Parental involvement

I'm a mom. I'm a teacher. The lines are rarely that clear.

As a teacher, when parents ask me about parental involvement in homework, I advise that the parents help make sure that there is a physical space that works well for that child's homework - whether it's a desk or a cleared off corner of the kitchen counter, they need some kind of nest to work, to spread out, to store things they don't need to use every day. I recommend that the parents help look at the child's schedule with the child and allow the child to be a part of deciding whether homework is done right after the child gets off the bus or before dinner or even after dinner. I advise that the parents make sure there are some cleared off parts of each day that allow homework to be accomplished. I tell parents that the work itself is the child's responsibility and that I want to see what the child can do with the work, not what the parent can do with the work. If the child tries his/her hardest and comes back with little to show, we'll work on it in school. If the child doesn't try at all, we'll talk about it in school. The parent need not take on the role of correcting the homework, doing the homework, or teaching the child how to do the homework.

Then, I switch hats. I'm home with my girls and they have homework. They're in high school and their work is quite challenging, so I'm delighted that it's not my job to do the homework. No issue there. I couldn't do the calculus homework to save my life and I have no time to read the volumes of books needed to write the papers assigned to them. I have no artistic talents, so when they were young and projects were assigned which other parents DID for their children, my children brought in wonderfully lopsided creations which were entirely their own. I don't do their homework.

We recently moved to a bigger house, so, at last, there is actually enough space for them to keep their extra piles of books and papers on a shelf where they have a reasonable shot at finding them again. The girls don't have desks, but we all love to work at the counter or table and we don't drip too much food on the computer or papers. Okay, I've provided physical space for them.

The schedule: well, we do our best with that one. When the dance classes and rehearsals are an hour away and last for three to four hours on a school night, we have a late night and sectioning off the homework part of the day is challenging. Solution: drop some dance classes, so this only hits twice a week and we all do the best we can with that.

Things go along pretty smoothly, until they don't. When there are extra commitments, whether it's extra rehearsals, performances, an occasional desire to see a friend, a sick animal who has to go to the vet, huge house chores such as leaf raking or lawn mowing, big holidays to clean and cook for, a family member in crisis who needs extra care or loving, or when there is a big piece of homework and it hits on the wrong day and there's no human way possible to get it done before 2am. . .

Mostly, I just let my children navigate those difficult times. These are the normal challenges of life. The girls stay up late or they hand the work in late and it's up to them to manage. Once in awhile, and always after a big internal debate, as well as an external debate with the mortified child who doesn't want to need my help in the exchange, I jump in to the conversation with their teachers. I call or write an email.

Getting involved is a very difficult decision because it's so ingrained in me that homework is the child's responsibility. Any step I take over that boundary feels quite shaky. Also, I know that their teachers don't necessarily want to hear from me; they'd rather hear from the child. I am torn, by their pain and by the contradictions of my two jobs.

As a teacher and as a parent, I understand the importance and value of a child's learning to communicate and stand up for herself. As a parent, I see the child during all those hours that the school does not. It can be painful to watch and sometimes I have to take action. I think teachers should know when the homework puts an unreasonable strain on a child. When, no matter how conscientious or diligent or eager to do her best she is, a child is unable to meet a deadline.

And, once in a while, the snags are bigger.

Last Thursday night, my sister-in-law passed away. All of our homework lives came to a grinding halt as we contemplated our loss and comforted each other with stories and memories of a woman I didn't expect to lose for at least another forty years or so. She was a remarkable person. When I joined her family, we decided that the "in-law" part of our connection wasn't needed; we'd just be sisters. She was honest (often beyond what anyone could take), loyal, loving, funny, talkative, generous and very troubled by mental and physical issues that took her away from us too often and ultimately, too early. Never expecting to lose her, I had in recent years avoided spending the time it would take to keep in close connection with her. I took for granted that we would have time "later" when life was calmer. I do regret that and, while trying to make amends, will keep that lesson in my mind as I think about other people and relationships I take for granted.

