"Ask Who I Am, Not What"

The other day, a student sent me a link to a story about a video called, “10 Reasons I don’t want to be an Asian.” The college student who made the video aired his offensive views casually and plainly, as if he were telling how he learned to play violin or how he got interested in electrical engineering.

Only when there was an outcry did the student recant, a little. He said he was only joking. Later, he said he was sorry. In an era when schools, parents and communities place an enormous emphasis on multi-culturalism, intercultural exchange and Teaching Peace, the racism and ignorance and meanness of this student’s “joke” make far less sense than if it had happened a hundred years ago.
I know some teen-aged students from China who are attending high school in the United States. Most of them have made strong ties to some of the other Chinese students, and some have good friendships with international students from other countries. Only a few have made friends with the local native-English speaking population. Most wish they could. They sit in the cafeteria surrounded by groups of teenagers, sitting and talking with each other. They don’t know how to join. Many are lonely. (Yet, they said right away that they are happy to "be Asian!")

This morning I heard a radio article about a project called, “The Race Card Project.” People are invited to submit a six word response to the question, “What are your thoughts about race?”

The Project has collected thousands of beautiful, fascinating, disturbing, funny, thoughtful, sad and ridiculous statements. I saw:

• “When will we see just people?”
• “No English. Standardized Assessment. No chance.”
• “No, where are you actually from?”
• “I see myself in the Other.”
• “Ignoring race doesn’t make it disappear.”
• “You see me as I’m NOT”
• “Don’t assume anything about me. Please.”
• “Black shoots black not in news.”
• “White people continually justify minority deaths.”
• “Color doesn’t explain or excuse failure.”

         and on and on. . .

How many of us think we know something about someone just by looking at them? How often do I think that because someone is a woman, or a man, or wearing certain clothes or has this kind of hair or that ethnicity, or even that expression on their faces,  that I know something about who they are.
I think I can tell something about people even before I speak with them and then I call myself open-minded?
What does it take to end racism? sexism? ageism? all identity-isms? One of the Race Cards read, “Ask Who I Am, Not What.” That sounds like where I/we need to start. I/We could make a difference to someone today by reaching past an assumption that I already know anything about him/her.  If I/we want to know who someone is, I/we need to show an interest in finding out about that someone, and not box their answers into categories about women, men, Chinese, black, Hispanic, gay, old, or young.
The local high school students don’t always turn around and include the lonely new international students. The neighbors who have lived on the block for ten years don’t always know the names or personalities of the neighbor who moved in last year. The strangers on the train with you are busy with their own concerns.
It’s not always easy to reach out and get to know other people. It is worth the time, to me, to you, to them. 


  I welcome feedback from anyone who has ever felt more like a what than a who, from anyone who can help extend the conversation.

It's a Craigslist World

"Don't talk to strangers."
"Don't go into someone's home if you don't know them."
'There are a lot of weirdos out there."

All those statements may well be true - I'm not here to dispute them. However, I want to share my experiences over the last two weeks, meeting over a dozen strangers and entering their homes during my search for families who were interested in making a commitment to hosting international high school students from China. It's been the kind of adventure that could give rise to new sayings, if fear weren't such a strong presence in our lives.

When I envisioned looking for and finding families to host international high school students, I assumed that they'd all be connected to people I knew. I sent out dozens of emails to dozens of nice people, all of whom have large networks of friends and associates. I thought the phone would soon start ringing and friends of my friends would call and invite me over to talk to them about hosting.

Instead, the inquiries came almost exclusively from ads on Craigslist. My limited connection with Craigslist prior to July was that it was a place I could possibly get a yard sale type item, but the quality of what I found there was mixed, and it was bringing me large amounts of spam and small numbers of real inquiries about a house I hoped to rent steadily this summer. A mixed review, to say the least.

However, there has been nothing mixed about the kindness and generosity of the people I've met through Craigslist these past few weeks. As a group, they make a "typical American family." As individuals, there's no such thing as a typical family and each has something so special and endearing to offer an international student that I can't imagine how the students will choose.

Some homes are spacious, on large plots of land, with shiny furnishings and not a pin out of place. Others are smaller, cozier, even messier, but neither appearance predicts the time the family spends playing games together, going to the pool to cool down in the heat wave, hosting all the kids in the neighborhood, or just enjoying each other's company.

Either way, I show up without official credentials, carrying a green paper folder, an interview packet, a purple or green pen, and a large, imposing camera and find myself graciously ushered in and invited to have something cool to drink while we sit and chat. We talk about issues that may arise during hosting, and to each question, the hosts give their most thoughtful responses, reflecting what they know about their own lives, the kids they are currently raising or the ones they raised years ago.

My biggest concern was that the Craigslist ad mentions money right in the title of the ad, to draw readers. I assumed that would bring out people who cared first about money and second about becoming at least temporary parental figures for a youth from a far away and foreign culture. In fact, almost none of the people even mentioned money, until I brought up something related to expenses, such as mentioning that the students need to own a computer and that they would pay for it themselves. Even then, families did not linger on the topic.

Ninety five percent of the concerns and interests of the families have been how to make sure the student feels included, welcomed, comfortable and able to thrive in their school community, neighborhoods, and homes. Most of the families have a member who well remembers the experience of adjusting to a new culture and the difficulty of expressing him/herself in a new language. The others have connected professionally or socially with people who have experienced those adjustments and are sensitive and aware of how much gentle and patient help is needed.

