The 7-Habits of Highly Effective Teens~

Please note: This blog entry was moved from the original SCVi Book Banter site in order to create a more streamlined blog process for book discussion.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Greetings SCVi Community,

This blog is a discussion forum for books in common for the Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School. Since our school is founded upon the tenets of Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it is logical that friends, families, and community members interested in the school will read the books and join in the dialogue.

I selected the teen version at the recommendation of a friend of Dr. Covey's who provided a workshop for the SCVi staff last summer. The teen version is very user-friendly and easy to read.

This is not to say that Dr. Covey's other books are not recommended. They certainly ARE and discussion of those titles will always be welcomed at this site.

If you are interested in joining our discussion, please purchase a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, and get ready to engage in the dialogue.

The Edible Schoolyard

Please note: This post was recently moved from the original SCVi Book Banter blog in order to keep things streamlined.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The beauty of a project-based charter school is that you can do things that regular public schools cannot. The Edible Schoolyard is a book that invites one to "do things," like plant a school garden and see what happens next.

Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse in San Francisco, teamed up with a local middle school to create the national phenomenon that is the edible school yard. It is a hands-on venture that invites kids to participate and always remains a work in progress. Not only does the school grow fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, the bounty is used by the students to create creative and nutritious meals.

The community partnership formed here between Waters and the school was so powerful that others came along for the adventure and stuck around to help the students and the garden grow to the next level. This is a model that SCVi can adopt and should adopt. This is a project worth our time and effort.

I highly encourage the SCVi community to read this book and begin a dialogue so we can make it happen.

Individualism vs the "National Character" ~

Last week, I had the opportunity during an SCVi staff meeting to view a TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson. I have viewed this talk several times and actually purchased the book last summer in order to really "get" what he was saying. Sir Ken is a huge proponent of creativity and the arts in a well-rounded education. What he says resonates with SCVi's true believers, those of us committed to the vision and willing to brave a few bumps in the road.

One thing he said immediately reminded me of WOMD: American public education, as envisioned by its 19th century proponents, was intended to train workers for an industrialized society. I don't think this is what the little one-room school houses on the prairie had in mind, but I catch his general drift.

Gatto discusses the control of human behavior and the individuals (okay, MEN) responsible for crafting this movement somewhat derisively. From a modern perspective, this attitude makes sense. Recall the response to the book about the Bell Curve of human intellect? Murray and Hernstein claimed that a certain percentage of the population was 'doomed' to fall under the bell curve and that nothing could be done about it. Remember the anger and righteous indignation? Had the authors published this work 75 years earlier, it would not have raised such ire. For better and a lot worse, this is how many Americans thought in those days. Albert Binet and his mind-measuring cousin, Francis Galton, Thorndike, Rockefeller, and others, were products of a different time.

This was before the idea of individualism and the 'frontier' mentality had taken hold, before the common man was held in higher esteem and respected, in general, for his/her contributions to the world. The common man was usually viewed with disdain by those in power. Despite the best intentions of the founding fathers, classism existed then and continues to exist now in America.

Those who fashioned public school in America to train compliant workers honestly thought they were doing a good thing. The schools would serve their own interests, but eventually these people would have jobs. The dignity of human beings born with "less" was probably not considered. After all, how far away were we from the abolition of slavery? Twenty years? Thirty? Fifty?

Gatto mentions that American education was designed "after the Prussian fashion" as a means to achieve important economic and social goals. Those wacky Prussians! Armies, Nationalism in what became Germany, and... oh yeah. The Nazis.

The spirit of individualism thrived, despite attempts to create a "national character." Our new country offered opportunities for anybody willing to work hard to obtain them. Success was just around the corner, providing you were free, white, and a 21 year old male.

I was taught by one of my favorite professors that a democratic education required the finding of one's voice, one's power, one's ability to transcend ignorance and bias. A book by E.D. Hirsch, called "Cultural Literacy," put forth the idea that in order to come together and engage in this national dialogue, one had to possess common knowledge, a core schema of common understanding. He believes that these things must be taught in the schools. Critical theorists disagree, of course, but I find some truth and comfort in knowing that the references I make to my life-long reading and formal education will be understood by most of the people who hear me, read me, and understand me. I am not alone. Newspapers, authors, and journalists also rely on this basic schema.

