Interest Inventory

 I wish I could fly....*

"Interest Inventory" is not a clever title--it's just a handout I give out to my kids on the first day of school.

In the interest inventory, kids answer questions like:

What is your favorite food?  Movie?  Book?  Fictional character?   What do you like to do at home or in your free time?  Who lives with you at home?  What do you like the most about school?  The least?

Some kids have trouble filling out the inventory.  "I don't have a favorite song," complained George.  "Then just pick one song that you like," I responded.  And Michelle had a different kind of problem.  "I live in two houses.  One has my dad, and the other has my mom," she confessed.  "Then just write down the people you live with at both houses."  She was satisfied with that solution.

For the most part, though, the kids enjoy filling out information about themselves.  On this test, the only right answers are their own opinions.

My two favorite questions are:  (1) What do you like least about school, and (2) If you had one wish, what would it be.

Go ahead and guess what most kids like the least about school.  That's right, it's homework.  And I have to agree with them--but I covered that in an earlier post.  Other answers about what they like the least included:  mean teachers, bathrooms, the food, the chairs (too hard), and (gasp) reading.

Sadly, there isn't much I can do about the bathrooms, the food, and the hard chairs.  But I can work on not being too mean this year.  And oh my gosh--those kids who don't like reading are in for a real surprise, because my special project this year will be to get them to love reading.

But my favorite question is: If you had one wish, what would it be?  Okay, a number of kids said they wanted a million dollars.  And one clever kid wished for infinity wishes.

My kids' wishes really reveals their heart and imagination:

• own a restaurant
• have a larger house
• a smart robot that flies
• be on a baseball team
• move things without touching them
• be a super hero (four kids wished for this)
• get their pet back (three kids)
• world peace

Now that I have their voices rolling around my head, I know where to go.  Give these kids a chance to act on their wishes.  They will blog about what they want to do to make their world better.

Sounds like this is going to be an interesting year....

* Superacorn, a Tanguy Desailly's Super Hero - European Free Artistic Licence by Hubert Lombard, Jan. 2007

Listen to Your Inner Child--Or Just the One Standing in Front of You

I was trying to figure out what items to request on a DonorsChoose proposal.  DonorsChoose.org is a website where teachers and donors meet in order to facilitate educational materials getting into classrooms where they are needed.  Teachers ask; donors listen.

Recently, because of a generous donation by the Claire Giannini Foundation to all California projects,  I had numerous proposals funded.  The items coming to my classroom include a class set of The Adventures of Captain Underpants (so we can read fun chapter books), a MacBook (to make our own movies about superheroes), and a class set of flash drives (so we can transport our movies between computers).

With a few proposal slots open and about, oh, a zillion ideas in my head, I turned to Santino for his expert kid advice.  Bean bag chairs, class sets of Percy Jackson, netbooks, a new printer/scanner--I had lots of ideas, many of them coming from Santino in the first place.  So I posed the question to him--what should I ask for?

"Mom, you gotta get laptops.  Imagine every kid having a laptop at school!"

He didn't pause for a breath, he didn't think it over--it was obvious to him.  And it made me wonder--why aren't we asking kids what they need in school?

I asked Santino for more advice.  "Bean bag chair, couch, or both?"  Again, he knew immediately.  "Both," he said, "because kids are happier when they have options."  Kids are happier when they have options.  Simple but profound.

I'm not claiming that kids really understand the world of pedagogy or the academic side of education.   But I do think they are self-aware.  They know what gets them excited about school.  It could be a beanbag chair, a laptop, or smelly markers--whatever it takes, they know what it is.  And when kids get excited about school, they stay focussed longer, try harder, and have a better attitude.  

So listen to that kid standing right in front of you.  You might get something out of it.

Trust Chaos

"Can we read?" asked Mike.  He looked hopeful.

I bit my lip.  It's the second day of school and I still don't have my library set up--so the kids don't have books yet.  A half dozen boxes of books sit in front of my library shelves.  Why?  I can't decide how to organize them.  Do I organize them by genre?  By reading level?  By shape?

When Mike asked if they could read today, I had to reconsider my plans to organize.  What was I waiting for?  In my desire to have the perfect start to the school year, I failed to open the most important part--our library.

"Hey, kids,"  I said, "do you want to sort the books?"

Cheers all around.  "Great--how do you want to sort them?" I asked.  "By reading level or by genre?"  I jumped on the opportunity to teach the word genre and gave them some of the categories.   Carla raised her hand.  "I think we should sort them by level.  If we do it by genre, it would take a long time for us to figure out what kind of books they are.  And we want to read now!"

It's hard to argue with that.  I handed armfuls of books to all the kids, and they brought them to the tables for the sorting.  Have you ever been to smorgasbord?  That's how our classroom looked.  Kids were feasting on a variety of books--scary stories, fantasies, biographies, mysteries.  There was something for everybody.

Eventually every student had picked a book to read, and they even sorted most of the books into bins.  All my kids walked home today with a book in hand, and that's the way it should be the first week of school.

