Please Make My Child Cry

When Santino came home today from his last day of school, he was upset.

"It was an awful day," he said.

From experience I know that a bad day at school means that he has a lot of homework. Why would they assign homework on the last day of school? I was confused. Weren't they having a picnic, playing games, and signing yearbooks?

You know what happened? He had an incredible year and he didn't want it to end. And who is responsible for this best year of school? His teacher, Ms. Sides.

A teacher like Ms. Sides comes around once in a very great while. The first day of school, she inspired her students to read as many books as they could this year. She encouraged them to be creative, laugh, and be joyful. She had high expectations for their academic and social behavior. And she infused a sense of humor into everything.

I suppose I'm writing this as a plea to other teachers out there. For parents, there's nothing like having your kid come home from school every day happy and excited. When you think about it, they spend almost as much waking time at school as they do at home. You trust the school, and the teacher, to give your child positive life experiences. A good day at school means an easier time at home. And a bad day at school makes time at home painful.

Let me tell you about one year that Santino hated school. Every morning he woke up and rolled over in bed. "Please don't make me go," he would say. "No problem," I would counter. "Go to school, and if you still want to come home by recess, I'll come pick you up." He never took me up on the offer, but I understood where he was coming from. I knew what went on in his classroom.

Now, this is a kid who loves to learn, gets top grades in all subjects, and never gets into trouble. He hated school that year because of his teacher. Yes--his teacher. My colleagues and friends who are teachers out there are probably cringing as they read this. But it's true. Put together with other gifted students, he was subjected to a tedious curriculum that was supposed to challenge gifted kids. The teacher threw mundane projects and endless worksheets at them that were supposed to add "enrichment" and take them to a deeper level of thinking. In the meantime, Santino would listen, tortured, to the other class across the hall as it rang out with peals of laughter and joy. (That other class also had a gifted cluster.) He didn't care about challenge and enrichment. He wanted to laugh and smile. That's what makes him want to go to school and challenge himself.

In spite of his misery that year, Santino did well in school. He always does. But what about those kids who need more motivation to do well? If they don't like school--and especially if they hate school--how can we expect them to perform?

Thankfully, after that year of torture and hating school, Santino changed schools and landed himself in a class with a vivacious, enthusiastic teacher.

Oh sure, Ms. Sides worked hard on making her class exciting and fun for the students. You know, most teachers work hard. But I don't think it was just her hard work that made this year so wonderful. It was her ability to make her students feel secure and comfortable and loved. She encouraged them to work with each other and have high academic and social standards. She had an incredible ability to help them enjoy learning. She challenged them, gave them academic enrichment, and pumped them up to a higher order of thinking skills. And all this learning was accomplished with laughter and smiles.

That's something they don't deliver in the teacher credential programs, nor do they cover it in professional development. I suppose they don't address this because you really can't assess it. Ms. Sides gets good academic results from her students, and she does it with fun and laughter. But the fun factor can't be assessed--not until that last day of school, when your child is either cheering because summer is finally here, or crying because they want one more year. So I'm asking you--please make my child cry.

Book Club of One

Don't ask me the titles of the last five books I've read.

Okay, ask me.

1. Schooled

2. The Secret Hour

3. Beautiful Creatures

4. The Hunger Games

5. The Schwa Was Here

Don't recognize these titles? You would if you were under 16 years old. Yes, I am addicted to young adult fiction.

You might not think this is a problem, but I've had my issues. I don't remember how to read books written for adults. I don't even want to read them.

While my adult friends were reading books like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I was reading The Hunger Games. We couldn't talk. I went to pick up Santino from his friend Jeremy's house. Jeremy's dad welcomed me into the house but politely excused himself. "I'm reading a real page-turner so can we talk some other time?" The page turner was that Tattoo book. Was everybody in the universe reading that book? Like The DaVinci Code, I felt like I was missing out on some collective behavior phenomenon because I was quagmired in the world of teenagers with magical powers.

This problem started in September when Santino started reading like a crazy person. And I mean really crazy. He is so engrossed in the worlds he's reading that he talks about characters like they're friends of ours. "I can't believe what Katniss just did," he said. "Oh, is that a girl in your class?" I asked innocently. "No, mom, Katniss is a character in The Hunger Games." Well, if he was going to be friends with all of these people, I had to meet them myself.