No one has blanched at hearing that they may need to show the student how to clean a bathroom or load a dishwasher or said that transporting another child to another set of activities, on top of the baseball-soccer-dancing-religion-music lessons that already enrich their own families' lives is too much to expect. In fact, rather than feeling overwhelmed to hear that the students will become family members, not boarders in their homes, these families rejoice, for that is precisely what they want, whether their own children are grown up and out of the house or whether they have four children prancing through the house and planting wet kisses on their cheeks as we speak.

I wonder if people knew that you could meet such loving and generous people through something as random as a Craigslist ad, if they would still have to feel so alone and discouraged about the world out there. I feel lucky to have met each family that I've met and hope that if they are chosen to host a student, the experience is all they wish for. The news is filled with the terrible things that happen, but I bet a lot more of this kind of thing happens every day, but just doesn't count as "news." It's news to me!

Hosting an international student - and looking for more hosts! Can you help?

“Wow, you’re so nice to do that! I wouldn’t want a stranger in my house.”

“How can you manage it? I don’t have time.”

These are some of the conversations I’ve been a part of throughout this year, ever since I agreed to take an international student from China.

I joined the host family program in October of 2011 in much the same way that I returned to teaching five years ago, bought my first house 20 years ago, or even decided to become a mom nineteen years ago. There was a short spell of trying to think through the consequences, a recognition that I couldn’t really and a leap of hope and maybe even faith that it was worth a try.

And it has been. Our year went much the same as many others. It had ups and it had downs and in the end, it was worth it. At first, we had the honeymoon phase where our student was ecstatic with everything about us and vice-versa. Then life settled down to normal and we started having a few adjustment difficulties. Where do dishes go when you’ve finished eating? Am I the only person who takes out the garbage? You have to be where? When? And you’re telling me now? A year is a long time to have a guest in the house. We had to figure out better systems.

The international students at our school are high school students. They’re teen-agers. They have a lot to learn from us as well as a lot to teach us. They’ve traveled literally halfway around the globe to join our community. And they knew less about what they were in for than I did! They come from large cities, large schools, large classes and single child families, by and large. Many lived in dormitories in their high schools and went to classes and studied throughout the entire day. Test scores have determined their choices for their entire lives. Their options for different types of education or spots at good universities are limited in a way we, living in the land of freedom to choose, can barely imagine. The class size here is less than a third of theirs. Homework in China is a lot of practice and memorizing. Homework here is an enormous amount of critical and creative thinking, analytical essays, projects that span demand originality of thinking and applying of learning, thinking outside the box.

After four months of life with us, I heard my Chinese student ask my daughter, “What is sink?” when I asked her to take something to the sink. I realized that she was somehow managing in an entirely English speaking world in which she was still only catching a fraction of what was said at full speed. (Actually, since I’m from New Jersey and tend to talk very fast, the full speed in our home is closer to the speed of light - - which increases my admiration for her managing abilities!)

We saw Chinglish together – a Broadway show about an American businessman who mangles Mandarin and cultural norms while trying to put together business deals in China – and it was great to see the American being the one on shaky ground. We laughed heartily when the projected words above the stage showed us that instead of saying, “You should hire our firm because we’re worth the money,” the businessman ended up saying, “We’ll explain how we’ll spend your money recklessly.” Yes, it was funny. But also, on reflection, I realized there must have been so many of those moments in our home, yet without supertitles to fill us in, none of us knew that we might be offending or misinterpreting each other.

We saw Jesus Christ Superstar together, which is one of our family favorites, but what might have been more memorable to our student was the chance to speak Mandarin to the waitress at the Chinese restaurant where we dined before the show.

Some evenings were game nights, with our Chinese student bravely playing Bananagrams with the most competitive English speakers around. Or cards. Or Boggle. Or watching movies, which everyone agreed are better with the English subtitles turned on. But most nights were homework nights, everyone working independently in whatever space was most productive for her. There were tearful nights, when the student received bad news from home, or reeled from various types of rejection and snubbing at which some high school girls excel. And nights when we ate delicious and new foods our student prepared for us: homemade dumplings, lotus root, cooked cucumbers (!), and a sweet kind of Chinese cabbage with noodles. We laughed to discover that “wok” and “dim sum” were just as foreign when spoken by us as were our miniscule and occasional attempts to pronounce names and phrases in Mandarin. We waved and smiled and said the same thing over and over to her parents over Skype, because we know no Mandarin and they speak no English. And we expanded our idea of who we were as a family.

What inspired me to invite this student back to live with us again next year? For one thing, we can. We have so much, we don’t even realize most of what we have. Yet, when we’re faced with those who don’t have it, we remember and can feel extremely honored to be able to share it. It’s not that these students come from underprivileged homes. Far from it! I may make less money per year than their housekeepers for all I know. But they don’t have the opportunities we have – like an education that values creativity and analysis, or opportunities to spend time with people from other countries, or goofing around with siblings - and those turn out to be shareable!

Also, I grew up with exchange students and visitors from other countries. I want to give that to my family. How else will they know about the many perspectives and cultures that make up their future world?

And finally (please excuse my existential sappiness!) because it’s true that
Love isn't love till you give it away
Love isn't love till it's free
The love in your heart
Wasn't put there to stay
Oh love isn't love till you give it away

Our school has accepted eight additional international students from China. They will join the current eight Chinese students. They will arrive at the end of August and stay until a day after graduation in June. They don’t yet have host families. I have taken a job with a company called Green Planet Homestay to try to get homes for them.

I am appealing to families and readers in this area, asking for you to help spread the word about the chance to be a host family. Would you take a few minutes and use your connections to friends and organizations to help me find families who are interested in enriching their lives and making an enormous difference in someone else’s life? I know many people will love the experience. I just need your help to let them know about it.