For instance, if somebody gives me a litany of complaints over a bad day, going on and on, I might be compelled to calmly respond, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" OR...."Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how did you enjoy the parade?"

The role of our current education system has been bastardized. The "compliance" and "domestication" (which we might euphemistically call "manners" and "civility") has disintegrated into chaos, a lack of vision, and a dumbing down of what should be a salient right in a democracy: An Education. Not schooling, not training, EDUCATION. Scripted curriculum with an overemphasis on testing and accountability has sucked the life out of what should a time of wonder.

I do believe in civility and manners. I also believe they should be a natural by-product from a culture of respect and dignity. Telling anybody to do something "because I said so" reeks of ill-gained authority, but this truism lies along a spectrum. At some point, people should have enough respect for others to listen to what is being asked and then make the decision to follow through because it is the right thing to do. For example, being asked to clean up after yourself, at home, school, in the workplace, or in public, should be second-nature - because it is the right thing to do, and not because somebody shames you into it or demands that you comply with anti-litter laws.

Being defiant for its own sake is rebellion that lacks potential.

The Implicit Curriculum

In the first Chapter, Gatto delves deep into an often mind-numbing retelling of the history of compulsory schooling in America. An original goal, he states, is to control human behavior. The titans of the industrial age needed passive workers. Reading this brought to mind a text I read while studying for my master's degree. This author, Eliot Eisner (Stanford University) uses a more positive connotation: Compliant behavior. He then asks if this is necessarily a bad thing.

The implicit, or "hidden," curriculum is the stuff we teach indirectly. We don't necessarily mean to, but we do. School is "preparation for work," in that students will learn to be punctual, delay gratification by having to "wait your turn," and to organize and manage tasks and time. We also teach what we value, and the state mandates that we value certain subjects more than others. It may be necessary to place math and reading at the top of our priority list, but this usually results in social studies, science, health, and P.E. being relegated to a second tier - somehow not as worthy. The "important" subject get the best time slots - in the morning when everybody is fresh and energetic. But what happens to the arts and music? Well... the are offered last, sporadically, or not at all. This implicit lesson teaches that some subjects have more 'value' than others. The proportion of time allocated is relative to its importance.

The "real" work of schooling takes precedence over "play." REAL work demands attention and thinking. The arts are a 'reward,' a 'break' from thinking. It is a mixed-bag blessing... isn't it?

Learning to be respectful and courteous are good things, in my opinion. The issue that Gatto seems to have with the "compliance" part is that too much of this leads to a separation from oneself - passivity that gradually turns over the power to think and control one's own destiny to someone else. Why should I think if other people will do it for me?

I dislike rigid authority because it is dehumanizing. There is a fine line between the compliance that encourages respect for the space and needs of others and the giving over of one's "self" to authority that may or may not rule in righteousness or stem from good purposes. There are times to make decisions and times to listen to the decisions (and reasoning) of others.

I write this while exhausted and must pause for more consideration and perusal.

:-)K

Extending Childhood

In the prologue, John Taylor Gatto repeatedly cites examples of people who accomplished great things at a very young age and without any formal schooling. He goes on to state that this is the rationale for rebelling against school - if Washington, Farragut, Edison, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. could succeed and make millions and command ships and revolutionary armies, then.... why force OUR kids into school at all?

As much as I would like to agree with him, I must temper my reaction with a bit of sociology and history. The world into which the aforementioned individuals were born no longer exists. Society is radically different. I am not speaking against successful homeschooling or autodidacts (people who teach themselves), I am considering the realities awaiting a child who gets little education, never learns to think, drops out, and tries to be successful in this world.

Further, compulsory schooling wasn't the law of the land until the early 20th century. When the American colonies were founded, survival was the main focus. The puritans introduced schools later - and for one purpose. In order to understand the word of God, citizens must be literate enough to read the Bible. This is one of the main differences between the British colonies and the Spanish settlements of South and Central America, the Caribbean islands, and what is now Mexico. Catholicism did not require literacy in order to 'hear' the word of God - it required an intermediary - a priest. But I digress.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains that the business titans of the late 19th century were born at exactly the right time and in the right place. Their personalities, coupled with vision, enabled them to build their corporations and make their millions. They were far from stupid, they were literate and mostly self-taught.