Because his enthusiasm (or insanity) is so infectious, I started reading everything Santino read. I also had to read it to relieve his frustration. This started with The Lightning Thief. Santino desperately wanted to talk about the book but didn't want to spoil it for me, especially when he started to read the four sequels in the series.

Oh, it's been a good ride, especially since my students have gotten into some of these same books. When I read Twilight, I had nobody with whom to share my ideas on the book. Having read so many well-written vampire books by Anne Rice, Twilight was a huge disappointment. I was grateful when one of my students, Josie, started reading it.

As an English learner, Josie really struggles with speaking the language. Nevertheless, she loves to read big, thick books that immerse you into a world for hundreds of pages. As she read Twilight I would ask her constantly what she thought. Her response was consistent: "I don't like it." I would nod in agreement--but why? "I don't like Bella," she said. Wow, I couldn't have agreed with her more, and we discussed Bella's character at length.

Finally I could share my ideas with someone else. Still, I wanted to compare it to the Anne Rice vampire characters. Couldn't do that, though. Anne Rice is clearly for grownups, so the Edward vs. LeStat discussion will just have to be tabled. I crave a good solid discussion about a book with an adult. A grown-up. Santino comes close, but he is still too young to read some books with adults as a target.

Now that the year has ended, I'm going to miss having those conversations with my students. I'm starting a book club with Santino and a couple of my friends on the staff of our school that are interested in sharing my young adult fiction addiction. But until our club is up and running, I'll just have to call myself a book club of one.

One Kind of Lockdown I Can Live With

Last year, my poor little school was under fire. At the crossroads of three gang territories and bubbling gang wars, we had regular lockdowns to ensure the safety of our kids. (See my previous post, "Lockdown City.")

This year has been a little bit quieter--no lockdowns during regular school hours, although many episodes occurred after school. I have been lucky to miss those after-school lockdowns. Typically they have been preceded by helicopters, in which case I run to my classroom, grab my stuff, and run out the gate so I don't get stuck at school for who-knows-how-long.

Now it's June with only two weeks left at school. I thought I had entirely escaped lockdowns this year. It was about 4:00, and I was cleaning out my room. My door was open because my air conditioning is broken--not fun on a hot summery day. I was vaguely listening to the clamor of kids outside when I heard the Voice of the Yard boom out, "Everybody IN! Everybody in NOW!"

Let me tell you about the Voice of the Yard. He's one of the instructors on campus running after school enrichment classes. I call him the Voice of the Yard, because no matter what's happening on the playground, he can boom his voice from one end of campus to the other with perfect clarity. He goes up to a volume of 11. So when he booms, kids listen.

When he yelled "Everybody in," I knew it had happened--a lockdown, more action in Highland Park. I thought I had dodged that bullet this year (figuratively AND literally), but no, two weeks before school ends and I'm here for another lockdown. It's like that veteran cop who's about to retire, and then on his last day on the job, he gets gunned down in a shoot-out.

I ran out my door and instinctively started to wave kids in. That's what I do, because my room is on the yard and one of the first places that kids run in an emergency. Anyway, kids started coming to my classroom, and then I saw what the threat was. It wasn't a gangster. It wasn't a thug. It was a huge swarm of bees. Bees!

As kids swarmed to my classroom, those bees slowly buzzed over the playground. Actually, there were two swarms. I've seen swarms before not far from here, but they were in the hills, in an area that is rustic and not urban at all. But to see this force of nature hovering over a concrete playground was just...so...weird.

Anyway, dozens of kids crammed into my messy (because I was cleaning) and sweltering (remember, no A/C) classroom. We kept the door open because, well, the bees weren't really doing much except making their way across our playground to some undisclosed home in somebody's house or tree. The bees knew what they were doing and they weren't very interested in us. In the meantime, jumpy kids watched from the windows and doors as nature's phenomenon passed by. It was really cool.

So we were in a lockdown. Oh, there weren't any long warning bells, we didn't lock the doors, and nobody was particularly worried. We just watched as the wonders of nature buzzed by. Now that's the kind of lockdown I like.

Lockdown City: For Whom the Bell Tolls

(a re-post from a note posted on Facebook on March 18, 2009)

I work in lockdown city.

Many of you probably don’t know what a lockdown is. Some of you have heard of it. Maybe a few of you have practiced one. But at my school, it has become a routine.