It may help you to know that host families receive generous monthly compensation, that these students arrive with spending money and health insurance plans, that they have studied primarily written English since they were young, and that they are aware that getting a great education, including becoming fully fluent in English, is the most important focus of their time here. That they are loyal to their home country in a way that used to be more common in America, but for us post-Watergate children is surprising. That they are hard-working, focused students who don’t take this opportunity to improve their futures for granted.

No one’s going to lie and say this is so easy you can do it with your eyes closed. Host families take on full responsibility for parenting a teen from another country, and they have to make adjustments and decisions constantly. (Sound familiar, all you parents?) On the other hand, you’ll have support: from other host families, from me, from all the learning we've done this past year.

You can help by posting flyers, writing a blurb in any newsletters you are part of, sending emails to groups with whom you are associated, talking to friends and neighbors – any or all will be enormously appreciated. I have any materials you could need. With your help, we can make this year great for our own children and families and for all of our visiting international students!

I look forward to hearing from you with requests for more information. You can write directly to me at jcampbell@gphomestay.org

Thank you!

A Short Story Once there was a little girl named Jan. She had a tiny bedroom filled with stuffed animals and a few dolls. Most days after real school, Jan opened her own school. Jan’s School took place wherever Jan was – in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in her friends’ basement, even while bicycling through the neighborhood. Finally, Jan grew up and stopped teaching her stuffed animals, but she still loved to teach so she went to Teacher’s College at Columbia and got the degree and certification she needed to do it for real. Teaching was a dream come true for Jan. It turned out that real students were even better than imaginary ones and Jan was sure that she would follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and teach until she was too old to walk down the steps anymore.

Real life turned out to have more twists and turns and great jobs to do than Jan’s dream of teaching in one school for her whole life. In between teaching in preschools, high schools and elementary schools, Jan found she loved helping build houses, working in restaurant kitchens and making chocolate candy and ice cream. After teaching at a school in Manhattan for three years, Jan decided to move upstate. She came to her current school to teach first and second grades with a smart, creative and always patient man named Steve Currie. She started a family and decided to spend time at home with them for a few years. It was hard to say good-bye to the school, but there were so many adventures ahead. She started a new chocolate business and raised two amazing girls.

Many years later, when her oldest daughter was ready to choose a high school, Jan visited her old school again. It felt so great to be back among loving friends and excited students that Jan decided to find someone else to work long hours at the chocolate store. It was time to return to teaching.

The best luck in the world gave Jan a chance to spend five years teaching in the 3-4 and then the 4-5, working with the best teachers and students and getting to know and love them very well. Jan hoped this could go on and on. She taught and learned about the Maya, the ancient Greeks, West Africa, Japan, electricity, the phases of the moon, multiplication, division, selling pizza, and so many wonderful books and stories, some of which still make Jan cry even after reading them so many times. She noticed that teaching and learning happened hand in hand and loved seeing her students teaching each other in so many ways. It was a dream come true.

There came a day when it was time for Jan to move on to other opportunities. She had to tell her students and their families good-bye, as well as all her grownup teacher friends, but every time she even imagined saying it, she just cried and cried. She really hated saying goodbye. It was one thing to cry in front of everyone while reading a sad book or watching a sad movie. It was another thing not to be able to speak to tell everyone how much she loves them and will miss them. Maybe they’ll understand it if she writes it down.

Looking ahead, Jan is ready for her next adventures. Armed with a garden trowel, some dog leashes, a sewing needle, a computer filled with writing projects, shelves overflowing with books, a piano and a guitar and the most loving family anyone could have, not to mention Bananagrams, Sudoku, crossword puzzles and plenty of playing cards, life will never be boring. She knows that she looks forward to seeing all of her former students and teacher friends in the future! She also plans to help the host families and the new students from China! She’ll be at school sometimes and is excited to see colleagues and students whenever she can!

The end.

NO! To be continued! And, please keep in touch!

When the going is tough. . .

We've all faced those moments when we think we have to give up, get out, go back; it's too much. And then, more times than not, we keep going anyway. Maybe we don't finish first or come out with the results we dreamed of, but by then, just having kept on going is first prize enough.

Working with kids, both my own and my students, I see those moments all the time. I want to celebrate the split second resolve(s) that keep kids going in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. I hope as students look at their own moments when they found their resolve to keep going, they can get a deeper understanding of some of the struggles of kids who came before them and helped change the world against overwhelming odds.

I have read the story of Ruby Bridges to my classes year after year. I love that story and find her ability to wish for forgiveness for the hateful mob more inspiring each time. This year, I want to also share with them the story of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan, pictured below in a photo that "went viral" in 1957.

The information I gathered came from several sources, but this Vanity Fair article by David Margolick, who has just released a book about Elizabeth and Hazel, was particularly helpful. (After a brief email correspondence with the author, I ordered the book! I love getting deeply into these stories!)

All her life, Elizabeth Eckford had worked hard in school and aimed to go to college. She had attended a good but segregated black high school in Little Rock when the city school board decided to admit a small number of black students to its best high school, Central High, beginning in September, 1957. Elizabeth was delighted to be accepted. Although she wouldn't be able to participate in after-school activities because the school board felt whites would not accept that, she believed in the importance of education and wanted to take courses that her own school didn't offer. Elizabeth's family didn't have a phone at the time, so she didn't know that the eight other black students were gathering at the home of the president of the local NAACP chapter and heading to school together. She went to school alone.

