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We’ve all heard a lot about the “echo chamber,” the perils of hearing only a narrow field of opinions, calcifying our unchallenged opinions into dogma.

On the other hand, there’s Thanksgiving dinner with the relatives!

“What was that you said, Uncle Frank?”

Yikes.

Anyway, I came across a great quote by journalist Walter Lippmann and wanted to share it. Actually, I had to track it down to its source, a book titled The Stakes of Diplomacy (page 51). When I first googled the quote, I kept coming across variations, all credited to Lippmann. It got to the point where I wondered, “What did he actually say?” No one seemed to care.

A good thought for all of us to keep in mind. I actually saw it in an article I edited many, many years ago for a Scholastic educational catalog. It was about cultivating higher-order thinking skills in the classroom. Ideas about convergent and divergent thinking, and so on.

It was a good concept then, and necessary today. Public discourse — democracy — thrives when shaped by a variety of informed opinions.

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The good folks at Macmillan Publishers have created a free, downloadable Teacher’s Guide for The Courage Test (just published today!).

That’s right, sing it with me:

“Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday to you!

Happy birthday, dear Courage Test!

Happy birthday to you!”

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From the guide:

“This guide is aligned with Common Core Standards for 6th grade but can be applied to grades 4–7. To attain specific Common Core grade level standards for their classrooms and students, teachers are encouraged to adapt the activities listed in this guide to their classes’ needs. You know your kids best!”

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Thanks for your interest and support. Teachers and media specialists are so important to the process of bringing books and students together, I really don’t have the words to express my indebtedness. My survival as a writer — this crazy career — depends on you. My hope is that teachers will share this book with students, and use it in your classrooms.

Just CLICK HERE and the Teaching Guide is yours, as easy as that!

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I’m a big fan of Donalyn Miller.

Do you know her? As classroom teacher, Donalyn made a splash with her book, The Book Whisperer. I met Donalyn during a trip to a reading conference in Dublin, Ohio, where I had the opportunity to hear her present to a large audience.

If you are an educator, you should read this book.

Long story short: Donalyn has made a deep impact bringing books and young readers together, and she does it without ego or self-aggrandising motive. There’s nothing phony about Donalyn. She’s simply a positive force in the world of children’s reading. A tsunami of inspiration. My kind of people.

Several years back she started The Nerdy Book Club with, I believe, Colby Sharp. It’s an active, inspirational resource/blog for teachers and librarians who care about children’s literature. I recommend it. Over the past couple of years, Donalyn has allowed me to contribute a few essays to it, and I’m always grateful to reach that specific audience, and participate in that grand conversation.

I’m quite happy with my recent essay and I invite you please check it out (link below). The idea came as the result of a few things going on in my life, particularly the end of my coaching career. I reflected on what I had learned from those experiences with young people, and I connected those lessons to what I believe about teaching and writing. But don’t go by me. Judge for yourself.

Here’s the opening:

I’m at loose ends.

For the first time in 16 years, I find myself not coaching a baseball team. During those seasons, I’ve coached a men’s hardball team, and all three of my children at various stages of Little League, including All-Stars and competitive Travel teams.

Now it’s over.

All I’m left with are memories, some friendships, and my accumulated wisdom, which can be reduced to a single, short sentence. So I’m passing this along to the readers of the Nerdy Book Club because I think it connects to teaching. And writing. And maybe to everything else under the sun.

When I started coaching, my head was exploding with knowledge. I knew all this great stuff! Boy, was I eager to share it. I had an almost mystical awareness of the game: tips and strategies, insights and helpful hints. Baseball-wise, I knew about the hip turn and burying the shoulder, how to straddle the bag and slap down a tag. The proper way to run the bases, turn a double play, and line up a relay throw. As coach, I simply had to pour this information into my players –- empty vessels all –- and watch them thrive.

But something happened across the years. I found myself talking less and less about how to play. Fewer tips, less advice. It seemed like I mostly confused them. The learning was in the doing.

I became convinced that the most important thing I could do was believe.

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Please click here to read the whole enchilada.

But before you go, here’s a nice quote from Donalyn that I figured I’d share.

Truth!

Thank you, Teachability Lounge‘s Mary Graham, for including this blog among your “Top Ten Teacher Blogs.’  With all the blogs now out there, I sometimes wonder how many teachers read this one. After all, I’m pretty eclectic. So, I was thrilled with this affirmation.