We spent the weekend and the first couple of days and nights of Passover reeling from and dealing with our loss and with the extra complications involved because their are some very difficult relationships within this larger family. We gathered with the rest of the family at her funeral and burial. We camped with them on the floor of a tiny apartment and breathed together all night long. Today we're going to plant flowers and vegetables in honor of my "sister", the girl's aunt. Meanwhile, while we grieve, we fall further behind in our obligations.

How can we ever catch up? Life goes on, and we'll jump back into our schedules and responsibilities, but somewhere along the way, we'll all be grateful to anyone who can make room for us to be late with a few things. The girls may need a lot more time to finish all the papers and work assigned, I may not have everything as prepared as I should.

Perhaps the first people we need to get permission and acceptance from is ourselves. Perhaps my job as a teaching mom is really to help my children relax their high standards at times like these. Then, they'll know inside themselves that if their teachers extend their deadlines fine, and if not, it's not the end of the world to get a disappointing report when the circumstances were way beyond their control. However, I still want their teachers to know that this has been an unusually rough time. . . Maybe they'll read my blog?!

It's a balancing act

Thanks to the fact that I now spend some time each day on Twitter, I have much more exposure to articles and videos promoting technology in the classroom than I ever realized existed. It's new, it's exciting, it's cutting edge, and it should be continually examined for it's educational implications.

I just watched about a nine minute PBS news video about a school in North Carolina which provides a laptop to every student from grades 4 to 12. I saw children engaged with their screens - listening, looking, "interacting"; teachers explaining that making a video or podcast is the same as writing a paper, kids saying that school is a lot more fun now. The principal sent a message to a child who was playing a game instead of doing his work. The school no longer buys textbooks and they save money on paper. They feel that the old kind of school was preparing kids to drive a car by teaching them to ride a horse. They feel that now they're preparing kids for the world they'll be living in.

Then I read an article about the obstacles to using technology in the classroom. In brief, it says that administrations don't take advantage of the number of mobile devices that kids already own which could be used as learning tools, such as smart phones and that schools think they're using technology well, but kids don't agree.

At one point in my childhood, I ate meat three meals a day, if it was available. Then I became a vegetarian for eleven years. I know plenty about all or nothing thinking! When it comes to technology in the classroom or home, I don't want to see all or nothing thinking going on. For kids to spend many hours of their school day on mobile learning devices, whether cell phones or computers, and then go home to relax and go on Facebook, play video games, share music, etc. is not the diet I would want for my children or my students. Nor would I banish the 21st century technology. Balance. That's where we need to keep aiming.

Making a video is a fabulous project which can certainly incorporate any educational goals, from acquiring knowledge to analyzing and interpreting it and applying it to new situations, critical and creative thinking, opportunities to write and revise and edit. I just don't agree with the teacher on the PBS news show who says it takes the place of writing a paper. There are excellent movies and excellent books. Why say that one medium could take the place of another? We need to be able to use written and spoken language to describe, analyze, interpret, respond to the world around us. Words have the power to incite, to destroy, to create, to organize, to promote change - whether we speak them, text them or write them, we need to continually improve our ability to use them.

And when all those children are facing screens all day long, what about the discussions? People say computers are interactive, but it's a different meaning of interactive than the one I value in our classroom.

My 4th-5th grade class recently finished reading The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Discussing it in small and large groupings, sharing humorous quotes, looking for ways that the author built tension, summarizing, predicting, visioning, analyzing, agonizing when one character didn't share her concerns with another character which endangered them all. . . No digital "interaction" could ever replace any of those discussions.

Then there's the issue of censorship. Our school blocks certain searches, but, since we are a small, private school, students can ask permission to have the block removed. In these larger districts, that's unwieldy. According to the PBS report, a student in this North Carolina school district can't research topics the district has declared off-limits. They block youtube, facebook and any access to information they feel is dangerous, such as sites accessed by the key words, "hate crimes" or "terrorism" or "gun control." Does that sound too much like the Chinese approach and not much like American education?