The bus dropped her off a few blocks from Central High and as Elizabeth walked the rest of the way, she noticed that there were more cars and commotion than usual. Then she saw the mobs of white people and the groups of National Guard soldiers outside the school. Assuming that they were there to help, she tried several times to enter the school, as she saw white students walking through the guards and being allowed admittance. However, as she soon discovered, the National Guard had been ordered by Arkansas governor Orval Faubus to keep the black students out. As the white mob yelled threats and insults, the National Guard did nothing to protect Elizabeth, but they did threaten to arrest a white reporter who had tried to comfort her and protect her from the mob when she sat at a bus stop and tearfully realized she could not go to school that day.

Nor was it easy to get away. While the crowd called out that she should be tied to a tree, the white reporter and a white woman hustled her to a store so they could call a cab. No go. The store closed up tight and refused to help. Finally the woman helped Elizabeth onto a bus and she was able to go to the school for blind and deaf Negroes where her mother worked in the laundry.

Elizabeth's picture, with Hazel in the background screaming for her to go home, was printed in papers all over the world. Interest in both girls was high. Newspaper articles near and far hailed Elizabeth as a quiet and dignified hero. In interviews outside the school in the coming days, reporters asked Hazel what she believed and she happily shared her strongly racist, segregationist views. The political embarrassment President Dwight Eisenhower felt finally propelled him to send in the 101st Airborne Division to carry out the law.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the story. Although by September 25, the Little Rock Nine, including Elizabeth, made it into Central High and were able to start attending classes, the racial bigotry and bullying did not end. Elizabeth reported a fraction of the pushings, shovings, bottle throwings and continual taunts to the Vice-Principal, but nothing ever happened. She was made to sit alone at the back of her classes and no student dared befriend her. In the showers of the gym, white students would sprinkle broken glass on the floors and arrange to scald her by flushing all the toilets at the same time. The content of some her classes was also racist. She learned that "slavery actually civilized blacks, that the black officeholders during Reconstruction were "ignoramuses," that the Ku Klux Klan was founded to defend white womanhood. A stern woman with a pince-nez who had taught at Central since it opened, Miss Penton refused even to touch Elizabeth. When there was money to collect, she made her put the coins down on her desk."

Throughout her 11th grade year, she considered leaving Central High many times, but somehow, completed the year. She had no one to turn to for support, as her mother would have pulled her from school if she knew what was happening and her father downplayed the seriousness of it. She wasn't very close with the other black students and they didn't want to talk about it when they were together. However, somehow, on her own and against all odds, she finished the year and joined the other Little Rock Nine students on a trip to Washington, D.C. where she met her hero, Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer who successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education to the Supreme Court in 1954.

Little Rock Board of Ed did not want another year like 1957, so they closed all the schools in 1958. Elizabeth got private tutoring and then moved to St. Louis to complete her high school and then college education. When she was 21, she returned to her home town and was surprised to get a phone call from someone she had never heard of: Hazel Bryan. Hazel introduced herself and apologized for screaming at Elizabeth and contributing to her misery at Central High School. Elizabeth accepted her apology.

It's remarkable to ponder it. Elizabeth not only persevered completely alone through more trials than any one person should ever face, but forgave one of her tormentors. The next 30 or more years were not easy for Elizabeth. While trying to work and raise her family, she was hounded by reporters and depression. Yet, in 1997, Counts, the same photographer whose picture of hatred and dignity had circled the globe so famously in 1957 asked to photograph the two women together. Here is is:

They forged a friendship that lasted a few years, offering the hope of reconciliation to many.

Many of us have never heard of Elizabeth Eckford and she probably wishes her name were not famous. Yet, while aiming only to obtain an education for herself, Elizabeth opened doors for millions of students, black and white, and taught millions more the lessons of perseverance, triumphing with dignity over difficulties and even offering forgiveness. I hope my students and I can learn her lessons well.

Service Lessons/Service Lessens?

Last night, I went with my daughter and some friends to see a local musical production of A Christmas Carol. Watching Ebenezer Scrooge humbug his way through numerous requests for charity and benevolence, I could almost understand his barking demand that the hordes all leave him alone.

We are bombarded by more information and more pleas for help than most of us can process. The 1% vs. the 99%. The unemployment rate that stays too close to 10%. The people with dead-end jobs. Children in at-risk homes. Women in abusive situations. Obese Americans. Animals in kill shelters. People experiencing violence every minute. People who don't vote. People who give up. People who don't have what they need to make choices about what they do in life. People with heartbreaking medical conditions. People with no access to medicine or clean water or safe homes.

A glance in my mailbox, virtual or real, shows overwhelming and overflowing need. From the NAACP, a reminder that Justice, Equality and Civil Rights need my attention. From Planned Parenthood, a warning that President Obama needs support to keep women's health issues within their control. From the local food pantries, a plea for staples: dried beans, rice, canned tomatoes, powdered milk. From a home for mentally ill children, a grim picture of institutional walls and children without family connections. From Amnesty International, reports of abuse of human rights. From Oxfam, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, World Wildlife Organization, the ASPCA, Heifer International, numerous organizations devoted to researching cures for particular cancers or other health issues, religious institutions, my own school's fundraising letters, we get the picture. There is enormous need out there.

The world would be a terrible place if we just told everyone to leave us alone.

With pounds and pounds of appeals, do we even open each one any more? With 77 new emails in the inbox, do we read them all? And how do we teach children about starting to make those decisions?

First, it helps to remember a whole lot of truisms that are actually true. Whether it's Mother Theresa, “If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” Or Annie Dillard, "The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart." Albert Einstein,"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving" or the Talmud, "He gives little who gives with a frown; he gives much who gives little with a smile." We can understand that small things aren't small things, they're everything and we can try to do whatever small things we can.

