Finding Happiness

In Adriana Trigiani’s book Very Valentine the main character, Valentine, comes to realize that her fight to save her families shoe company is getting in the way of what brings her true joy–making shoes. She says, “The way I live from day to day in New York City suddenly seems ridiculous to me. I’ve mortgaged my happiness for a time that may never come. I love making shoes. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?”

I think about her words and compare it to my own life. I spent so many years thinking about leaving the classroom to become a reading coach, a college professor or something bigger. After three years of attempting to be a reading coach, I realize that maybe I too have mortgaged my happiness. I love teaching kids, and I love sharing ideas with teachers. I love collaborating with teachers. Why should I make it more complicated?

I am so thankful to be going back into the classroom where I can teach kids and collaborate with teachers.

Another Book I MUST Have!

The Fathers Are Coming Home by Margaret Wise Brown.

What Does the Future Hold?

“I hate to read.”

“I don’t read.”

“I can’t read.”

“I’ve never liked reading.”

“I’ve never been a very good reader.”

These are all statements I have heard this week.

Because I have always been a reader, I find it inconceivable that anyone could utter these words. I simply cannot wrap my mind around these thoughts. Even more mind-blowing to me is that I hear no shame or embarrassment in these mutterings, and they aren’t coming out of the mouths of students, but out of the mouths of teachers.

What does it say about our education system to have teachers saying things like this? These are teachers who went through the system, graduated from high school, graduated from college and many times have even gotten their Masters degree. How were they able to do this without reading? How can a person spend so many hours doing all the reading that is done in school without becoming a reader? What happens when people who view reading as a task to be tolerated and not enjoyed are trusted with the responsibility of teaching the next generation? I can’t help wondering if this isn’t the question Rodman Philbrick had in his mind when he wrote the novel The Last Book in the Universe, a dystopian novel that gives us an idea of what a future without books might look like. What is going to happen to our world if we continue to allow ourselves to hate reading? What is going to happen to our world if those who are responsible for teaching children don’t understand why reading is important?

I’m not a fan of this type of humor, but I can’t help wondering if this movie Idiocrosy might be a glimpse of that future.

Duncan to Principals: Release Your Inner Warrior!

Just read this article from EdWeek Duncan to Principals: Release Your Inner Warrior! and thought I would practice using the addthis feature to post it to my blog.

I thought it was an interesting article. I really like the comment by Pam Adamczyk.

The National Writing Project has an answer for all of our schools and it doesn’t cost a lot. Get every teacher to teach reading and writing in their subject areas. The basis for all learning is in reading and writing. There are so many fun and engaging ways to get kids to use writing and reading in any classroom. When we start getting kids to read and write (which is thinking) in ALL subject areas, there will be dramatic change in our schools and eventually our society since reading and writing and thinking kids become reading, writing, and thinking adults who will help pass on the importance and fun of reading and writing to their own children. Check out the studies. Check out NWP.

I would only add that in order to get teachers to teach reading and writing, they must become readers and writers.

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The Crazy Professor

I heard about The Crazy Professor at last month’s Middle Tennessee Literacy Coach’s meeting. I love this video. It is so cool that there are wonderful teachers in the world who are willing to share what their successes with the rest of us.

From the Nightstand

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.

From the Nightstand

Ahh. Three days off in a row. One for snow and two for sickness. It is stolen time. Time that was meant to be spent working is now available for other things– playing with kids, watching TV shows you never get to see, curling up with a good book, catching up on household chores. This morning I used some of that stolen time to read a book that has been waiting on my nightstand for months. Incantationby Alice Hoffman. I picked this book when shopping the book fair at one of my schools this past fall. I knew from reading other Alice Hoffman books that this book would make me think. I was not wrong. Even though I was able to read the book in a short amount of time, I think it will be with me, making me think, for many days to come.

Incantation is an enthralling story set in a time distant from our own, a time filled with betrayal, hatred, lies and secrets. Yet, in an interview with the author, Alice Hoffman says that she was led back to the Spanish Inquisition by her quest to understand our own world. She says that theirs was a world of concealed identities and fear. I can’t help but wonder if she sees this in our world too. Who are the people our society has forced into hiding?

In the story, Estrella learns of her family’s concealed identity and learns to embrace it even though there are grave consequences. In her words, “Some people say save yourself and save your life. I say Be yourself and you save your soul.”

I recommend this book for girls 14 and up. Even though Accelerated Reader lists it as a 5.o reading level, I think the Hoffman’s beautiful use of figurative language might be challenging for younger readers.

From the Nightstand

I have a few reads going on at the same time right now.

Everyone who teaches in a middle school or high school should read this book.

I am finding this very helpful.

I am enjoying this daily dose of leadership advice.

Another great piece of fiction by Chris Crutcher who wrote the second chapter of Adolescent Literacy, the first book on this list.

So, now you know why I haven’t been writing so much lately. I’m too busy reading. Well…. and going to hockey games, and falling asleep on the couch, and visiting with friends and family.

Room 105 Mystery Solvers

I’m excited! Today I met with a great 3rd grade teacher. Starting Monday, I will be joining her three days a week for literature circles. She has a box full of mysteries, a cool detective hat and a desire to, “Give kids the idea that the basal is not the only reading material in a bag of tricks.” and “Get them excited about reading a new genre…..even chapter books. ….for most kids they have never sat and read a chapter book of any kind independently….I would love to see everyone do that at their level!!” The kids are all set with the terms they need to know in order to discuss mysteries and little detective notebooks. Tomorrow they will be choosing the books they want to read. I’m going to learn so much from this experience. I can’t wait!

My Motivation Cabinet

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.

On page 8 he writes,

Someone once said anyone can be great under rosy circumstances, but the true test of character is measured by how well a person makes decisions during difficult times. I certainly believe this to be true. I made a lot of mistakes, and went to jail, but I wasn’t on the road to ruin like everybody said. While I was locked up, I pulled myself together and made some good decisions.

I figure if Jack Gantos could pull himself together and become the award winning author that he is, I should be able to pull myself together and accomplish something. You can too. Later in the book he talks about finding graffiti on the cinder block cell wall.

I found the best line scratched above the mirror: WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE. That line from Cool Hand Luke said it all for me, whether I was talking to myself or someone else. Some wit had carved it into the cinder block so that each time he looked in the mirror he reminded himself that the biggest failure in life is self-communication.

So to sum up my thoughts for today:

1. find books that motivate you and fill your holes.

2. make good decisions even in the tough times.

3. remember to communicate with yourself.