Of course technology has allowed us access to information in unprecedented ways - and we need to provide safe ways for our students and children to enjoy that access. It has also allowed teachers and students opportunities to collaborate beyond our school walls in ways that no horse and buggy world ever allowed. Let's just remember that our face to face interactions, sharings, discussions, even arguments all have enormous value as do our many uses of written language. Let's go for balance!

Why ISN'T the military having bakesales to buy bombers while schools have all the money we need?

A recent issue of the issue of the monthly newsletter from ALATFF (Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations) cites these twelve ways libraries are good for the country. They are:

1. Libraries sustain democracy
2. Libraries break down barriers
3. Libraries level the playing field
4. Libraries value the individual
5. Libraries nourish creativity
6. Libraries open young minds
7. Libraries return high dividends
8. Libraries build communities
9. Libraries support families
10. Libraries build technology skills
11. Libraries offer sanctuary
12. Libraries preserve the past

Couldn't the same be said about schools?

Why is it so hard to get towns, counties, states and federal governments to make schools and children a priority?

Every day another school district announces budget shortfalls, freezes, cutbacks. What can the districts do? They just don't have the money. We need to make the money available. Haven't we already learned where we get with such short-sighted thinking?

It's appalling.

One of my students at Manhattan Country School, more than 20 years ago, suggested that we fund schools first, and if there isn't enough money to buy bombers, let the military have a bakesale. I later saw that sentiment on a tee-shirt, but I was there when nine year old Asha invented it on her own.

When the military budget was expected to be 708.2 billion dollars for 2011 and expected to rise by 3.6% for 2012 (according to the United States Department of Defense Budget Request) and education budgets are being slashed from 137.6 billion dollars in 2009 to 77.8 billion dollars in 2011 (according to the Education Department Budget Summary) what's the message about what's important to this nation?

Isn't it time we listen to Asha? While we still can?

Sharing our wonder

For this post, I'm going to direct you to Jan's 4-5 Blog, my class blog, because I used their Everything Journals quite freely in the writing of it. Please leave your comments there. The class will be delighted to read them! Thanks!

A Community of Learners

This weekend I feasted on learning with others. First, on Friday after school, my daughters and four teen-aged friends, another mom and a super-patient and wonderful beading enthusiast met together around my dining table and learned bead-weaving. Having never even strung beads together to make a simple necklace, I was the most beginner member of this gang, but we were all starting together to learn the peyote stitch. The first hour or more was filled with whining, moaning, under-the-breath cursing and a few exclamations of, "I've got it!" During the second hour, most of us had finished taking our piece apart repeatedly to start again and actually understood how it worked, and by the third hour, we were hooked! The ones who "got it" were able to help the rest of us, and our instructor stayed with us until we felt confident, and the stories and jokes and tidbits we shared made the time fly. I felt so fortunate to get to stick with it until I got it, rather than to stop after the first 45 frustrating minutes - which made me think about what it's like for our students when the class has to stop one thing to do the next. The teenagers kept going until after midnight, but I couldn't. I slept well knowing that I had been a part of something exciting to all of us!

Usually, I look forward to "sleeping in" on Saturdays- not quite the glorious treat it was before I became a mom, but if I'm lucky, I can stay asleep just past 7am and if I read in bed for awhile, I feel pretty decadent just the same. But, yesterday was the Teacher's College 80th Saturday Reunion of Reader's and Writer's Workshop teachers and the three of us who teach combined 4th and 5th grade classes decided to attend together. We were all up bright and early enough to meet at the 6:40 train and enjoy watching a nearly full moon set as the sun rose over the Hudson River.

We arrived at Riverside Church in time for John Scieszka's hilarious opening address. His stories of his life growing up in a household of six boys included enough urine and wrestling to make it clear that his first mostly-female faculty meeting when he became a teacher must truly have been culture shock and his irreverent gift of his book "Knucklehead" to then-President George W. Bush plainly illustrated his ability to say what's on his mind, no matter who's around to hear.