As a classroom teacher, I want to give the children opportunities to participate in a way of life which considers the needs of others. This happens in many ways, within the classroom, with our younger buddies, as part of every meeting, every lesson of the social studies curriculum. In the past, through selling pizza every Friday at a slight markup and donating the profits, the children also gave generously outside our community. In addition, a tiny portion of this money was used to purchase bright red empty stockings from the dollar store. The children then purchased items to fill the stockings and we delivered the filled stockings to a nearby homeless shelter in time for Christmas. The children were asked to do extra chores at home as their contribution to the family's shopping endeavors and were excited to think about how someone would feel receiving these gifts.

This year, we're wondering if we can keep up that service project. We no longer fundraise through pizza sales. Our school is a non-sectarian, progressive, independent school. Many, but by no means all, of the children hang stockings by their own chimneys. No matter what their family traditions were, in the past, the students were excited to imagine the joy on the faces of the recipients of their stockings. They knew they were adding cheer to the lives of even a few in need. This year, the local shelter has at least 120 children in residence. At the same time, many in our own school community are facing tougher economic times.

While no one can agree on the number of homeless people, and while that number is always shifting, one study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007)(Quoted from the National Coalition for the Homeless)

Is it right for a school to ask families to purchase stocking stuffers for 120 of these homeless children? Can the school leave this shelter in the lurch after 10 or 12 years of being there for them? What is the responsibility of the school? Most schools are facing such severe funding cuts that they can only offer the essentials. Are service lessons part of the essentials?

As Scrooge told the gloomy and silent dreadful Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, "The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on. . . "

I can only hope that in all the ways that we can we will teach caring. I hope we can learn Scrooge's lesson. "He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world." As much as we must teach our children math or science or reading or writing, we must teach them to give. We can't take care of all the problems of the world. But we can do what we can do.

Tucker Everlasting

By some divine sense of comedy and tragedy, we began to immerse ourselves at school in the book Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt at the same time that it appeared that Tucker, my English Cocker Spaniel and best friend, might not be everlasting.

When Tucker runs, his ears bounce around so much we like to say he is "bunny rabbiting." For eight and a half years, he has loved every opportunity to bunny rabbit off-leash both on (and off and on and off) paths through the many beautiful woods we are fortunate enough to live near. He gets better exercise that way and can sniff this bush or that stump for as long as he pleases while I get to keep walking at my pace. His typical stray is much less than 50 yards - not so far that I can't talk or sing to him while we walk, and he makes frequent passes back to me for a kiss or a treat. He has taught several puppies how to be great off-leash woods walkers.

Tucker, before his summer haircut. He's as beautiful inside as out.



On roads, he needs a leash. He is curious, friendly, and utterly without street sense. He thinks cars are friends to go up and sniff, even if they're moving. He's smarter in the woods. He knows not to bother bikers and joggers and, although he loves to chase deer, he soon gives up and comes back to his humans.

The fourth day of school, September 12, significant to so many people as the day after the tenth anniversary of 9-11, was a warm and sun-dappled gift. My daughter and her friend decided to walk the dogs in the nearby woods. Unusually, I decided not to go with them. About a half hour into the walk, I got a panicked phone call from my daughter.

"Tucker took off in the thick bushes barking. Then cried loudly in pain and then he was silent. We can't find him."

With several loving friends, we searched, calling and clapping, whistling and yelling, pushing through bushes and prickers, sludging through muddy bogs thick with mosquitoes and smelling strongly of rotting vegetation. Confident that Tucker would come back to us any moment, I was both calm and clueless about how to find him if he didn't come to us. Since he had never gone missing before, I had no tricks or strategies up my sleeve, but that was okay; I knew we'd find him.

After a long and mosquito-bite-filled evening, the others needed to get home. Dinners needed to be made and eaten, homework needed to be done. Lives needed to move on.

I stayed until it was too dark to see anything. By then, it had hit me. I was about to go home without Tucker for the first time in his life. Was he alive? Was he hurt? Was he still in the woods? Why didn't he whine or cry? Why couldn't I find him? How could this be happening to us? Not much sleep that night!

Over the next week and a half, my daughter and I asked countless joggers, walkers, bikers and bystanders if they had seen Tucker. We made flyers. We called the police and the pound. We kept searching and so did many friends and, amazingly and inspiringly, strangers. Countless people wished us well and tried to help us find our black-eared, four-legged gentle friend, but we have yet to find an explanation that works or even one clue.

For the first few days, I was always on the verge of tears. Not just tears, but sobs. Who knows what we ate. I certainly wasn't keeping up with cooking and chores. Keeping up with my work for school, at least a little, was both necessary to my ability to teach a lesson and also to my sanity. School was a reprieve from walking obsessively and repetitively in the woods, yelling and clapping and whistling for a dog who didn't show up.

For five minute snatches, I can sometimes forgot he's gone. Then I am hit with the realization all over again. It's a hole that can feel too deep to cross over. Our puppy, Mocha, lets me kiss her nose twice as often, which helps. Her antics are as funny as ever, and her need to be cuddled, held and noticed helps my daughter and me fill some of that furry quota. She reminds us to laugh and play tug-of-war and to live each moment in the present. When she shakes her toy and growls at it to remind us to throw it for her, she suggests that guilt and regrets are about as useful as excrement. Undeniably, she tells us minute by minute that life goes on. I believe her.

From an interview of Natalie Babbitt I learned that an ancient meaning of "tuck" is life. Tucker has been my life teacher these past eight years. I hope to have news of him to report one day on this blog. Meanwhile, my thoughts and love for Tucker are everlasting; I just have to learn not to flinch every time we use the word Tuck.