Imagine you are a second grader sitting during a math lesson. While you’re trying to figure out how many dimes are in a dollar, you hear a long bell ring. A really long bell. You listen for a moment—it’s not the end or recess or lunch. Your teacher walks to the door, locks it, and then glances out the window. The lesson continues, but your teacher seems a little distracted. You’re in a lockdown.

A lockdown is a procedure by which a school—or other facility—secures its premises for safety reasons. At my school, which is located in the middle of a bubbling gang war, usually it occurs when there has been a shooting nearby. When a situation calls for a lockdown, we corral every human being inside the buildings. We lock the doors, the windows, the gates, and our freedom.

You can’t leave the room to go to the bathroom—that stuff goes in a black bucket, and if you’re lucky, your classroom has a separate workroom where you can conduct that business in private. If you’re not so lucky, maybe you can fashion a little privacy using wooden racks and butcher paper. My little second graders have never complained about using the bucket. They're just grateful.

My kids don’t like lockdowns because they think the air gets stale inside the classroom. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure feels like it when you’re trapped and you don’t know when you’re going to get out. Also they worry a little. On Monday, one of my more vocal second graders was worried that someone was going to jump the fence and break down our door with a sledgehammer. Imagine what the shy kids were thinking.

If the lockdown starts right before lunch, then it’s really a challenge. Not only are the kids jumpy because they have a lot of energy or have to go to the bathroom, but also they’re hungry on top of that. If you’re looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, their most basic needs are completely shot.

Sometimes you know a lockdown is coming. You hear the helicopters. It’s like Radar O’Reilly saying, “Choppers” and then you know you’re going to be trapped for a while--but not inside an operating room like M*A*S*H. Instead you’re trapped in a classroom with little kids. Your job is to make them feel safe and secure, and keep them calm enough to learn how to read and do their times tables. And really, when there are gun-wavers outside on the street, the safest place to be is inside the classroom.

When the helicopters circle, you wonder when the bell is going to ring. If it’s lunch, or recess, you hurry to the bathroom. If you get trapped inside the classroom later, you never know when you’ll be able to go again. If the lockdown occurs when kids are on the yard, then you open your doors and pull them into your classroom—no matter how many, you take them in to the closest location.

In general I prefer the lockdowns that are preceded by the helicopters, rather than the long bell out of the blue. Why? Well, if you hear the helicopters first, that means that the incident occurred somewhere else, and the police are pursuing the suspects. But...if you just hear the lockdown bell without any warning, that means something has happened very close by. I'll take the helicopters.

One time I was in my classroom after school and I heard gunshots on the street. My classroom is right on the playground, so I opened my door to let kids in to safety. You know what? Not one kid came to my room. They were running--running for cover. They were running around the building out of the shooting range. You never know how those emergency procedures are going to work until you’re in the middle of an emergency.

During a lockdown, you carry on class, business as usual. Everything is okay. Finish the worksheet, read the story--whatever you were doing continues. It's not until you come to a transition where your routine breaks down. Recess time comes and passes. Maybe you miss lunch. When you miss part of your daily routine, then you know that things aren't okay after all. You stay calm, and if kids get nervous, you counter it with hugs and reason. Whatever works. My kids know that when it's dangerous out there, the safest place is in here.

For the record, I want you all to know I have an amazing school. While we teach in the trenches, the staff is amazing, the kids are sincere, and our attitudes are high. I love teaching there and I’m glad to help the kids during this crisis. I just wish it was a little safer for them. I can only imagine what life is like for them when they go home.

Drop Everything and Read

They have spoken. After an experiment in my class, where I allotted a substantial amount of time every day for sustained silent reading, my kids have given their opinions.

• I used to hate reading but now I don’t. I mean, coming to this class full of readers inspired me to read.

• This class changed my opinion of reading because it has so many interesting books, and my attitude toward reading is that I like books and I’m going to keep on reading until there’s no more books.

• Well before people tried to convince me to read but I said no. But you have convinced me because you show that you read a lot. Thanks to Richard and Manny, they have persuaded me to read.

I’ve mentioned before that my son’s sixth grade teacher gave me a new attitude toward teaching reading. An avid reader herself, she used her love for books, plus strategies from The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller, to create life-long readers in her students.

