We were granted another snow day today. Naturally, when I woke up I reached over to the nightstand and picked up a book. I figure a snow day is a perfect excuse to finish of a good book. Today’s selection was Invitations to the Worldby Richard Peck. Which is a book that has been taking up space on my nightstand for way too long. It feels good to finally be finished with it, but I am tempted to go back and reread it from the beginning. Here are a few passages that I marked as I was reading. I’m sure there are many more that are worthy of mentioning, but these are the ones I marked.
Children whose lives were already disfigured by poverty, wealth, or some other affliction saw school as a clean, well-lighted place with teachers empowered byt the system and kind of droning routine the young demand. For some of us the standards of school were a clear echo of the values of home. For others school offered the only safe haven. Above its portals were invisibly carved the unspoken motto: FORGET WHERE YOU CAME FROM, ENTER HERE AND LEARN.
This made me think. I have mixed feelings about this motto. Part of me wants to say that it isn’t fair for us to expect our students to enter school and leave themselves behind by forgetting where they came from, but another part of me agrees with this motto. I have been saying for years that teachers need to stop judging students and categorizing them based on where they come from. I have to think if school was a place were we expected all students to succeed instead of assuming that some won’t, we would accomplish more. I guess I would like to change this motto. Instead of posting it on the portal of the school, I’d like to post it above the door from the teachers’ lounge: FORGET WHERE THEY CAME FROM, ENTER HERE AND TEACH.
…the basis of all real learning is fear. Fear of the consequences of not learning, ….
I can’t help thinking of a former student when I read this. She once told me that nothing we did mattered because when she grew up she was going to be just like her mom. When I asked what her mom did, she responded by telling me that her mom didn’t do anything but sit around and watch TV all day and that was exactly what she was going to do when she grew up. When that is the future you imagine for yourself, what is there to learn?
For me, writing a novel is like making a quilt. You gather bright scraps from other people’s lives, and then you stitch them together in a pattern of your own.
This reminds me of Margrethe who is both a writer and a quilter.
…they have to be imperfect enough for improvement and willing to stand up for who they are. They have to take one step nearer maturity in an age when maturing itself has become an elective, and they must show readers the way, give them the word. … We need no novels about how to fit in. Popularity and acceptance cost too much now.
when maturing itself has become an electiveThis really stands out to me. Has maturing become an elective in our society? It only takes one night of TV viewing to realize that it has.
Those of us who were teachers don’t believe much in phases. It’s parents who can explain away their children’s behavior as phases they’re going through. Teachers are less sure. Teachers have evidence that people don’t grow up till they have to. There are people still going through puberty in senior year. A system of school that issues diplomas to people who can’t read them retards their development further, and they look elsewhere for status and identity.
There are people well along in adult life who still believe that being in the right place with the right people will mask their personal inadequacies. Long after graduation there are people voting in a bloc, counting on club membership, trying to live in the smallest world possible. In adult life there are still people searching for scapegoats and finding them.
People don’t grow up until they have to. It makes me wonder what is going to have to happen in our world for people to realize that they have to grow up.
We write for a generation who have needed language less to get what they want from adults, who in their dealings with one another have reason to suspect that the pen is no longer mightier than the sword.
We cannot make adolescent readers out of adolescent illiterates. If you have been coming to school for seven years without having to read, you’ve whipped the system and are lost to us all.
Is it possible for a student to go 7 years without reading? I say, “yes and no.” If reading is the ability to recognize words on paper and call them out, the answer is no. If reading is the ability to recognize words on paper, call them out, and think about what they are saying to you the answer is yes. When students are sitting in classrooms where a study guide is given and memorized for the test, they aren’t really reading and thinking. When all reading is done as a class and the teacher tells the class what they should think, they aren’t really reading and thinking.
Like teaching, writing is something less than a profession, but more than a job. When you aren’t teaching, you’re thinking about teaching. When you’re not writing, you’re thinking about writing.
Happily, American books for the young greeted a new century with a whole spectrum of worthy offerings, from picture books to coming of age novels. …. These page-turners powerfully documented the foreign country adolescence has become in three decades of self rule.
“Words are the only thing which last forever,” Winston Churchill once said. Somehow that truth seems truer now, here in the gray dawn of uncertain new century. Books prepare the literate for change.
Posted by aredden
A few weeks ago I ended up at an auction with my in-laws. I saw this china cabinet lined up with several others very similar to it. I thought, “That would make a great bookcase.” I pulled out my cell phone and called Bill to see if he minded me bidding on it. He didn’t mind, and a few hours later I was the proud owner of not only the china cabinet, but also a writing desk, and oak sidetable and a kitchen hutch. The china cabinet made its way into the room we call “the front room” and became the perfect home for many of my favorite books. I love having those books conveniently in the same place. When I need some motivation, I know exactly where to go and don’t have to dig too far. Today I went to that cabinet and pulled out a Jack Gantos book. It has been almost two years since I met Jack Gantos at the NCTE conference in Pittsburgh. His book, Hole In My Life had meant so much to me that as soon as I tried to speak to him, tears poured out of my eyes. I’ll never forget how kind he was and the gentle softness of his hands as he grasped mine and told me it was okay for me to cry. So, for today’s motivation, I turned to the worn out post-it notes in my autographed copy of this book. He signed “For Angela–’Books filled the Hole’ Jack Gantos. I would encourage anyone who has a hole in their life to find the books that will fill that hole for them. 
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