Note: A variation of this essay first appeared a while ago over at the fabulous Nerdy Book Club, founded by Donalyn “The Book Whisperer” Donalyn, Colby Sharp, and possibly some other folks. It’s not entirely clear to me. Nonetheless! You can follow all their nerdy, book-loving, classroom-centered hijinks on Facebook, Twitter, and various other places. 

These days, young people are crazy about zombies. That’s just a plain fact. Not every kid, of course, but a lot of them.

And I’m here to say: Use that as an advantage in your classroom. Seize the day zombie! Particularly when it comes to student writing. Some girls wants to team up to write a story about a zombie apocalypse? Here’s a pen and paper. Go for it, ladies.

Many students, as young as third grade and on up into high school, are watching THE WALKING DEAD. The secret that quite of few of them don’t realize is that the television show is not about zombies at all. It’s about people surviving zombies. The zombies themselves are boring, without personality, almost irrelevant. They could be switched out for deadly fog, or World War II, a forest fire, or a tsunami. The zombies are simply a device to propel a character-driven story forward. It’s the ticking bomb that drives plot forward and gives each moment heightening meaning.

That’s my essential point here. The action -– the story – is almost entirely about character.

What we need to recognize is that, counter-intuitively, the zombie plot device perfectly lends itself to purely character-driven story. It could even be argued that it’s about family, blended, modern, or traditional.

With, okay, some (really) gross parts thrown in. Warning: Some characters in this story may be eaten. Ha! And why not, if that’s what it takes? If a little bit of the old blood and guts is the hook you need to lure in those writers, embrace it.

You can’t write a good zombie story without creating an assortment of interesting characters. Then you place those diverse characters in danger, you bring them into conflict with each other, you get them screaming, and talking, and caring about each other.

As, okay, they are chased by a bunch of zombies.

There’s no drama unless the writer makes us care about his or her characters. Your student writers will be challenged to make those characters come alive, be vivid and real. We have to care that they live or, perhaps, really kind of hope they get eaten alive in the most hideous way possible by a crazed zombie mob.

Don’t be turned off by that. Remember, it’s really all about character development, turn your focus to that. Dear teacher, I am saying this: embrace your inner zombie –- and turn those students loose.

What they will be writing will be no different than your typical Jane Austin novel. Except for, you know, all those bloody entrails.

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There are currently five books available in my “Scary Tales” series.

As a longtime 4th grade teacher there are times when racist language appears in our classroom work. Each time I try to educate my students, but in a way that doesn’t seem hectoring, no easy task. For I think it is a fine line we teachers walk — while most of the kids may well take in all that we say, others may be quietly dismissive and go away with the opposite thought.  And I try to keep in mind that what might be horrifying to me because of the history and knowledge I bring to a word, may not be for my young students. I try to consider that even those words that shock me the most may not do the same to my students.  That said, there are certain words I cannot say and I avoid books and work that include them. But sometimes they appear unexpectedly and then there are others, somewhat arguably less charged that also occasionally appear. And I think carefully about those kids and how best to make them aware in a way that helps them throughout their lives.

I’ve been thinking about this because of the conversation over at Betsy Bird’s post about older books that include racist elements and even more so this post by Matt Tavares about his decision to take out a highly racist word in a new edition of his book, Henry Aaron’s Dream.  Because of my classroom experiences I think Matt’s decision is the right one,  discomforting though it is. Here’s my comment on his blog post:

I’m a longtime classroom teacher (31 years at my present school, most of them with 4th graders) and think this is the right decision even as uncomfortable as I am going that way. So kudos to you and Candlewick for making this hard choice.

For me, it isn’t only about the book not getting into its audience hands, but that kids in their own world do take language and own it for themselves and sometimes that can be in extremely hurtful ways. We may not like thinking this, but it can and does happen. The audience for this book is a young one and not yet at the developmental place where they are able to unpack the history around that word (as I would hope those teaching Huckleberry Finn to much older young people would do). And so putting it in may not have them understanding your book as well as you would want.

You might be interested, if you don’t already know it, of the book Desmond and the Very Mean Word — also, it so happens a Candlewick title. I’ve read that to my class and they focus on the result of the word and are fine not knowing what it was.

I really think that we need to be honest about the realities of young children — think hard about what they take in and don’t. Keep in mind where they are developmentally. Additionally, every child’s situation is different — some may know a lot and some may not know so much.