After John Scieszka's address, many thousands of teachers paraded across Broadway to Teacher's College where four hours and a huge selection of workshops awaited our free participation. Choosing where to go was tough, but I was delighted with the rooms I crammed into. Lucy Calkins talked to us about the need for children to read more difficult books and to read them with deeper comprehension. She identified a few specific skills, such as retelling, prediction, envisioning, empathy, reading like a writer and interpretation and she talked about how to help kids begin to improve them. Another time, I'll go into more details about some of these because they were enormously interesting and will help greatly in class.

Then I jogged and jostled my way into a talk about inquiry based learning with Stephanie Harvey and then fairly flew up four flights of stairs and through many winding halls to a talk about using blogs for reading logs -- all fascinating and full of things I can use immediately, which is important to most teachers who attend workshops.

The closing talk was given by Linda Darling-Hammond. For an excellent article about her views on the current administration's approach to education, you can follow this link. She told us how with 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's inmates and more than 25% of our children living in poverty, the US is choosing incarceration over education. She encouraged us as teachers to stand up for our profession and to stop others from dictating what we must do in the class, as we really know perfectly well what works and what doesn't work. In countries such as Singapore and Finland, teachers are part of a system which supports good teaching, won't allow children to be hungry or homeless, and values the professionalism of teachers.

As I listened and scribbled some notes - the best chance my memory had these days is if I scribble some notes! - I realized what a rare atmosphere I was breathing in. Not only was I seated in the balcony of a gorgeous church, modeled on a thirteenth century Gothic cathedral and featuring huge stained glass windows and soaring wide ceilings , but I was surrounded by thousands of teachers whose commitment to teaching and learning brought us all together in one place to listen, reflect, laugh, take notes, ask questions and return to our classrooms renewed and recharged. This was a crowd I had more in common with than any other random crowd at a concert or shopping mall and it felt great just to look around, eavesdrop soak it in.

Maybe I could have learned the peyote stitch from a computer - I won't say it's impossible - but it wouldn't have been as fun! And how would the computer know when my mistakes were bad enough to require a restart and when I could keep going? From what I can tell so far, although there were plenty of tech-savvy speakers and audience members at the Readers and Writers Reunion, there has been no attempt to try and bring this day of workshops to us digitally, and for that I am grateful. I prefer the experience of learning with others and digital learning just can't replace the experience of learning in a live community.

P.S. I have been so focused on blogging that I just burned the black beans! Here's a perfect time to be on-line instead of in my kitchen. . . You aren't having to smell the beans!

What is Progressive Education?

My father was brought up by two progressive educators who taught at and later ran the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama. For those of you who don't know, Fairhope itself was a pretty radical concept: every household could be a shareholder in the town, but shareholders did not own the land itself - that was owned in common by the town. Marietta Johnson offered very radical ideas in the 20s and 30s, including child centered education, no tests, no grades, and an approach to curriculum that included Morris Dancing and shop on an equal plane with reading, writing and 'rithmetic. His educational experience was, my whole life, the gold standard for education, and, like many teachers I know, I have spent my entire adult life thinking about, promoting, teaching in or parenting in progressive schools.

I currently teach at a child-centered school with no tests or grades and a rich variety of drama, music and art along with all the rest of the academics. We consider ourselves progressive, without having any common definition for what we might mean by that word. I think that each one of us at my school has a few strongly held tenets - and that they probably overlap and conflict with each other in interesting ways. We have a powerful mission statement - and we all have different ways of interpreting how to achieve it. (I purposely said "and" not "but" because I think that leaves us open to exciting philosophical discussions.)

Before coming to my current school, I taught at a progressive school whose founder was still actively teaching and administering. The discussions about progressive education were lively and frequent, and because the founder participated in them, and because we were all so passionate about the vision of the school, our philosophies were much more closely aligned.

I have been associated with my current school for about eighteen years, but only employed for six of those years, as I took a LONG time to return after having children. Meanwhile, I was a parent and board member at yet another progressive school, where I had the opportunity to share in the growth and development of a school choosing to expand to eighth grade instead of fourth grade.

Throughout those years, there's been more than enough to reflect on about progressive education, and I have reached some level of clarity about some of what matters most to me as a progressive educator.