I overcame my compulsive desire for order.  It's time to trust chaos.  And sometimes when you trust chaos, you end up with a book in your pocket and a story in your heart.

New Beginnings

Today is the first day of school.

There’s something magical about those words.  The first day of school.  Gosh, that’s five syllables.  I feel a haiku coming on:

The first day of school

New shoes, new clothes, and new friends

The end of summer

Last night, little Bella was so excited about her first day of second grade as she went to bed--she couldn’t contain herself.  She ran around the living room in her fluffy pink robe, rechecking her pencil box, showing off her Hello Kitty backpack, and chanting, “the first day of school, the first day of school.”  I couldn’t help but get caught up in her frenzy.

This morning, children are wondering—who is going to be my teacher? Is my best friend going to be in my class?  Will I meet any new kids?  What are we learning this year?

Believe me, teachers are doing the same thing.  Who will show up and who won’t return to school?  Will my kids work as a group? Will they learn—and retain—everything I taught them?

Oh, I’m going to miss waking up without an alarm clock.  Stacks of paper are going to start to dominate my living room.  And don’t forget that eternal state of exhaustion that hovers over your total state of being. But every September gives us a new beginning.

Every year you get a fresh start.  New teacher, new kids.  Last year you could have been the problem child—this year, who knows?  You get another chance to change your karma.  Same thing goes for teachers, as you have spent the summer thinking about the past year and make plans for retooling.

Yeah, it’s the end of summer, but it’s the beginning of possibilities.  

Character Counts

Right now I'm reading Dracula by Bram Stoker.  I checked this book out of the library because it's on so many must-read lists.  I've read everything by Anne Rice, and I made it (barely) to the end of Twilight--how could I have missed the granddaddy of them all, the Count?

I'm only halfway through, but now I know why you must read this book--it's absolutely brilliant.  Stoker brings out the narrative using numerous points of view and through various forms of documentation.  At one moment you are reading a diary entry from solicitor Jonathan Harker, and the next you're spying on the captain's log of the cargo ship Demeter.

It made me think about teaching point of view in the classroom.  You can talk about character motivation until you're blue in the face, but it won't mean anything if the kids don't experience and play with the concept of motivation firsthand.  The best way to do this is through theater.

To scaffold the concept, start with something easy.  In pairs, give each kid a different motivation--it's best if the character goals have nothing to do with each other.  For example,

Kid 1:  a child trying to convince a parent to get a puppy
Kid 2:  a parent trying to fix a leaky sink

Remind the kids to focus on two things:  What do you want?  How are you going to get it?  That's your motivation.

Once they've had a little experience with this, put them in small groups and have them act in a setting like the zoo or a department store.  The students must agree on and pick different roles in the setting.  Then each student decides privately what their motivation is.  And the acting begins.

Bring it a step further, having them act out the motivations of characters in a story you have just read.  You can have them start by brainstorming on graphic organizers the motivations of different characters.

And finally, try a story that they haven't read yet.  Which brings me back to Dracula.  The reading level of Dracula is way beyond the ability of my fourth graders, but I'd like them to experience the story in a deeper way than the comic books offer.  So, I'm assigning them characters and character motivations.  I haven't finished the book yet, so these are portrayals I just made on the fly--I'm sure I'll get a deeper understanding as I work through the book.

What's my motivation?

Count Dracula:  You want to fill the world with vampires.
Jonathan Harker: You want to escape the castle Dracula and return home to your fiance, Mina.
Mina Murray: You want to create a perfect household and support your fiance, Jonathan.
Van Helsing: You want to protect people from vampires.
John Seward:  You want to understand and treat psychosis.
Lucy Westenra: You want to party and get the attention of potential husbands.

Put them in one big room and see what happens!  How fun is this?  Try it!  The opportunities are endless as kids explore the ideas of character, motivation, and point of view.  It will increase their reading comprehension, improve their creative writing, and help them become a more empathic person.  It's a win-win-win situation.

So, when you're playing a character like the Count, remember that character counts.

Bouncing Baby Book

Whew!  All that talk about testing, and you'd think that's the only important thing in education.  Let me get back to the spirit of Electric Child.  It's time to talk about Mockingjay.

Mockingjay is the third book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.  Santino introduced me to Hunger Games last year via recommendation by his teacher.  "Mom, you've GOT to read this," he said.  A real page-turner, it is a dystopian vision of a post-apocalyptic United States.  The controlling central government asserts its power over the twelve districts of "Panem," formerly the U.S., by sending teenage representatives from each district to an arena fight to the death.  I couldn't believe my kid was reading this stuff!

Like everything else coming from Santino's teacher, though, this book was compelling.  We quickly read the second installment of the series, Catching Fire, some time in March.  And after that?  The long wait for the third book to come out.

I don't know what's happening in the publishing industry, but it seems that nobody writes a simple, single book any more.  So many books come series, in threes, or fours or fives.  Each individual book has an ending, sure, but the arc of the whole story isn't played out in the first 300 or 400 pages.  Most of my experience is with young adult fiction, but immediately several series come to mind, including "Midnighters"  (three books), "Uglies" (three books), "Twilight" (four books), and of course, Harry Potter (seven books).  The Hunger Games series was no exception.