I’ve been faulted for sanitizing the harsher aspects of the Amistad story in my book, but I stand by my choices. Like Matt, I want the story to be known, especially for younger children. Here’s my thinking (in the source notes) about that:

There is no record of Margru’s firsthand description of her voyage from Africa to Cuba. Based on the many other accounts available I can only guess at its dreadfulness and feel it would be presumptuous of me to write about it in detail.  My father, a Holocaust survivor, was not able to talk about certain things and so I imagined that Margru could not either.  I also did not want to frighten the relatively young child audience I have in mind for this book and so tried to communicate the horror without the specifics.

If we want younger readers to know harsh stuff we need to think hard about them, to consider just where they are on their life journeys, what they know and don’t, and what they bring or don’t bring to their encounters with books. Matt, it was a hard decision, but I think you are absolutely right.

As a longtime 4th grade teacher there are times when racist language appears in our classroom work. Each time I try to educate my students, but in a way that doesn’t seem hectoring, no easy task. For I think it is a fine line we teachers walk — while most of the kids may well take in all that we say, others may be quietly dismissive and go away with the opposite thought.  And I try to keep in mind that what might be horrifying to me because of the history and knowledge I bring to a word, may not be for my young students. I try to consider that even those words that shock me the most may not do the same to my students.  That said, there are certain words I cannot say and I avoid books and work that include them. But sometimes they appear unexpectedly and then there are others, somewhat arguably less charged that also occasionally appear. And I think carefully about those kids and how best to make them aware in a way that helps them throughout their lives.

I’ve been thinking about this because of the conversation over at Betsy Bird’s post about older books that include racist elements and even more so this post by Matt Tavares about his decision to take out a highly racist word in a new edition of his book, Henry Aaron’s Dream.  Because of my classroom experiences I think Matt’s decision is the right one,  discomforting though it is. Here’s my comment on his blog post:

I’m a longtime classroom teacher (31 years at my present school, most of them with 4th graders) and think this is the right decision even as uncomfortable as I am going that way. So kudos to you and Candlewick for making this hard choice.

For me, it isn’t only about the book not getting into its audience hands, but that kids in their own world do take language and own it for themselves and sometimes that can be in extremely hurtful ways. We may not like thinking this, but it can and does happen. The audience for this book is a young one and not yet at the developmental place where they are able to unpack the history around that word (as I would hope those teaching Huckleberry Finn to much older young people would do). And so putting it in may not have them understanding your book as well as you would want.

You might be interested, if you don’t already know it, of the book Desmond and the Very Mean Word — also, it so happens a Candlewick title. I’ve read that to my class and they focus on the result of the word and are fine not knowing what it was.

I really think that we need to be honest about the realities of young children — think hard about what they take in and don’t. Keep in mind where they are developmentally. Additionally, every child’s situation is different — some may know a lot and some may not know so much.

I’ve been faulted for sanitizing the harsher aspects of the Amistad story in my book, but I stand by my choices. Like Matt, I want the story to be known, especially for younger children. Here’s my thinking (in the source notes) about that:

There is no record of Margru’s firsthand description of her voyage from Africa to Cuba. Based on the many other accounts available I can only guess at its dreadfulness and feel it would be presumptuous of me to write about it in detail.  My father, a Holocaust survivor, was not able to talk about certain things and so I imagined that Margru could not either.  I also did not want to frighten the relatively young child audience I have in mind for this book and so tried to communicate the horror without the specifics.

If we want younger readers to know harsh stuff we need to think hard about them, to consider just where they are on their life journeys, what they know and don’t, and what they bring or don’t bring to their encounters with books. Matt, it was a hard decision, but I think you are absolutely right.

On the first day of school, my son and I made a deal. In three days, one of his favorite authors — Jon Scieszka, editor of the “Guys Read” short story collections — was coming to Nashville for a reading and signing downtown. If my son showed me that he could keep track of his early school assignments and bring home everything he needed for each of those first few nights of homework, he could go.

From Mary Laura Philpott’s Homework and Consequences.

I’m sorry, but as a teacher this is NOT a consequence I’d recommend for missed homework.  Makes me sick to my stomach that this poor kid — spoiler — didn’t get to see his favorite author.

On the first day of school, my son and I made a deal. In three days, one of his favorite authors — Jon Scieszka, editor of the “Guys Read” short story collections — was coming to Nashville for a reading and signing downtown. If my son showed me that he could keep track of his early school assignments and bring home everything he needed for each of those first few nights of homework, he could go.