I see the picture with a wide-angle lens, taking in the relationships between all parties, administration, faculty and staff, parents and children as well thinking about what the curriculum is and how we create and "deliver" it. It's about seeing opportunities to help people (all the people in the school!) flourish and grow, and giving them the tools, time, support and love to do so. In a progressive school, the way we teach, the way we talk, the way we make decisions - it's all vital to the lifeblood of being progressive. We're learning all the time as well as teaching students to think, be compassionate, be open-minded and responsible, be problem-solvers, work together, work alone - - and in the midst of that most important curriculum, we teach them to read and write, do sums, create, explore and express themselves in all the variety of classes we offer.

In a progressive school, it's imperative that the kids, parents and teachers feel they can speak up or share their interests or concerns, that they are invited to share their thoughts openly and honestly, that they'll be heard and responded to respectfully and honestly, that trust and communication underlie everything that goes on in the school. There's no good replacement for those relationships and that trust. That's why I give out my cell phone number to the students and parents of the kids in my class; that's why I spend so much time reading their work or preparing for their classes; that's why I bring small groups and large groups of kids together to discuss disagreements or other issues that arise; that's why we sit in a meeting area where we can look at each other and respond to each other's ideas many times a day and why we take it very seriously if anyone laughs at anyone else's ideas or insults anyone; and that's why, before I have 9 and 10 year olds spend much school related time on a computer, we put so much time and thought into paying attention to face to face communication. We need the community and trust to come first.

Once all that trust, respect and communication is in place as the most important boulders of a classroom's foundation, then we can set about working on the mortar. Are we going to teach phonics? Are we going to use writer's workshop - and which model do we like? Are we going to use textbooks for any subjects? Will we teach spelling? Handwriting? How does our social studies curriculum progress throughout the grades? How do we make the learning experiential? How do we make sure learning is intrinsically valued? At what age do the children write research reports? Who makes the curriculum decisions? What type of assessment do we use? What is the role of homework in the curriculum?

There aren't necessarily right or wrong answers - progressive and traditional answers - to those specific questions. There are only progressive and traditional ways to go about answering them. That's what defines a progressive school far more than which math text they do or don't use. A progressive school values the community and the trust above all else and from that flows all the opportunities for students to learn to be compassionate responsible problem-solving creative and fabulous citizens of the complicated future we are leaving for them.

I keep thinking of more points to make and more questions to ask, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about what progressive education means to you!

Cain and Abel?

I listen to audiobooks and podcasts every chance I get. Sometimes, I fall several days behind in the news because I'm catching up on my TED talks or my "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me." These days, the book I'm listening to on my ipod is "Kane and Abel" by Jeffrey Archer. It occurred to me that I don't have a good understanding of the biblical story, so I looked it up in my Children's Illustrated Bible. While I was reading that, my children walked into the room and wondered what on earth I was doing, (I was stretching and exercising on the floor at the same time, so it was a valid question.) Curious, they actually invited me to read the King James' version of that story to them over lunch.

It was helpful to read it together; the girls raised further questions I couldn't answer, but I could ponder with them. We wondered:
Why didn't the Lord like Cain's offering? Was he offering inferior grains and fruits? Was he the less favored child?
Why did Cain murder Abel? What are we to learn from that?
Was banishing him, but not allowing him to be harmed, a more terrible punishment for Cain than death would have been?
If, as it seemed, Cain and Abel were the first and for a while only people on the earth besides Adam and Eve, who were the masses of people that Cain feared might want to kill him for his crime? Other children of Adam and Eve? Then they'd be his siblings. . .
Why is the first murder in the bible between siblings?
Did Cain repent?
What does this story tell us about the people telling it to us?


I don't want to offend anyone who reads the bible as a religious text. I have no ax to grind or religious affiliation of any kind. My interest in the bible is primarily as a piece of important literature which contains the origins of most of our modern literature. I have barely scratched the surface of the bible's literary gifts, but I enjoy reading portions and trying to understand them whenever obvious references show up in my novels. In my quick look through blogs on the topic of Cain and Abel, I saw many different and interesting interpretations, but nothing that really satisfied me. Maybe you have ideas you'd like to share!