The backbone of the American Dream, in which hard work will get you success, was fine during the frontier era, when hundreds of thousands could leave the established cities of the eastern seaboard, homestead some land, and start farms, ranches, towns, and businesses. In the early 1900s, by great-grandfather uprooted his large family from rural Indiana and came to Los Angeles. He was a mechanic and fixed cars. He was handy with just about anything requiring hardware and a motor. He got a towing contract with the City and was able to buy a house with some land. His children came of age during the Great Depression, yet hard work again paid off with FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and, later, city jobs as police officers, fire fighters, and mechanics. My grandfather earned his high school diploma going to night school while working manual jobs during the day. College was never considered - it wasn't in the lexicon. Instead, he waited out the depression, married my grandmother, put lifts in his shoes, and signed on with the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

But our current society is racing along, with new information quickly doubling every few years. Jobs require specialization, literacy, numeracy, techno-savvy, and... the ability to problem-solve.

Our schools should educate, not train a "virtual herd of mindless consumers." It is frightening to think of how many American adults, let alone teens and younger children, are so heavily influenced by propaganda. Gatto's point about mindless consumerism being at odds with the frugality and common-sense of an earlier America, is SPOT ON.

Do you remember all the advertisements a short while ago that encouraged people to file bankruptcy, walk away from debt, and get a lawyer or a company to "fight" for them? It galled me to no end. Such irresponsibility! Encourage debt, then encourage people to not pay it? Offer "mortgage forgiveness" to people who KNOWINGLY bought homes they could not afford but WANTED anyway. Then, blame the sharks at the mortgage companies!

Thinking critically and independently comes from rich experiences - in real life, through wide reading, and education. We want our children to be educated - not trained to be mindless followers.

All those titans mentioned by Gatto? They were thinkers, observers, and problem-solvers. They asked questions and then asked more questions. They were leaders and good decision-makers.

This is what we aspire to, is it not?

Boredom?

From the first page of the prologue, Gatto gets me going. I used to just go OFF when a kid would say he/she was 'bored.' I just couldn't stand it. HOW can you possibly, ever, be bored? I have to be careful not to react when I hear it now because it soon becomes a 'button' the kids discover they can push.

I had a fearsome 8th grade English teacher at Arroyo Seco named Olive Burns. She kept us on our toes with various readings and lots of writing but my eyes really opened the day one of my classmates said he was "bored" by something we were reading. "It's boring," he said. I swear ol' Mrs. Burns was going to pop a vein.

"BORED? BORED? If you are BORED young man then something is missing within yourself!" Most of us didn't exactly know what she meant at the time, but it resonates now. Gatto tells us his grandfather felt the same way!

I spent the first five years of my life living with my grandparents. There was no television - only books, a yard, a garage, a basement, and lots of music - records, show soundtracks, an organ, and a piano. There were no kids my age. So, I played alone. This was a habit I kept up throughout the years and I never minded being alone. I was never, ever, ever bored. Voracious reading also kept me occupied. And my stories - I wrote lots of stories.

Gatto reports that his students told him they were bored. They thought school was stupid. They hate the work. Well.... sheesh. What to say to that without knowing what they were supposed to be doing and what kinds of kids are we talking about? Thoughtful kids? Kids who persevere? Or kids with the attention span of gnat colony? Hard to say. Since he eventually ended up doing something positive with these kids, I will err on the side of the kids here.

Then he talks about bored teachers. THAT just fries me. Leave the profession and go do something truly boring - like working in a factory.

Gatto also talks about schooling vs education. Two very different concepts. Schooling 'trains.' Schooling brings about conformity and domestication. These are not wholly bad things. But, the word education comes from the Latin educare (ed-u-car-eh), which means to set oneself free, to liberate, to separate from ignorance. To seek an education is to learn how to think. Education gives men and women the tools they need to transform their world. How powerful is THAT?

It is the difference between 'schooling' in Nazi Germany and 'education' in a democratic society.