From Mary Laura Philpott’s Homework and Consequences.

I’m sorry, but as a teacher this is NOT a consequence I’d recommend for missed homework.  Makes me sick to my stomach that this poor kid — spoiler — didn’t get to see his favorite author.

I have been very appreciative of the occasional attention given to introversion in the classroom for students and teachers of late. It helps me to clarify what I know already — I’m very introverted. I need quiet, recovery time, and all those other things that are so often typical of introversion. And as I consider how I can be a good teacher given this and how I can also support my students, introverted or not, I have been considering something else. This is the pleasure so many get when a teacher performs. Those that happily dance on the stage during an assembly, who willingly wear a costume all day for a cause, who speak publicly with such verve, who do the Ice Bucket challenge and other things of that sort. So often I see a video of such a teacher along with comment after comment about what an amazing teacher he or she is and I think, “There is just no way I can do this.” The very idea gets me all scrunched up.

It isn’t that I’m uncomfortable with all forms of public presentations. I enjoy enormously writing about what happens in my classroom, about curriculum, about my thinking about teaching and learning. I enjoy public speaking about teaching and learning or Lewis Carroll or Sierra Leone or Africa is My Home or something else. What I don’t like at all, what makes me horribly uncomfortable, is having it be all about ME. That the looking is at ME and not about my work or something else. And I wonder — what is this? Is it introversion or something else? Social anxiety? (While I am very lively in social gatherings with people I know, I’m extremely shy in those where I don’t know anyone.) Comfortable as I am knowing this about myself,  I still feel horribly guilty when saying no to a request to do one of these public acts. I feel that I must appear really selfish for being so unwilling. Or that I’ve disappointed my students who watch other teachers happily dance and be silly.

So this isn’t about throwing ice on these sorts of public activities. Bravo to those who can do them. But what about those of us who appear perfectly able to do them and say no for the reasons that are not necessarily visible?  Teachers and students alike. How do those of us who have this aspect to our personalities navigate a world that so adores Ice Bucket challenges and similar sorts of things?

I just saw something from author/teacher Andrew Smith about how he answered a letter from a kid asking him to explain his book to him. Smith replied that the book stood on its own and that that the kid should trust himself to figure it out for himself. Here’s what I wrote in response (slightly edited for clarity and such).

Thank you, teacher Andrew Smith. And I hope somehow you can keep teaching as there aren’t too many high-visibility authors like you who can also speak from the POV of a currently practicing teacher. I’m one for much younger kids (private school 4th grade) and I think some of what happens at these younger grades can create the sort of older readers such as the one who wrote you.

First of all, I think there can be a tendency to broaden our already over-fixated celebrity culture to authors. Teachers are often eager for kids to know that books are written, that authors go through the same trials that they do when writing. But by doing that they can sometimes make the focus be on the creator more than on the thing created.

Secondly, I think teachers at the younger grades such as mine can be so worried about kids’ “getting it” (comprehending on a basic level) that they can be rigid about the “correct” interpretation and aren’t always as open to varied ones as would be preferable.

Thirdly,  not all teachers have had positive experiences themselves in being honored for their own interpretation of a book and so if  they don’t truly believe themselves in this approach (having found it challenging for one reason or another themselves when they were students) it is hard for them to trust the wide range of what kids say. No doubt many kids who write these sorts of letters to authors are just lazy, but some may be legitimately terrified of being wrong for good reason.

Then, there are those teachers that encourage kids to write authors. I do get that this is to encourage the kids to be inspired, etc. But it also relates to our current focus on celebrities in general and the ease of online fan culture these days (as evidenced by Michael’s post). In my experience (admittedly with high end learners, by and large) the most intense readers tend to care very little about the author, it is the book that matters to them. Those that are curious about the author tend to be those who are passionate writers themselves.

Finally, I just have to voice a personal grip — the generalizing about teachers and students that I often see. We teachers are not all the same nor are our students. A bad experience with one shouldn’t tar all. (PS In addition to being a teacher, I’m a blogger and reviewer and last year became a published author myself of a book for kids so I’ve been on many sides of this situation.)

