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

Those Seed Ideas~

Having only taught very young writers in high poverty schools, my experience as a teacher of writing was somewhat limited. I felt lucky to get the kids to put something down on the page or regurgitate some information about a topic we had studied. Low language skills are the foundation of reading and writing delays in young children. Ameloriating this gap in literacy development is the topic for another blog and another time.


My current teaching situation is a blessing for me as a teacher of writing. I am being forced to examine my practices and push myself out of the safety of my little poverty writing box. I am being forced to learn more in order to be a better teacher for these kids.

At the beginning of the school year, I struggled to understand why my firsties were such reluctant writers. They could write, they simply chose not to put any effort into it. Good enough seemed to be the mantra and it frustrated me. Here were kids from literate homes with decent reading skills and full-sentence conversations. They knew stuff and could make sense of their experiences. So - why wouldn't they write?

Page after journal page was filled with simple sentences and drawings - lots and lots of drawings. Lest you think that time and effort went into these creations, reconsider. Very little effort other than painstaking use of the watercolor marker filled these pages. Tic-tac-toe games, heads with dotted eyeballs, and energetic scribblings took the place of what I wanted to see there - thoughtful writing!

I cajoled. I modeled. I brought forth powerful literature. I told myself that pictures are the foundation, the toolbox, of emergent writing. I told myself to give them time. I stepped back, took a good look, talked with my teaching partner, and then came back with a vengeance. Suddenly, my kids are writing.

Here is what I've learned:

You have to keep it up.

Most powerful is the seed idea. The kids are full of them but don't realize it. As teachers, we have to be "noticers" of the seed ideas. We have to pay attention to what the kids are telling us and the stories they share. When a "good one" pops up, we have to be enthusiastic to the point of lunacy and say, "Yes! Yes! That is the perfect seed idea! You can write about it." You always have the best shoes, I tell Kaycie. Are you a shoe fanatic? You should write about your shoes. They are so fun!

You model. "Brian and I visited my parents over the weekend. Hank, the family dog, stole Brian's hat and we couldn't find it."

"I was reading on Saturday afternoon. I had a bag of cherries on my tummy and I put the seeds into a bowl that was on the floor below me. I kept hearing a crunching sound but didn't think too much about it because my book was really good. Then I looked down and saw that all the cherry pits were gone. My dog, Duke, ate them all!"

You use the examples of other students and embellish them to make the seed ideas stand out. "Ty just did the smartest thing. He wrote about a visit from his cousin and then added details so that we could picture what fun they had eating ice cream."

One day Cheyenne arrived to school late. Her socks, she explained, were still wet from the washing machine and her dad had to dry them. He put them in the microwave oven to dry them. What a great seed! I attacked it and asked Cheyenne very loudly and with much incredulity why in the world did her dad put her socks in the microwave oven! Cheyenne did write about this but the best part happened later when the other kids got into the action and wrote letters to Mr. V about the proper methods of drying wet socks.

You have to read with a writerly eye and find ideas in children's literature that can expanded into good writing lessons. Using Picture Books to Teach Writing With the Traits, is an excellent springboard for finding those essential pieces of literature and non-fiction texts.

Now that my kids are writing, I find myself scrambling to keep ahead of them and give them what they need to succeed. The rubrics in 6+1 will come in handy - for all of us.

the 6+1 Writing Traits~

I remember something Lucy Calkins wrote in her landmark writing text, The Art of Teaching Writing. Referring to her son Miles, who is now in his mid-thirties, she tells a story of his focus as a young writer. Miles apparently made a list of things one should pack for a hike. His list of essentials included a "notebuk."

I remember laughing at the absurdity of such an idea. I couldn't picture an 8-year old wanting to bring along a notebook while hiking. The purpose, of course, was the recording of any seed ideas that came up along the way. I say "of course," because now I look upon the inclusion of such a notebook through the eyes of a teacher, writer, mother, and hiker. A notebook serves a useful purpose because not everybody can recall with clarity those little moments that provide fodder for the writers' journal.

I tell my own students that the process of becoming a writer means thinking like a writer, reading like a writer, and living what Katie Wood Ray calls "The Writerly Life." Seed ideas, or small moments, can be quickly recorded and then filed away for future attention. Viewing the world through the lens of a writer means living thoughtfully and taking a moment to notice those small moments and record them for exploration that may lead to a decent piece of writing.

I think it also means living life thoughtfully, with empathy and appreciation. Living it means writing it and making meaning, turning it into something else. As a teacher, it means modeling it. Explicit instruction of the writers' craft is good, but showing a young writer how it works, how that seed idea transforms, and what the finished product may LOOK like - is powerful.

My mind goes off on writerly 'riffs' quite frequently. Seed ideas abound. Pointing this out to young writers will begin the process of journal writing, essential for the development of young writers but grist for writerly mills of more mature writers.

The 6+1 Traits of Writing is a good book for the teaching of writing. Anything by Donald Graves or Lucy Calkins is good too - and Wondrous Words by Katie Wood Ray is even better. The Ray book delves into the craft of writing and using the best in children's literature as springboards for the modeling of that craft. But the 6+1 book is very explicit - something essential for teachers of writing and the universal "traits" that define good writing. The book reminds me of things forgotten or cast aside when teaching out of a box sucked the very life right out of me.

The authors say that 'writing is the residue of talk' and is an essential gateway to literacy. I would add that writing is the reciprocal skill of reading - the other side of the coin. Development of one will lead to increased proficiency of the other.

A child's reading ability generally outpaces his skill at writing. Children may be more reluctant to write and there is a good explanation. Comprehension aside, reading is really a passive activity. All the work has been done - the author put it all down as text and the reader simply tackles it with varying degrees of proficiency and interest. But writing must come from the wellspring of the writer. The child must find the ideas and then encode them - using background information, the knowledge of spelling patterns (phonics), a sight word vocabulary, and more. Good readers begin internalizing all of this early. Struggling readers will find writing more difficult.

There is much in this book that will lead to conversation about teaching writing and doing it well.