Allow me to go off on a tangent that really illustrates this point. Paolo Freire was a brilliant Brazilian educator determined to give a voice to the disenfranchised peasants who made up 90% of that country's population in the early 1960s. He taught them to read. (Well, not ALL of them.) Then he taught them to read their constitution. For all of his hard work, the Brazilian government "invited" him to leave Brazil in 1964. He lived in exile for many years, eventually teaching at Harvard and other Ivy League schools in the U.S. One of his American counterparts was a man by the name of Myles Horton. You may not recognize the name, but you will recognize what he founded: His school, Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, taught Rosa Parks to read. It educated the men and women who founded the Student-Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center. SNCC spawned a name you might recall - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Horton taught a generation of poor coal miners to read and helped them found a union. For his trouble, he was arrested - over and over again. "They accused me of learning things and then going back and teaching them," he wrote later. "They were right - that was exactly what I was doing." This was America before the civil rights movement.

Gatto talks about the "best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight" and I can't help but think about many of the kids I see from day to day. DO they have these qualities? Because frankly, when I observe them huddled around the campus or playing with their video games in the lobby on a gorgeous, sunny day, I sense..... boredom. I sense a lack of motivation. I sense a lack of purpose, interest, or passion. I see the attention spans and desire for instant gratification that the television and video game revolution has wrought. Watch a kid's eyes when he/she reads: They are moving and full of life. Watch their eyes when they are watching television or interacting with the DS or other hand-held electronic device. They are devoid of life, expression.... intelligence!

What if these kids became interested in something else? How about learning? Life? Their communities? The country? The world? What if we could spark curiosity and then.......they CHOOSE to become educated?

There is much more in this prologue but I don't want to hog all the good topics.

:-)K

Weapons of Mass Instruction~

To my left you will see a nice picture of the book we are going to discuss, Weapons of Mass Instruction, by John Taylor Gatto. I usually take pictures of books against the tan carpet in my home office, but the blue color of the classroom mailbox was irresistible. I love color and contrast. If I wasn't a teacher or a veterinarian or a forensic psychiatrist, I would have been a designer. I love DIY Network, HGTV, and stores like Home Goods.

The classroom mailbox is in my home office because the kids were putting all kinds of things inside it. Play food, books, office supplies, bark and wood chips, socks, leftover snacks, and... themselves. They climbed on it, lounged across it, and occasionally drew on it. Since it was made for me by a parent over a decade ago, I opted to rescue it.

This entry will serve as an introduction. We have at least six confirmed members of our reading group and most of us haven't met each other. So, because I am the ringleader, I will start with a brief introduction of myself.

I am a teacher. I have been in the classroom since 1995. It is part of my identity and describes what it is I do. Teaching is a habit of heart, something that calls to you; it is more than a paycheck or a job: it is an adventure. People who teach and don't feel that way really shouldn't be in the classroom. It takes too much passion, dedication, and energy to do well if you don't feel called to it. The profession is filled with crappy teachers and most of them remain in the classroom because we are educators, not politicians. We are not good at policing ourselves. So we 'allow' politicians, bureaucrats, and control freaks with nothing better to do run things. Haven't they done a fantastic job so far? Don't get me started. I am going off on a tangent.

I have been married 33 years to Dan the Fishing Man (he bowls, too) and live in West Palmdale. We have two outstanding sons: Danny is married to Brandy, whom he met while attending Chico State. They have the most precious baby in the world, my granddaughter, Mable Kats. Danny is a Game Warden with the Dept of Fish and Game in Ventura County. My younger son is Dustin, the boy I could take anywhere, at any time, and he would make friends. After years of working in my classrooms and swearing he would NEVER ever (in a million years) be a teacher, he earned his teaching credentials last year and is now teaching 6th Grade at SCVi. How is THAT for an excellent situation? Word on the street is that he is pretty good at it. Yeah, I am proud.

I am a reader. I love books and always have a stack on my nightstand, on the coffee table, and in my home office. I have been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. I recall being in first grade and being in love with Ricky Beasley (who never talked) but I don't remember learning to read. I remember flopping down anywhere and everywhere with a book. I hid from the world through books.

I hope this book study will encourage us to engage in the thoughtful dialogue that sparks change. I hope it allows us to find our collective voices and add them to the educational process that is our school - the one that is seeking to be different, better, a ripple in the education pond. The more we know, the better we can be.

How do you see yourself as a reader? How do you view public education? What are your goals for this book study?

I will state up front that I do not agree wholeheartedly with everything Gatto says in this book. But reading it energized me - I could not put it down. It stayed in my head for days.

Please introduce yourself. Then... let's read!

:-)Kim