Two Million Reasons to Celebrate

"Richard, you're going to the principal's office."

Richard looked up at me, a little surprised. He wasn't the kind of kid who got sent to the office, and I wasn't the kind of teacher who sent kids. He smiled--he knew I was up to something. He was right.

He brought a note to the principal saying, "Dear Dr. P. I am very proud of Richard because he has just reached the goal of reading two million words this year. He has inspired my class to read and we are lucky to have him!"

Our principal, Dr. P., never misses an opportunity to capitalize on the moment. He searched for a book in his office and found a fantasy story with the main character sharing Richard's name. He wrote a note of congratulations to Richard on the inside cover and gave it to him. When Richard came back to class, kids crowded around reading the inscription like it came from Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber.

Fourth graders in California are supposed to read a half million words. Our computerized reading program counts the words that students read if they pass a reading comprehension test on that book. Richard passed that goal long before winter break in December.

After that, Richard made the one million goal, and quickly he came close to two million. He was about 40,000 words away when he started reading "New Moon" from the Twilight series--over 100,000 words, and it would certainly push him past 2 million. We all held our breath as he took the test online. He would need to pass at 60% in order to get credit for the book--but his average is over 90% so the odds are good. Drumroll as he finished...the results came in...and voila! He made it. All the kids cheered.

Two million words is nothing to sneeze at. That's like reading all seven books of the Harry Potter series--twice. The Twilight series--three times. War and Peace---four times. Ulysses--8 times. The Sun Also Rises--29 times. Hamlet --- 62 times.

But Richard didn't read the same book twice. He read over 100 different books. Looking at the list is like reading the menu at Jerry's Deli--a diverse group of lexical delicacies. The Sea of Monsters, Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ricky Ricotta, Goosebumps--the list is endless.

My whole class celebrated Richard's achievement. None of them are even close to two million words (I do have one other student near one million, though). But when Richard calls out, "Can we have reading time?" my class holds their collective breath, hoping, hoping, hoping.

Of course you can have reading time. How else can you get to two million?

Thanks for a great achievement, Richard. I know you'll go far.

Alien Invaders

When Vaughn said he was going to produce another movie, of course I stepped up to the plate. Who wouldn't? His stories are fun, his vision is unique, and his enthusiasm is infectious. I've been watching him perfecting his craft for the last 10+ years, so I knew it would be a winner. "Tell me what you need," I said.

What did he need? My house. A location. Pack-rat by nature, I shuddered at the thought of having people invade my house and move my stuff around. But hey, anything for Vaughn.

I had three weeks off for winter break, so at least I had time to clear out my living room. Also in my plans for vacation were to paint a mural of Rivendell from Lord of the Rings on Santino's bedroom wall. I mentioned it to Vaughn and Rob but also that it might not be finished. Rob said, whatever you can do will be great.

So away went my clutter, and up went the mural. Big huge crates housed my extra stuff, and I crammed that into my garage and also my bedroom, which would act as my "untouchable" room; that is, a room where they wouldn't be filming so I was going to leave it in its messy state. We painted the mural--a bit unfinished but was complete enough to create a look for the film.

For the day of filming, I kenneled my dogs for the day and trapped my cats in my bedroom (one of my cats was an actor in one of the scenes so I wanted him on hand). I parked my car strategically and blocked off an area in front of my house with trash cans so Rob's truck would fit. Pia called me when they were pulling up at 9 am-ish, so I removed the trash cans and re-parked the car. I felt like I was on the spy crew of Mission: Impossible.

Then came the transformation. When Rob/Neil/Vaughn had checked out my house in late November, I had very little vegetation in my front yard. But on this day in January, my fertile land had sprouted with foot-tall grasses. I told Rob--hey, let me cut that down for you. He reassured me--we're professionals, we'll take care of it. But you know, I wanted to pitch in, so I quickly cut down the green just enough for them to cover it up.

They unloaded the truck. Bags of landscaping rocks, potted plants, shovels, it kept on coming. And wow what a job they did--first they laid down black tarp, planted desert plants, put landscaping rocks on top. It looked great. Rob said they would remove everything before they left but I really wanted to keep it--it looked amazing and was what I wanted to do with my yard anyway.

Eventually Rob ran out of landscaping rocks, so I made a run to Home Depot to get more bags, the Mission: Impossible theme running through my head the whole time.