As we finished the second act (that is, book) of the story, we were left with two cliffhangers.  First--would our hero, Katniss Everdeen, succeed in leading a revolution to overthrow the central government?  And second---who would end up as Katniss' soulmate?  Her longtime archery chum Gale, or her loving partner in the Hunger Games, Peeta?

These are high stakes, and we had to wait until August 24 for the last book to come out.  Santino was upset because he had soccer camp that day.  I know he would've been very happy for me to say, hey, don't go to camp--let's sit all day and read instead!   But, he went to camp, and I bought the book, including two additional copies for my book club friends at school.  When I picked Santino up from camp, he climbed into the car and started reading immediately.

At home, Santino plunked himself down on the couch, and I sidled up on the love seat.  He read Mockingjay, and I read Specials--yet another third book in a trilogy about a post-apocalyptic dystopia.  After four chapters, Santino growled.  "Arrghh!!! Mom, I have to talk to you about this.  Could you read it?"  So I read four chapters so we could talk.  Then he had the great idea--we would each read a few chapters tag-team style so we could discuss the book as we went along.

Once more, he plopped onto the couch and continued reading--he changed his mind about tag-team because he didn't want to give up the book to me.  It was getting late, though, and some time past 11 pm he still had about 100 pages to go.  "I don't want to go to soccer camp!"  he whined.  I told him that while he was at camp, it would give me a chance to catch up with him.

The next day, I read to the exact page where he was in the book.   Back from camp, he focussed again on the couch, book in hand and puppies at his feet.  That last 100 pages were excruciating.  "Oh, not HIM!"  he cried.  At another point, "Mom, you're going to HATE this!"  And finally, "Yes, YES, I knew she would do it!"

The final page read, he shut the book with a loud thump and woke up the puppies.  It was my turn, and the book didn't disappoint me.  No spoilers here--but I can tell you I know whether the rebels succeed, and also which boy Katniss chose in the end.

After plunging yourself into a world that spans over 1,000 pages, it's always a disappointment when you've come to the end.  We certainly felt that sense of loss at the seventh installment of Harry Potter.  You get to know those characters, and that world, and it's almost like a death in the family.

But how wonderful is it to celebrate the birth of a book.  The anticipation of the release of Mockingjay captured our imaginations for months.  We tooted our horns on August 24--today is the day!  And as we saw the world play out, a surprise in the end, we left with a sense of happy melancholy.

And now Santino and I are asking ourselves--What's the next great book?

Parent Education and Test Success - It Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

Okay, I'm still thinking about testing.

I've been crunching numbers lately.  My focus group was three elementary schools in my local district. The statistics come from my school district's website and are available for everyone to see.

One interesting stat is parent level of education.   Using stats developed by the California Department of Education, I pulled up information on these three schools that happen to be within about a 3 mile radius of each other.  One of those is my school, the school where I teach.  Here are the stats:

Parent Education Levels

Source:  California Dept of Education -- Assessment, Accountability and Awards Division

2009 Academic Performance Index (API) Report

My School                     percent

Not a high school graduate    31

High school graduate            41

Some college                       16

College graduate                    7

Graduate school                    4

My School's 2009 API: 754
My School is located in an immigrant and working class neighborhood with a gang population of >3,000.

Nearby School #1           percent

Not a high school graduate     9

High school graduate            19

Some college                       30

College graduate                  27

Graduate school                   16

Nearby School #1's 2009 API:  845
Nearby School #1 is gifted magnet school located within 2 miles of My School.

Nearby School #2               percent

Not a high school graduate      3

High school graduate              7

Some college                       27

College graduate                  35

Graduate School                   28

Nearby School #2's 2009 API:  898
Nearby School #2 is a School for Accelerated Studies (attracts gifted students) and is located in a secluded neighborhood within 2 miles of My School.

The "API" of a school is a numeric valuation based on the performance of students on a standards-based test given once a year.  The goal is for all schools to have an API of 800 or greater.  My school--in a working class and immigrant neighborhood--has been inching up toward 800 slowly but surely.  "Nearby School #1" is a magnet school for gifted kids.  "Nearby School #2" happens to be my son's old elementary school.  If you add up the percentages of each school, they come to over 100%, but I assume this is because of how they rounded the decimals.  So, my numbers below may be off by a percentage or two, but you'll get the idea.

Just to take a quick look at the stats, note that 72% of parents in the survey at My School never went to college.  Compare this with 28% at Nearby School #1 and only 10% at Nearby School #2 who had no college experience. 

Do you see that--as parent education level goes up, the API goes up?  

Oh--and look at Nearby School #2 with the meteoric API of 898--90% have been to college, 63% are college grads, and a whopping 28% of the parents went to grad school.  Amazing.  

I really don't want to club you over the head with a baseball bat on this one, so I'll leave you to your own designs.  Look at the numbers, check other schools, and see if you can find a similar correlation.  Bon apetit!