I have never been much for homework. Nothing I’ve read indicates it does anything to improve student learning for the 4th graders I teach.  I do require that my students read a minimum of 30 minutes a night, but I try to keep their accountability for that as simple as possible so that the reading doesn’t become a chore.  We also give them a small amount of math to reinforce what they did in school, a bit of word study, and that is pretty much it. What I hope they do away from school is whatever they wish — read more, Legos, soccer, fantasy play (which, I’ve noticed, every year seems to be more vestigial for this age group), video games (they aren’t all bad:), drawing, or just hanging out.

When I do give homework I’m pretty fanatic about the kids doing it on their own. That is, no adults should be involved. I’m not a fan of arty projects where some parents get so involved that the projects look professional while others look exactly like what you would expect a non-dexterous kid’s to look like. And some parents, in my experience, find it impossible not to get involved in a piece of writing. Some kids end up leaning on them for this while others hate it.  The bottom line for me is that any work done at home should be the kid’s 100%. Where the parent CAN help in is encouraging them to do it, find a good/quiet place for it, and otherwise help develop their child’s independence and good study habits.

I was provoked to write this after reading Judith Newman’s New York Times piece,  “But I Want to Do Your Homework: Helping Kids With Homework.”  While what she writes isn’t new, she does it in a wry self-deprecating way. With helicoptering parents finding it hard as hell to stay back, I think there can’t be too many articles like these supporting them in doing so.

My 4th graders culminate a year of immigration studies with a close look at the story of the Mayflower passengers, aka the Pilgrims. I began teaching the unit years ago and  have enjoyed finding new material for the children every year. We have a great time reading primary sources like Mourt’s Relation  and end with a visit to the wonderful recreation of both the ship and settlement, Plimoth Plantation.  So I was curious when one of my students brought in Rush Limbaugh’s Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims for me to see. After all, I had heard that the author was a finalist Children’s Book Week Author of the Year Award due to its high status on the best seller list (and this week was dubbed the winner).  And so I wondered — was the book any good?

Sadly, I have to concur with both the Kirkus review and editor Vicky Smith’s closer look at it (and its sequel);  the book is not good. The history offered in a fictional form is the standard take on the Pilgrims, the one we grew up with, something not unexpected given the author’s known conservative stance. But it is that the writing itself that really makes it such a dreadful book;  it is incredibly poor, cringe-inducing in spots.  Unfortunately, it isn’t helped by the digital illustrations which are cartoony in the worst way. There are a few older-looking images scattered throughout with citations at the end; unfortunately, these are muddled without proper identification. The whole package simply looks  and reads as something very unprofessional. The bottom line is that it would not be something I’d want to add to my curriculum, that is for sure.

And so, for those who may want to know of some alternatives here are some of the books I use in my teaching of this topic:

Connie and Peter Roop’s Pilgrim Voices: Our First Year in the New World. This is my favorite book to use with my class. The Roops have carefully combined the two main primary sources about the Pilgrims (Bradford’s journal and Mourt) to create an accessible and highly engaging book that is almost a primary source as they use only the original language. Add to that outstanding, carefully researched illustrations, and excellent back matter and you have a winning book. Please bring it back in print!

Kate Water’s Sarah Morton’s Day, Samuel Eaton’s Day, Tapenum’s Day, and others about the settlement are useful for my students who create imaginary characters who may have traveled on the Mayflower and write their stories. These books help them imagine their characters’ lives.

Lucille Recht Penner’s Eating the Plates: A Pilgrim Book of Food and Manners nicely weaves in elements of both social and political history and ends with some yummy-looking recipes!

Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Mayflower and the Pilgrim’s New World which is a reworking of his adult title.  This is really for older children than my 4th graders and is not flawless  (there have been criticisms of the Native American aspects), but definitely is heads and tails above Limbaugh’s book for those looking for something for young people on this time in American history.  If I were teaching older children and using this I’d be sure to have them read and discuss the criticism and the author’s response to them.

Kenneth C. Davis’s Don’t Know Much About the Pilgrims.  Light, but nicely presented for a young audience.

Penny Colman’s Thanksgiving: The True Story focuses on the history behind our national holiday.

Cheryl Harness’s The Adventurous Life of Myles Standish and the Amazing-but-True Story of Plymouth Colony is a very nicely presented version of the Pilgrim story through the vantage point of the settlement’s militia leader.

Catherine O’Neil Grace’s 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving is a National Geographic title that provides a more nuanced view of this history than does Limbaugh.