Do Animals Belong in our Classrooms?

When I was growing up in suburban New Jersey, keeping pets was considered "normal." We had two dogs, a cat, and, during my pre-teen years, a large number of gerbils and teddy bear hamsters. My older brothers had enjoyed the shorter term companionship of many ducks, chickens and rabbits, as well as a couple of parakeets, which somehow, by the time there were three children, were no longer part of the household census. We also rescued our share of baby squirrels and other creatures left motherless and in need. We had a goldfish pond and a fish tank filled with guppies and we contributed to conservation funds to preserve habitats. Consequently, I grew up knowing that I could and should take responsibility for the creatures and ecosystems around me and feeling particularly connected to my dog, Thistle.

As a mother, I tried to pass along those teachings through similar experiences: dogs, cats, mice, gerbils and hermit crabs have kept us company, demanded our help and care, taught us daily and weekly routines and responsibilities outside our own selves, and helped us keep our eyes and fingers on the love that guides our daily decisions. When a bat wandered uninvited into my bedroom, my daughters courageously and helpfully showed it to the window, returning it to the sky diving and hunting that must have been more interesting than the back of my bookshelf. When the cat brings in living prey, the girls leap to take of it; insects are trapped and escorted out of doors, dead animals are mourned and missed as the friends or strangers they were. Both girls are vegetarians and consequently, most of the food in our household is vegetarian, mostly in response to the inhumane and terrible conditions which are the reality of the lives of most animals raised by for food and sold in supermarkets.

As a teacher in elementary schools, I have to think hard about whether or not to include a classroom pet in our room. There are many positive lessons to be taught by living closely with, caring for, and observing other species. Yet, there are moral/ethical/philosophical dilemmas to consider when keeping animals in captivity or as domesticated creatures. If we are to keep animals in our classroom, we should certainly examine what we are teaching.

On the one hand, when we present our children with animals outside of their natural environment, we are presenting an altered animal, and one which had no say about the change. We are saying, however quietly, that having the ability to pluck them up from their burrows or dens or nests or hidey-holes under the rocks makes it acceptable that we exercise it. These caged animals typically do not meet any other of their kind for the rest of their lives; their desert environments are reproduced using theatrical approximations; the range of weather is nil; the hunt for food, which would usually use up most of an animal's day and calories, is non-existent. The quality and activities of the caged animal's life is very different from one which lives in nature.

On the other hand, "mankind" has been having this type of effect on the world for all of our time in it. We can chop or grow trees, plow and plant land, catch wild horses or cattle or fowl or dogs and raise them. More than any other animal, we not only can do these things, but we can think and talk about them, write books or movies or hold meetings and make laws about doing them. We have both the ability and the responsibility to do everything we do thoughtfully and deliberately, acknowledging that there is not one single act that we can carry out which doesn't have a whole range of consequences and repercussions.

We want to go see our cousins in Boston; we have to either take a few months off from school and walk there and back or we have to take our car and burn hydrocarbons and come back in time for school on Monday. We want to get new furniture because the old furniture didn't quite make the statement or serve the purpose that the new can do, but we don't have time to grow the trees and chop them down and carve them and grow the cotton and pick it and spin it and weave it, so we go to the store, which sits on land which 100 years ago held magnificent maple and oak trees but now is next to hundreds of other stores on a highway covered in asphalt, etc. etc. You get the picture. All of our actions have consequences. Nothing we do, and nothing we have done since the dawn of time, could really be called pure and simple. That's our curse and our blessing.

Back to pets in the classroom. We have classrooms filled with children who come for 6 or 7 hours a day to learn in an environment that presents literally zillions of opportunities to explore and wonder and grow. None of those opportunities is without its costs. We use paper and pencils - thoughtfully and resourcefully, but sometimes extra copies of papers are made by mistake. We turn on lights and computers and heat and air-conditioning - conscious of saving energy, but using it, nonetheless, and sometimes, the heat is too high or the air-conditioning is too low and we have just been a party to adding huge amounts of carbon to the atmosphere without meaning to. We buy new computers or furniture or buildings, mow the lawn, do the laundry, wash the dishes - - and always, there's the environmental cost. We serve snack and lunch and try introduce children to new tastes and textures; sometimes, in order to follow sanitary guidelines and give children the opportunity to try new things, some food gets wasted.

We try to teach lessons about taking care of our planet earth in all that we do, and we all aspire to do an even better job with this - but we live in a real world where budgets and time constraints and each person's individual preferences have a lot to say about the final decisions made about each and every use of resources in the school.

In the end, as with all decisions, we have to decide if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The cons of bringing a pet into the classroom are real: some children may have an allergy, some children may see animals in an unnatural surrounding and may not respect the importance of animals living in their own habitat or may think that animals in captivity is the best place for them to be, the animals may not be well cared for, the animals may be dangerous to the children.

The pros are also real: classroom animals give children the chance to live with an animal which many children do not have at home, children learn about and attend to the needs of a being outside their species, children observe the habits and behaviors of an animal which may be very different from the anthropomorphized beings they meet in stories and on tv, children take part in the life cycle of an animal, which is generally much shorter than the human life cycle, so there can be an increased familiarity with birth, death, maturity, etc. and children's emotional well-being may be positively influenced by spending time with an animal.

“Being around animals is extremely good for children”, says Dr. Harvey Markovitch, pediatrician and editor of The Archives of Disease in Childhood. “They’re good for morale, and teach children about relationships and about the needs of another living being – learning to care for a pet helps them to learn how to care for people.”