I had said to Rob and Pia--take what you need from the garage, and boy did they take me seriously! When I came back from Home Depot, my living room was transformed with wall hangings, boxes and bulky items removed from my garage for dressing the set, you name it. They found stuff I hadn't seen in years. I have no idea where they found that giant pink Care Bear. Rob and Pia reassured me--don't worry, we'll put everything back as we found it. I believed them--and yet, where did they find all that stuff anyway?

Neil and Vaughn arrived, and then came some of our little glitches. There was no monitor. I offered my t.v. as long as they plugged it all back in (because you know our lives would end without cable access). We used a dead t.v. from my garage to replace the monitor to dress the set. Then they needed some kind of cable--I had that too.

That day I made something like seven trips to get food, pick up Santino, pick up the dogs--I was constantly in and out. On my last trip, when I came back they had already broken the set and returned most of my things to the garage. Despite Rob's assurances that they would clean up absolutely everything, I wanted to help a little, so I put a crate into my room.

Sweeping things up, returning boxes to the garage, and then the place was cleared, just as they found it. As Rob made his last review of things in the living room, he counted the crates we had there in the morning. "Seven," he said, "we're supposed to have seven crates and I only count six." That seventh crate was the one I had put in my bedroom. Man oh man, he wasn't kidding when he said they were professionals.

Everyone left, like the end of a huge party. The truck pulled away, and I plopped onto my couch and turned on my fully functioning t.v. in a state of exhaustion. The only difference between this and a party, though, was that there weren't puddles of beer and half-full soda cans laying around, and we get a movie out of it too.

Anyway, Vaughn and the crew didn't leave my house the way they found it. They left it BETTER than how they found it--spotless floor and careful landscaping. All this for a little film about an alien.

Book Junkies

Santino is a book junkie.

I never thought it would happen. When he was in third grade, he hated to read. Oh, he read a lot--mostly monster manuals for his Dungeons and Dragons games, and anything in general that would make him a better gamer.

What he didn't want to read was fiction. I would recommend to him some of my favorites--Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl. These were smart books for smart kids (and good reading for adults too), and I was sure he would get hooked on these stories just like I was. He didn't bite.

This was devastating for me, because I have a book addiction. I love to read books, buy books, write in books, carry them in my back pocket, sleep on them, drool on them, you name it. And like any junkie, you know that you can only rationalize your obsession by roping everyone else into your downward spiral. I was bummed because my mini-me did not share my addiction with me.

In fourth and fifth grade, Santino started to read a little more. In fact, he became a big fan of the "Redwall" series--high fantasy with talking animals. I bought him every Redwall book available--but for some reason he didn't read them. They just collected dust on his bookshelf and I wondered if I was duped into believing he got my book addiction gene.

Don't get me wrong about him--he's a fairly advanced reader for his age. He has a huge vocabulary, is a competent storyteller, and he can read most books at adult levels. He just didn't enjoy cuddling up with a good book. Wahhh.

Then something happened. He came home from his first day of sixth grade and said, I love my teacher! She's awesome, and she has the most amazing library!

I checked his temperature. I couldn't believe he was actually excited about a library. He went on about the "wall of books" in his classroom and said he was going to apply for the job of classroom librarian. He got the job, and now he knows the entire inventory of his teacher's library.

So, for the past seven months, Santino has been hooked on books. It started with Percy Jackson. "Mom, you've GOT to read this. It's like Harry Potter only with Greek mythology." Okay, so I read Percy Jackson, and he was right. It hooked me into an imaginative world full of magic and Greek gods. I bought the whole 5-book series and read it in a couple of weeks. Then I brought it to my classroom and got my 4th graders hooked on it. The movie came out months later, and boy was I glad they had read the book first.

His recommendations kept coming. House of the Scorpion. Schooled. The Schwa Was Here. Uglies. Pretties. The Hunger Games. I can't name them all, the list is so huge.

Santino's year-long reading assignment is to read 40 books from various genres. Now it was my turn. You need a mystery? How about Da Vinci Code? He loved it. How about Brother Cadfael? He was on the fence with that one, but he read the whole thing. Finally finally finally, I can talk to him about books.