I met Donalyn Miller at a Literacy Conference in Ohio. She was the keynote speaker and I came away impressed, inspired, and determined to read her book, THE BOOK WHISPERER: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child.

I started reading it yesterday, frustrated over my own 9th-grade son’s brutal, book-hating experience in advanced, 9th-grade English.

I underlined this passage from Donalyn’s book, page 18:

Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters — the saints and sinners, real or imagined — reading shows you how to be a better human being.

The book is filled with passages that make you want to stand up and cheer.

Anyway, this morning Donalyn Miller shared her enthusiasm over this fun bit of pop culture stardom:

Good for Donalyn Miller, good for Jeopardy.

It’s funny, isn’t it? That’s a real touchstone in America today. An undeniable sign that you’ve arrived and made your mark. You become a clue on Jeopardy!

Donalyn is also a founding member of the Nerdy Book Club, which you should definitely follow. Seriously, I insist.

There are many books out these days written by adults about social aggression — novels for children and teens and others, often nonfiction, for concerned adults. And sometimes there are firsthand accounts from children and teens themselves. Say by a former student of mine, Natasha Lerner, who has just started high school.  She is a blogger at Huffington Post Teen and has just written a remarkably insightful blog post about her just-completed and often painful middle school years: ”Middle School.”  Highly recommended.

Two teachers in recent blog posts had some interesting points to make about meeting authors.

In “Fangirl” Donalyn Miller writes about often feeling starstruck when coming into contact with her favorite book creators.

Meeting authors isn’t like meeting Cameron Diaz to me—it’s like meeting Picasso. Writing is an art. Authors are artists—painting images with words, sculpting worlds to explore, evoking emotions that make me feel more alive. When you are a fan, reading is art appreciation.

In “Authors Demystified” Katherine Sokolowski writes movingly about how and why her meetings with Katherine Paterson were so special and distinctive from meeting other authors.

I think that when I was a kid authors were removed from us. I never for one moment believed that I could be one – that was something revered and special reserved for a chosen few. I didn’t know how you got to be that lucky, but knew that would never be in the cards for me.I didn’t know any authors. None ever came to the cornfields of Illinois so I assumed authors lived in magical worlds – or at least not rural towns like mine.

My entire goal as a teacher is to change this for my students. I want them to know authors, and illustrators, as I do. To demystify this profession. To make them cherish their words – and beautiful illustrations, but also see them as people.

Like Katherine I too did not meet any authors growing up. But I have to say I wasn’t  interested in them, just in their books. Say Madeleine L’Engle. In 5th grade I desperately wanted my own copy of  her now-rather-forgotten  And Both Were Young.  I was besotted with this teen novel which involved a Swiss boarding school (I’d spent time in European schools), a shy protagonist in a new school (I so identified with her having moved a lot), and a sweet romance. And so, after taking the book out of the library over and over, wanting to own it I started copying it out into a notebook, giving up after three chapters. (I don’t believe there was a bookstore in East Lansing with children’s books at that time, certainly the idea of buying it never occurred to me.) Yet for all my love of the book I never thought about its creator. Not once. Never thought to write a fan letter or find out anything about her.  

Things are different and the same today.  Different in that the Internet has made virtual connections between readers and book creators much more likely. As a result of my online connections I’ve met a number of book creators in real life and consider many of them friends. And so while I admire what they do I also think of them as regular people who have ups and downs in life as we all do. I want my own students who have access to information about authors in a way I never did to appreciate them as artists in the way Donalyn describes, but also to know that they are just real people as Katherine notes.

But what makes me happiest is what is still the same for my students — falling as deeply in love with a particular book as I did at their age. While they can easily get a copy and don’t have to resort to my crazy attempt to have my own, they still love books to tattered shreds, read them over and over just as I did.  Sometimes I’ll suggest to such a kid that they might want to write to the author, but generally they aren’t interested. They just care about the book.

This past February, after reading an article by an extroverted teacher who felt it was important to grade her introverted students in class participation,  I wrote a post providing my own perspective as an introverted teacher. It was seen by a reporter at the UK educational journal TES who contacted me for an interview and now you can read her article, “How introverts can thrive as teachers.”

To clarify and extend some of what I said in the article I wrote the following comment:

Lovely to see this. I do just want to clarify that I scheduled the interview for when my class was out of the room. [The article suggests that my class sat silently throughout the conversation which would have been very strange!] But we were still speaking when they returned and I let them know I was finishing up an interview with someone in England. They then politely and quietly played with their Slinkies (which they’d just gotten from their science teacher) until we had finished. I would certainly not have done the whole thing with them there listening!