Late in the school year I adopted some of her strategies. I gave my kids plenty of “D.E.A.R.” time every day. That’s an acronym for Drop Everything And Read. We spent at least a half hour a day reading in silence—sometimes 45 minutes, and toward the end of the year, an hour.

During DEAR time, I conducted two main activities: conferencing with students, and reading my own books. Our best times were when I read along with them. For some reason, it brought an already quiet class to a silent class. How can I teach my kids the value of reading if I don’t respect that time myself? DEAR time gave me an opportunity to read more of the books that they’re interested in.

Anyway, they loved it when I would chuckle at a funny part or gasp at a shocking part. They would always ask, “What happened?” And I would fill them in without giving away the plot. Invariably any book I was reading during DEAR time became one of the most popular books in our classroom library.

My other activity during DEAR time was one-on-one conferences with my students. We would discuss their reading goals, what books they wanted to read, what they were having difficulty with, and what their successes were. Our school uses an online reading quiz program called Accelerated Reader that tests students on reading comprehension. During our conferences, we would assess their progress toward their Accelerated Reader goals and revise their strategies to meet those goals. The Accelerated Reader quiz reports gave us a data-driven springboard for conferencing.

One of the most significant factors in developing an enthusiastic reading crowd was giving my students book-talk time and a chance to give oral book reviews. They discussed what books they liked and what they wanted to add to our library. With every wish list came a new box of books, infusing their enthusiasm with a shot of energy. It started with the day that the Magic Treehouse books arrived—everyone read them. The next month, a box of Goosebumps books came—and then everyone was reading Goosebumps. And with the coming of Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid—my students were hooked for life. Their enthusiasm and desire to read was validated by my effort to get the books they wanted into our classroom.

Last week, I gave them an end-of-year questionnaire asking them to evaluate our reading program. The response was overwhelming. Kids who didn't like to read became readers. Kids who already liked to read were grateful for the focus on their favorite activity. We learned that when you drop everything and read, the classroom becomes quiet, and the kids care about what they're doing. And here is one final opinion from my student Peter, who I mentioned in a previous post:

• Reading is fun. Last year I didn’t like reading. Now I love to read.

Are You Done Yet?

If you love to read, there’s nothing better than sharing a book. Love for a particular book spreads like a virus in my classroom. When one kid loves a book, everyone else wants to read it. This year, I learned how to use the reading virus to inspire my latent readers.

Let’s look at the case of Peter (not his real name). Peter was an under-achiever and a shy, lackluster kind of kid. I wasn’t surprised that he was in the gifted program, but I was surprised when I found out his third grade test scores were below proficient.

I talked to Peter's mother early in the school year. She was concerned because during third grade, he had lost his desire to read. Indeed, as we came to the end of our first reading session, he had not met his reading goals and had only read a few short books.

Desperate, I said to Peter, “Tell me what you like to read, and I’ll get it for you.” He shrugged--funny, he always shrugged at everything. I started calling out book titles. Harry Potter? No. Lemony Snicket? No. How about Encyclopedia Brown. Shrug. Aha! A shrug means maybe. He read the two Encyclopedia Brown books in my library and then asked for more—sadly, I had none.

So, I wrote a grant for a box of books, many of them Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, A-Z Mysteries, and Goosebumps. Peter read about four of them, and then he gave up again. What could I do?

Then I figured it out when I was reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Peter kept asking “Are you done with that yet?” Annoyed by his nagging, I finished the book and gave it to him—Here, have it! But then I realized the trick. Peter just wanted to read what I was reading. I needed to sell him on each book.

The Schwa Was Here. I read it during our silent reading time—often chuckling at the funny parts. Someone would invariably say, “What’s happening now?” I wouldn’t tell them, just give them sketchy plot lines. Every day I read this book, Peter would ask me, “Are you done with that yet?” I promised him I would finish it over the weekend and kept my promise. He read it in a few short days.

It happened again with Schooled. “Done with that?” he would ask me daily. Finally on a Friday, I promised him I’d finish it over the weekend. Giving it to him on Monday, he was done by Thursday.

Finally, I had found a way to hook Peter on reading. But more importantly, my kids took up the same philosophy. We had sign-up sheets for the popular books, and kids would promise to finish books over the weekend so the next kid on the list could start reading it on Monday.