His teacher is responsible for the disease he now has. She's a book pusher, and boy is she good. Her approach to reading is organic, and her bible is the Book Whisperer. Get excited about reading, and your students will get excited too. She devotes 30-60 minutes every day to silent reading in the classroom. She reads, too. It's brilliant. So many studies have shown that the more kids read, the better they do in school. And, I might add, in life.

So I have spawned, after all, a book junkie. Sometimes after school, we plop down on the couch and read for an hour or so, quietly with our cats and puppies cuddled up. He's in his world, and I'm in mine. But somehow, we are connected by our addiction. And I love it.

Paging Dr. House: Little Buddy Can't Do It Alone

I'm no great lover of homework.

As a teacher, I hate everything to do with homework---assigning it, collecting it, correcting it, enforcing its completion--you name it. Not until recently have I figured out how to make homework work effectively in my classroom.

But as a parent--homework is the bane of my existence. I'm not even exaggerating here. Santino despises homework.

During his worst year of homework, which was second grade, he would receive enormous homework packets on Friday to be completed by the following Friday. We received a calendar so students would pace themselves.

At least the homework load was predictable. One page was dedicated entirely to writing sentences for spelling words--twenty of them. Each sentence had to start with a different word. Try thinking of twenty sentences that don't all start with the word "the"--it's maddening. Another page was dedicated to synonyms and antonyms for vocabulary words. Another page for syllabication. Pages and pages of math, although Santino did that pretty quickly. It was a routine we grew accustomed to but never liked.

Now, the time spent doing homework that year wasn't just one hour of sit-at-the-table-and-do-it-quietly (nor was it the mere twenty minutes recommended for second graders). It was more like this: spend one hour crying about doing the homework. Ten minutes writing. Thirty minutes sulking. Fifteen minutes writing. Thirty minutes crying. Ten minutes writing. Ten minutes sulking. Twenty minutes writing. Santino spent more time complaining, sulking, and crying about homework than he spent doing the homework itself (which was substantial).

And it wasn't just us! Every second grade parent that year had the same problem. Kids were hysterical about the homework load, parents were distraught and exhausted--who needed that? A few parents challenged the teachers about the homework load, but nothing changed. These were extremely experienced and well-liked teachers. Everyone respected them. They were the Yoda of teachers. And I learned a lot from them as a colleague--how to team-teach, run independent work time, use project-based curriculum strategies--and also how NOT to assign homework.

I guess I wouldn't have had such a problem with the homework assignments if I felt that it was adding to Santino's learning curve, but it just wasn't. Smart kid, conscientious worker--the mountains of homework he had didn't make him a better student, smarter, or learn the standards. Just loads of busy-work, it was just making him hate school, and making us miserable at home until that golden moment when he finished the packet for the week.

Still, we were stuck. To get Santino to do his homework, I would put on episodes of Gilligan's Island. Every time someone said "Gilligan" on the show, Santino would have to do 5 minutes of homework. Now, if you remember watching Gilligan, somebody says his name about every two minutes in the show. So I figured if he watched two or three episodes, he'd get through his mountains of homework. It seemed to work.

He hasn't had homework overload like this in a few years, but tonight he had quite a bit of homework. "How was your day?" "Horrible," he said. I know that whenever Santino has a bad day at school, it means he has a lot of homework.

It happened that this day, his dad brought him a dvd from Netflix--House, Season 1. "Mom, I have an idea!" First time he smiled that day. "Let's watch House, and every time they make a diagnosis, we'll pause the dvd and I'll do five minutes of homework." Now, for those of you who have never seen the show "House," it's kind of like a crime show--finding the murderer--only the setting is a hospital and the detective is a medical diagnostician who is trying to figure out why his patient keeps exploding in pustules and spewing bloody phlegm. The diagnostic teams throw out guesses for the source of the illness about as often as Skipper hollers "Gilligan!"

Brilliant idea. "House" certainly isn't the lighthearted comedy of Gilligan's Island, but I'll take it. Santino finished his homework before Dr. House made the final diagnosis at the eleventh hour. No tears, no sulking, no pain. Which is more than can be said for Dr. House's patients, or Dr. House, for that matter.

So I would like to thank Gilligan and Greg House for helping Santino with his homework. I am still no great lover of homework, but with the help of these guys, we'll make it through the next six years of school. And maybe even learn how to make a radio out of coconut shells.