In classrooms, many children choose to spend time playing with the classroom pet at every free period. Choosing an animal, naming the animal, taking care of the animal, learning about the likes and dislikes of each animal, taking the animal home over school breaks are all important parts of the cooperative work we consider essential to our community.

I think we have to recognize and discuss with our students the possible negative lessons of having animals in cages in our classrooms, and we have to be super-vigilant about caring for the animals' needs in that setting, but the long-term and bigger picture benefits of having animals in our classrooms far exceed the possible negative lessons of caged animals. The companionship of animals has been central to every culture for thousands of years. I'm sure Thistle wouldn't have it any other way.

Summer: the furry realities of planning for September while raising a puppy

About half-way through summer vacation seems like a good time to take a moment to notice how much I've accomplished. A kind of progress report for a conscientious teacher.

In thinking about summer before it began, I enjoyed making lists and piles of all the things I would accomplish: make a quilt for my college-bound daughter, get a puppy for my tenth-grade-bound daughter and start to train it, clean up the piles of "stuff" all over the house, get the garden in shape, visit friends, take tons of long walks, make serious in-roads into planning the new curriculum for next year, get some rest, read oodles of books, organize the freezer, schedule appointments with dentists and doctors and eye doctors and hairdressers, file last year's unfiled papers. . .

You know the lists. . . I have begun most of those projects and finished few - - something must be wrong!

I think the smoothly silky adorably clumsy little girl named Moki might be a clue. Did I really think that raising a puppy could be just another item on my list, like cleaning the bathroom? Moki says no. While I try to read or take notes, she bounds across the floor, legs all moving at different paces in different directions, the hair that grows between the pads of her feet giving her absolutely no traction on my smooth hardwood kitchen floors. Skidding into the folded comforter that serves as a dog bed, she looks up to see if I'm ready to throw her a toy. I throw. She races off after it, going as fast as her six inch legs allow (which is a lot faster than my thirty inch legs allow!) grabs her toy, growls at it while biting and shaking it, and comes back empty-mouthed, ready for me to throw another. I throw. How much reading did I do while Moki sported? You guessed it. Zero. The same goes for all other tasks. If she can get her mouth around it, she will. If she can't (as in the case of the cement stoop outside the kitchen door, she'll try anyway. The only thing she won't put in her mouth on her own is her high quality, all natural puppy kibble. That she prefers to eat out of my hand, preferably with a bit of hard-boiled egg or plain boiled chicken mixed in. Are you rolling your eyes? If my eight year old English Cocker Spaniel could roll his, he would. Valiantly, he tries to help her join the clean-bowler club - - if only it were a team sport!

So, I guess it's time to scale back my vision of all I could accomplish, celebrate each page read rather than each tome. There's always next summer, right?

The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander

Bullying is pervasive, persistent, ageless, boundary-less. It's in our schools, our homes, our jobs, our on-line networks. Even though we're increasingly aware of bullying, we know it's hard to stop it. The bully has the power to silence the bullied. A bully can silence one person,an entire family, a staff or even a community. Some kinds of bullying are officially discriminatory acts against someone due to their age, sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, class, job description, ethnicity, and so on. Some kinds feed on less obvious differences. But in every case, the bully has power over the bullied. It's often illegal and it's always unfair.

How do bullies get their power? How do they keep it?

Sometimes, the power difference is actual. The bully is older or bigger or has a higher status (teacher/student, boss/employee). Sometimes, the power difference is perceived. We see someone as being able to hurt us or take something away from us and we don't know how to stop them without coming out worse in the bargain.

Letting them bully us appears preferable to the alternative. Being labeled a tattle-tale. Being exposed as someone "different". Losing our jobs. Being alone.

I just read about four sixteen year-olds who formed a teen rock band called Radio Silence NYC which is touring to denounce bullying. They want to let kids know it's okay to be themselves. It's a great message, and I wish it were that easy. Many times, kids who are themselves are teased, taunted, shamed, even hurt until they conform or are too hurt to respond. As a country we try to say we are multi-cultural, we try to say we embrace differences, yet according to Stopbullying.gov:

+Eight in ten LGBT students had been verbally harassed at school
+Four in ten had been physically harassed at school
+Six in ten felt unsafe at school
+One in five had been the victim of a physical assault at school

And, according to The University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School’s Center for Problem-Oriented Policing’s director, Michael Scott,

+Bullying is widespread and perhaps the most underreported safety problem on American school campuses.
+Bullying occurs at all grade levels. It gets more subtle as kids get older.
+Boy-bullying tends to be more "direct" - physical aggression; girl-bullying relies more on "indirect" methods - teasing, exclusion, social isolation, rumor spreading.
+Bullies have little empathy for their victims.
+If there's no intervention, young bullies tend to grow up and continue bullying.
+Previously bullied students have been the attackers in at least two-thirds of recent school shootings.

In the classroom, we tell kids to come to a grown-up if they see or experience bullying. But victims worry that telling a grown-up won't help. By coming to us, they worry that they invite further bullying.

In the grown-up world, where can we go? In many cases, we stay silent because we (rightly) worry about the outcome of reporting. Blow the whistle, lose your job or your friends or your status. Get undesired attention. Be shunned.

Sometimes, it seems easier to put up with being bullied.

Interestingly, it turns out that being a bully is actually bad for the bully. According to girlshealth.gov,
+Childhood bullies are much more likely to commit a crime by age 24
+Often, childhood bullies are violent when they are older
+Childhood bullies may not change and may be bullies as adults
+Bullies are more likely to get into fights and steal, to drop out of school or to get bad grades.