The comments about noticing the children in distressed or not interested really resonated. Too often I worry about the success of a lesson based on the one or two kids who I sensed were disconnected and have to remind myself of the majority who were loving the lesson.  I was interested to learn that extroverts focus more on the latter while we introverts focus more on the former.

I should also say that what I hate about the evening events (and these are where I have to do presentations to large groups of parents not just do small talk)  is the timing — if they were first thing in the morning, before a full day of school, I wouldn’t mind them nearly so much.  [In the article I say over and over how much I hate doing this which is quite true, but I wanted to make it clear it is because of exhaustion after a long day at school and not social anxiety.] And while I feel my best form of communication is by writing (as here) and prefer it for small problems, I do prefer face-to-face for anything serious. I think the problem for me with phone conversations is that I can’t see the person’s response and that may be more about me being more visual than auditory than being introverted. [I certainly don't communicate really bad stuff via email --- that would be awful.]

Anyway, very glad to see this and know I’m not alone.

Donalyn Miller’s post “Let My People Read,” is about the sad reality of assigned summer reading that so many kids get. I’m with her 100% on the need to leave kids alone to read whatever they want over the summer. In fact, I’m happy to see more media attention given to the research indicating that the best way to keep kids reading over the summer is to give them books. Next week is our last of the year and I’ve got a book handpicked for each of my students to read (or not as they chose) over the summer.  Where Donalyn and I appear to differ is on the idea of  reading a book together as a class during the school year.

Don and I expressed dismay that another slew of great works will be slowly destroyed for our daughter during months-long novel studies next year.

Sigh. Now I understand the hatred many have for this approach to books and literature in school because it is often done badly. Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry” makes me wince every time I read it. For I think that exploring a piece of great literature together can be wonderful, that it can be as fabulous a way to enjoy a poem as any other, that it is celebrating the work, not torturing it. Certainly I had my share of boring novel studies throughout my schooling, but I also had some amazing ones. I remember the excitement of reading The Iliad and Odyssey together with my 8th grade English teacher and an incredible college class where we delved into Goethe’s Faust. And so I feel strongly that we teachers should do the occasional novel unit — one where the class becomes a community, helping each other in an exploration of a particular work of literature.  

Turn the class into a book club like the ones we participate in as adults. The kids can then experience the book together, responding to it in real time, exclaiming, becoming choked up, being surprised when someone he/she doesn’t know has the same response to a particular moment, gaining insight from another peer, and so forth. Reading the same book for school is, to my mind, a social experience not one done in solitude. I do this with the books I read aloud, but I also do it with books the kids read. This year we started the year reading Charlotte’s Web together and ended in literature circles with The One and Only Ivan. Loving each book by itself, finding wonderful images and pieces of writing, seeing connections between the two — all of this and more made both experiences exhilarating ones.  

I believe in giving kids ample choice in what they read, but I also believe in the power of shared literary explorations.  To me close reading, whole class book study, and so forth can be a joy not a horror.

The title of Simon Horobin’s book poses what, at first blush, seems a banal question. I imagine most readers would answer “Yes, spelling matters”, perhaps adding “though not as much as some believe”. Yet if the question of how words should be written is not uppermost in many people’s minds, its nagging everyday presence is nonetheless evident in the existence of spell-checkers and school spelling tests, as well as in mnemonics designed to help us with spellings, such as the venerable “i before e except after c”.

So begins Henry Hitchings’ very interesting Guardian review of Simon Horobin’s book Does Spelling Matter?  As one of those highly challenged when it comes to spelling, this is always of great interest to me.  In fact, I feel one of the many ways computers turned me into a writer were their non-judgmental spell checkers — I could get a ton of errors and no one besides me and my little computer would ever know.

Next week I will be doing one of my favorite lessons with my fourth grade class — having them “translate” a few pages of Mourt’s Relation, the 1620 publication of the Pilgrims, in its original form which means unconventional spelling. Understandably, fourth graders love it!

As a teacher I think spelling matters because we all want to be able to read what the other writes and some sort of standard spelling makes that possible.  I tell my students that they should want their readers to notice what they have to say and not be distracted by spelling errors.  Being a poor speller myself and a professional writer I’m able to help them understand the importance of being able to independently correct spelling without feeling a shame about it.

