunder of spectacular proportions. Anyway, in my opinion, it ranks right up there with a few other brilliant prognosticators.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
– Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Of course, there are more…

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”
– A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
– Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

And finally, some of the most famous…

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
– Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
– H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Thanks for everything, Sesame Street. My life, my daughter’s life, our world is a better because of you! I mean yours is a birthday that really warms my heart.

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.”

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 love sports. I love hoops, football, baseball, boxing, soccer, hockey, tennis and so on. And when I mean “and so on”, I mean, I can watch table tennis, badminton, lacrosse, rugby and golf.

Yep, I can watch golf.

But I only like to watch when there is level competition. If a game is a blowout, it’s off. If a team has a 35 point lead heading into the 4rth quarter, a 3 goal lead late into the second half, an 11 run lead in the bottom of the seventh, I am usually gone. Got other things to do and if I miss the comeback of the century I’ll catch the highlights on ESPN.

See, for me, there is no pleasure in watching sports when there is no element of a fair, heated competition between the players. If there is extreme competition though, the kind that calls on all opponents to reach deep down to give their best, I am all with it.

So, here’s an idea… what if we handicap our much discussed upcoming teacher/student/school evaluations like we do the game of golf? I mean we all realize that some schools have such a built in advantage before we ever tee up the school year that if we simply go head up (as we currently are), our score vs score comparison is going to make the competition a blowout.

So unexpected, too, right?

Almost without fail the upper-socioeconomic educational institutions in the U.S. are kicking butt and taking names. And despite the occasional “feel-good” anomaly (the kind which I strive to create in my own classroom), the low socio-economic schools are getting trounced.

But if we take into account mitigating factors such as English Language Learners, students living at or below the poverty level, degree of transience in the student body, special ed populations, and so on, suddenly there might be a way to really get a true glimpse into which teachers/schools/kids are really making strides.

Of course, from this point on, it’s all conjecture and academic with little need for me to draw up the “how we can do this” because, though I am no cynic, I see almost no way in the world whereby the parents who send their kids to schools like Beverly Hills High are ever going to allow a system of data to be implemented whereby the kids at inner-city schools like mine at Lynwood High will be able to actually outperform them.

Not when they pay those kind of property taxes, live in those kind of houses and support political candidates with those kind of fundraisers.

Nope, not a cynic… but not a naif either. Those parents would have heads a rollin’ if they saw their weighted test scores in the newspaper showing them to be getting whooped like a Greek mule on Crete during high tourist season.

Yet, to handicap the competition would level it out? Or would it?

See, now I don’t know. On one hand I think yep, applying a true growth model whereby we use baseline measures and then end-of-year evaluations to the data in order to show true achievement over the course of the year makes a lot of sense. But if we take mitigating factors like poor academic history, non-English speaking homes, lack of internet access, ability to hire private tutors to remediate under-performance, and so on into account (there’s gotta be a mathematic formula for this, right?) then, on one hand we are creating a level playing field whereby my kids can go up against any kids in the country. (And we’d LOVE to do that!) Yet, by handicapping our schools accordingly are we sending a mixed message?

Or even a wrong one?

Are we saying that “since you come from less, we expect less”?(And are therefore “lesser”?) See that troubles me deeply.

In my own class in Los Angeles, I tell my kids “no excuses” and we work to beat the metaphorical Beverly Hills High kids from day 1… cause I know that’s how the real world works.

But when I see my school get the “data” back from the state, I realize that to not take into account mitigating circumstances such as all the urban challenges we face, I realize, we’ve been set up for slaughter like a junior league baseball team taking on the New York Yankees.

Sure, the Yankees may give up a game now and then, but over the course of a season, the Yankees are gonna absolutely steamroll the junior leaguers time and time again.

And if I am the Yankees, I am not sure where the fun is in that. Yankees want to play the Red Sox. Ali wants to fight Frazier. The USC Trojans wants to kick Notre Dame’s butt… not Akron Community College’s butt.

At the end of the day, golf is ultimately a game you play against yourself and the course. You can only control what you can control — your own effort, preparation, practice time and so on. But if it rains, there’s wind, someone plays at 8 am when there’s no wind and another person tees off at 3:p.m. when a tsunami-like gusts are howling… what can you do?

You play the round that is on front of you. Some schools have kids where 98% of the parents went to college. And some have an 18% parent attended college ration… complicated by high truancy numbers and less resources cause there’s no real PTA out there raising a few hundred grand a year to make sure that the arts haven’t been killed off for their kids.

Yet the thing for all players to remember is, you gotta remember to love the game. Otherwise, you’ll never be the best you can.