Many anti-bullying programs in schools are ineffective because the bullies are clever enough to act when they are out of earshot of the adults. Fortunately, there's another ingredient in the bully mix: the bystander. The one who hears it, sees it, or hears about it. This might be another child in the school yard, a co-worker at the office, or another visitor to a Facebook page.

Ken Rigby has been researching bullying since the 1980s. He has found that while most children don't report bullies and bullying generally happens in front of peers, rather than in front of teachers, most children want it to stop.

Often, the bystander does nothing because:

+They felt it was none of their business.
+They feared consequences, including embarrassment, being branded as a “sissy,” and the bully turning on them.
+They felt the victims should take care of the situation and stand up for themselves. As students move into the teenage years, they tend to become less sympathetic toward victims of bullying.
+They felt helpless to stop the bullying – or feared that their intervention might make things worse.

Importantly, at least half the time when a bystander speaks up, the bullying stops. The bystander can take action, knowing that most kids don't like bullying and will support him/her. Also, bullies like an audience and when their audience doesn't approve, they change course.

Bystanders seem to have the most power in the bullying situation. Speak up. Talk about what is wrong. It's not risk-free, but it's worth the risk. As Edmund Burke identified it: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”

Got a moment to read some students' work?

This week, I am writing end of the year reports, so I won't be posting anything of my own, although my fingers are busy on the keyboard! However, my kind daughter typed all the poems that my class was ready to share and I posted them on Jan's 4-5 Blog. Please visit, read, leave a comment if you have a moment.

Thanks so much!

Best Laid Plans

The best thing about making lesson plans is that they can change! Sir Ken Robinson says, "Human life is not linear. You can't plan it like a production line." (Here's a link to the video in which he says that.) Well, that certainly is true of classroom life - and only more so in May.

This week, there have been rehearsals and performances and Grandparents Day. And, it's spring. School is ending soon. The children are a bit edgy. They have big research/writing projects to fnish. There's a lot going on.

Flash to Thursday morning. My plan book clearly said, "Attend Lower School Assembly, 8:25. Teach Greek game, Plakato,8:45,then play it. 9:30, Social Studies, Mini-lesson: how to use the Revision and Editing checklist.Recess/Snack, 10:15." My morning was planned.

Enter the real live class. Off to the Assembly. Then back to the class to finish up pizza orders for Friday and review the schedule for the day. Time to teach the game. A hand shoots up.

"Yes?"

"I made a presentation I'd like to share. May I do it now?" the student asked.

"Okay," I answered, knowing it would be fine to give her a few minutes, excited at her initiating this, wondering where we were going.

The student, a cheerful, steady, quiet fourth grader, came up to the front of the room. She carefully opened up a sheet of paper she had typed in preparation for this presentation. The class shushed themselves and sat forward to hear her better.

The student shared her concerns about how we reaching conclusions about people based on looking at their clothing and appearance; she wondered why there are popular kids and unpopular kids; she talked about how terrible teasing makes people feel; she proposed a change.

It's a conversation we've had from time to time all year long, but somehow this particular morning, it took wings. Almost every student in the room had something powerful to add.

One child talked about being teased for being too short. Another child shared what it felt like when people made comments about her parents' car. Another talked about other children shunning her when her brother was very sick with cancer. Another student talked about how much she wished she didn't love the attention and concern shown her when she had a dangerously allergic reaction to nuts. Another student said that popular children aren't always the nicest children in the class. Another suggested that popular kids may look like they have many friends, but in reality, they only have a few true friends. Another said it was sometimes hard to know who his true friends were. A student with Tourette's Syndrome quoted, with difficulty, a comment he'll never forget: "Thank G-- I don't have what you have."

We agreed that judging people based on what they look like doesn't make sense. We sympathized with each other, we shared stories. We heard each other. We threw away boundaries and popularity scales. I tried not to cry. The importance of the conversation that resulted over the next 40 minutes far outweighed the plans I had laid for that moment.

We'll get back to researching next week. Ancient Greece won't have gone away!

The Heart of a Teaching Mom

Yesterday, while dashing back to school from a meeting at the district, I listened to a radio essay (for which I've just failed miserably to find a link) which contained the quote from Elizabeth Stone, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

I want to take that one step further. To be a teacher is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around in hundreds of bodies.

I don't think it's just me. I think it happens to many parents who are teachers. Our hearts break, bend, tear, expand, fill with joy or anxiety or pride or love or despair for our own children as well as for our "children", our students.

It's why we teach, it's why each day is so rich and full, it's why it's so hard to say good-bye when they go off to another school or another class at the end of the year.

This year, we decided to let the fifth graders lead their own conferences. This changed the entire dynamic of the conference. What was especially new to me was the opportunity to sit and see my pride and hope mirrored on my students' parents' faces. Usually, I don't get to see the parents too often, interacting with their kids. Usually, it's just me, watching their kids and feeling that pride (or frustration, or pain, or excitement) alone.

Then there was the one conference that didn't go the way I hoped it would go. The joy and pride weren't there on the parent's faces. There was only criticism and defeat. Yet this was a child for whom there was so much to celebrate. His reading and writing have improved, he is a hard worker, he is a caring and thoughtful friend to other kids in the class, he never gives up - even though many school tasks are very challenging.

Listening to the derision and watching the child's posture slump noticeably with each barb, and not knowing how to protect him full time from something I only glimpsed for half an hour was one of the most heartbreaking experiences I've had as a teacher.

The pain was no different from watching my own child being treated unfairly. Actually, maybe it's worse because I feel less able to do anything about it.

Happy Mother's Day - to all who feel a mother's feelings for those who need us.

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!