Today’s blog asks, do I get to blog about this?

If you clicked the link, you saw that a “well respected professor” in the department of human sexuality offered his students the chance to see…

Darn, can I go on?

And then when the kids actually saw…

Oops, maybe I ought not to mention that?

Oh yeah, but then things really got interesting when…

Uhm, is there an acceptable use clause I should read before I continue typing this?

Okay, as many of you know, I am ALL about using engagement in the class so philospophically speaking, I guess I’d have to say that it’s understandable why some educators might want to show…

Okay, this is breaking down fast. But I swear it wouldda been a really funny, really meaningful, really profound blog post today… if only I knew whether or not it was permissible to write it.

Alas, a golden opportunity missed.

Almost to a student, kids have been, in a Pavlovian way, turned off to textbooks. That especially hurts an English teacher’s aim of trying to develop them into readers through the use of textbooks because it’s not just an ELA association they have with them; they come into class with a history of pretty much loathing these things in their other core areas of study as well.

From 6th grade on, kids are pounded with math textbooks that far-too-many teachers use in a drill and kill style… and science textbooks that teachers use in a “Do the unit questions at the end of the chapter” style… and then history textbooks where it’s “remember these 15 dates and names by rote” style… so even if the ELA textbooks were the cat’s meow (and in my opinion, they ain’t) the kids come in with emotional baggage about using textbooks that is almost insurmountable.

And from there it feels like we’re just putting lipstick on a pig by trying to show them just how amazing these tepid, issue-free, sanitized, 12 pound tomes are.

They don’t buy it. And yet, we keep trying to sell it to them. Worst of all, district admins remain deaf to the cries of “these things ain’t working”. Cause if they were really working, maybe our “data” would be better. After all, what’s been the primary educational tool in the classroom for the past two decades?

Textbooks have ben at the center of the curricular wheel in all of the core subject areas and yet, how come few, if any, people point to them as perhaps the problem with our curriculum/low achievement/poor test scores as opposed to viewing them as the solution?

However, here’s a school district that is embracing new ideas. And I gotta say, it makes me feel like the folks out there in Pulaski are doing the sorts of things that I’d like to see embraced by more and more and more of our schools.

Why do I choose the books I choose for my class? Me, I always spent a lot of time thinking about the choices of text for my students because, well, for one… I could.

Unfortunately, teachers today are seeing more and more and more micro-management of their curriculums/books/texts by people who do not actually ever have to work face-to-face with any of the real kids in the room.

It’s kind of like going to Web M.D. for medical treatment. Sure, there might be some highly qualified folks who are posting very high quality material there, but only a fool would remove a face-to-face visit with a real doctor from the equation should someone actually fall ill.

Yet, removing the power of the teacher to be a “professional diagnostician” of the literacy needs of the actual kids sitting in the classroom is not only how we operate (all too often), but it’s a wave of tomfoolery that way too many school districts in America have bought into hook, line and sinker because they wrongly believe curing literacy shortfalls in kids today can actually work from afar.

It’s as if the solution to “fixing” our kids can be purchased in a box. Great tools can come in a box. The craftspeople who wield those tools cannot.

Teachers, when I really think about it, have almost been backed into a corner in far too many schools whereby they are supposed to be executors of curricular decisions; not parties to the crafting of the curriculum itself.

And so, how do I decide which books my kids will read? First, I made sure to grab the power to do so.

My feeling was always, “Hey, you hired me to do this job, now I am going to actually do the job,” and no, I am not saying the means always justify the ends. But I am saying that if I hire a contractor to build an addition on my house, I’d be a bozo to stand over them the whole time saying, “Okay, now use the hammer. Okay, now use the saw. Okay, now I want you to use the tape measure, the wrench and then the level – in that order and at these intervals.”

The person who is doing the work needs latitude in order to smartly and effectively do the actual work.

Do teachers have the latitude to make book choices for my their own classes in this day and age. class? Do you?

The teacher as “professional diagnostician”. Our importance in the classroom of today (and tomorrow) – despite the false appearances in the media – is on the rise. The question we all must face is, “Are we up to this challenge?”