This has evolved into the way we read everything. We share our books, make recommendations, sign up for the next one. The kids are excited. They know they’re a part of something big—they are a part of a literary world where the biggest commodities are great characters and great stories. I can hardly wait for the next kid to say, “Are you done with that yet?”

Client Meetings

Do you work in the corporate world? Imagine working in a firm like this:

Every day you have six hours of client meetings. You only get paid for those six hours. You spend the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow’s meetings.

You hold your client meetings with 30 clients in the same room. Each client has different abilities and different needs. However, each client is also required to achieve the exact same goals. In the span of 180 days, your clients must master over 120 goals.

Twice a year you have a week of meetings with 30 different corporate executives. You give each executive a status report on the client they have signed with the firm and whether they have achieved their goals. The basis of your success depends on the activities and cooperation of your clients, who do not always follow your recommendations.  The hours you spend meeting with these corporate executives are not billable--it's all off the clock.

When your clients don’t follow your recommendations and their portfolio underperforms, everyone blames you. Corporate blames you. The CEO blames you. And everyone in the country blames you, even though they have never met you or your client.

You may only go to the bathroom at 10:00 am and 12:30 pm.

If you need to miss work because you’re sick or have an urgent personal need, your client meeting with your 30 clients still goes on without you. You have to prepare detailed notes for the person who is handling your meeting. They must get your notes before the meeting begins at 8:00 am.

Instead of generating financial revenue, you are generating intellectual revenue. Your success determines the ability of the voting public to make rational and informed decisions.

The workplace I am describing is a school, and the job is a teacher. Your clients are the kids you teach, and the corporate executives who signed them with the firm are their parents.

I am always amazed at corporate people who are critical of teachers.

You see, for two years I worked in a high profile accounting firm. The corporate division measured success by acquisition of clients and billable hours. Every year they determined your compensation based on your worth to the company, i.e. the bottom line. How many clients did you bring in, and how many hours did you bill?

In our personal tax division with approximately 30 employees, the managers and assistants worked quietly in their cubicles attending to the needs of their clients and the firm at large. I remember whenever a manager had to prepare for a client meeting. They would be very focused and stressed for a couple of weeks, and working overtime. On the day of the meeting they would come prepared with their best business suits, handouts, and PowerPoint presentations. After the client meeting, they would breathe a sigh of relief that they could return to their “normal” work activities.

People of the corporate world, I walked a couple of miles in your shoes. Now it’s your turn to walk in ours. You know those stressful client meetings you had a few times a year? Imagine doing that every day you’re on the job. That’s what it’s like being a teacher.

You spend six hours of the day engaging and instructing your clients—who happen to be 30 ten-year-olds. They don't necessarily want to be there, and you must create a tool kit of tricks to maintain order in your boardroom (ahem, classroom).  Even though you give them recommendations for improvement, they don't always act on it. Sometimes they need bribes or coersion.

After six hours of these meetings, you spend 3-4 hours prepping for your next “client” meeting the next day. Go to bed, wake up, back to those same clients. Are you tired yet?

I guess the reason I’m ranting on this is because teaching is a high profile profession, always in the news, and something about which everyone has an opinion. People think they know what it’s like to be a teacher because they’ve been in school, or they have children in school. Well—just because you’ve been to a doctor, does that make you qualified to assess the medical profession?

“Fire the bad teachers,” some people say. Others remark, “Let’s give them merit pay and that will improve education.” To all of you I say, go ahead! Take my job! Spend six hours with 30 ten-year-olds and see what you can do. Oh—by the way, three of them have a parent or other close relative in jail, so they might be a little distracted. One of them is getting abused at home—I hope you can identify the kid with that problem. Oh yeah—four of them are pulled out every day for 45 minutes for targeted special education services, so don’t forget to get them up to speed on what they missed while they were gone. Three in your class have family members in a gang and are chock full of attitude. Twelve of them speak only Spanish at home, and parents of nine of those kids aren’t even literate in Spanish. Three of your kids are gifted, so that means they need to be meaningfully engaged while you’re trying to bring the rest of the class up to grade level standards.

And while this is going on, accountability, accountability, accountability. Our yearly test scores are made public on websites and are treated as the only evidence of our success. And then the finger-pointing starts, along with threats to the profession.

I’d like to rant some more, but it’s a school night and I have to prepare for my client meetings tomorrow.