We still use an old-fashioned spelling workbook in my classroom with a weekly spelling test.  I feel it isn’t so much about learning spelling rules as much as it is study skills — becoming adept at figuring out written directions in the book as they will have to do in standardized tests, having to memorize a bunch of words as they will when they begin foreign language in 5th grade, and so forth. (Of course, we also do a lot of work separately with their writing and proofreading.) I’m curious — do other classroom teachers out there still use such programs? If not, how do you teach spelling?

Tomorrow the fifth annual Battle of the Kids’ Books gets underway with a match between Bomb and Wonder judged by Kenneth Oppel.  Now some, I know, are uncomfortable with the concept of books in battle, but I wish they wouldn’t be.  In fact, the idea is for sixteen well-lauded books from the year before to be highlighted and admired again in a new and different way. What our judges do is thoughtful and  in-depth, considering the two books they have been asked to judge and, in a variety of ways, coming up with a winner for this contest. Just with any tournament, all the contenders are great and it is just how things play out on this particular day that makes for a particular match winner. Another day and different judges and a different winner might well be the result (as is the case with pretty much all awards and contests).

I’m writing about this within a classroom context because this contest has been a terrific one for young people. Roxanne Feldman and I (the two-person Battle Commander) have been involving our students in the Battle for the last two years.  Last year we introduced two very fine Kid Commentators (who will be back this year) and this year we had 5th-8th graders write introductions for the contenders.  That is, each assumed the role of one of the actual books, and did a terrific job with it.  (Those are here, here, here, and here.) This is something any teacher or librarian can do! In fact, we hope to expand this beyond our own students and school next year.

And that isn’t the only thing that is possible in schools and libraries.  A high school library in Texas contacted us to let us know she was running the contest in her school. Others have told us of displays, bracket pools, and more.  Every time we hear of this we are delighted because we’ve always hoped for the involvement of young people. Most of all I aspired to a Shadow BoB like the Shadowing Site done for the UK Carnegie Award (comparable to our Newbery).  In that, young people read and vote and often come up with a completely different winner from the official judges.  It would be so cool to do something like that for the BoB.

Meantime, I do encourage teachers (especially those put off by the battle metaphor) to take a look and think about how they might want to use it in their own teaching and schools.  And let us know if you do!

I’d been aware of Susan Cain, but hadn’t really looked into her until now, prompted by the recent todo regarding the teaching of introverts. In her Ted talk , she reinforces a number of my beliefs and practices as a veteran  introverted teacher. Here are some of them:

• Quiet time. Because there was a time when any sort of classroom talk was harshly subdued, many experts have since encouraged a lot of classroom talk.  I’ve always found that hard, no doubt because of my introvert nature, one that needs a fair amount of quiet.  And so I’ve always made time for chatter and time for quiet.  When my students read it is quiet. Most of all, when they write it is quiet.  I give each of them a so-called “office,” a space a bit apart from the rest so that they can be alone with their work and their thoughts. We talk about what do when stuck, how to operate without involving someone else.  Many writing experts encourage talk during writing time, but not me. I keep the lights down (in fact, I have a bunch of those little battery-operated portable lamps that the kids bring to their desks if they need more light) and there is a serene calmness that they all appreciate.  
• Talk time.  When we are talking, I watch every child and I can absolutely see that those who don’t speak up are attending and thinking and are on top of everything. I’m tough with those kids who love to speak without having something to say. I feel we so overvalue this sort of aimless talk . I see it so often in my school, at assemblies, and elsewhere.  Say when we go on museum trips and the educator happily asks my students for questions. Before long those who like to hear themselves talk come up with more and more, many rather random and unconsidered. I have kids who wave their hands, eager to be called on, and when you do have forgotten what they wanted to say.  I have kids who, when I ask a question, raise their hands and ignore mine to say something else, to ask their own question (not bothering to wait for the time when they are invited to do). Not only do I think a lot about the questions  ask, but when I ask them I also include a lot of wait time to allow everyone an equal chance to answer, those who need time to formulate and answer as well as those who jump in without thinking.
• Small group critiques.  While I actually enjoy collaborating, it is with people I’ve chosen to work with, people who compliment me. I’ve never liked being tossed together in a random group of people to do something.  One of my most memorable and hateful experience of this was long ago at a writer’s workshop for educators at Martha’s Vineyard.  The first day of the course we were told to make up our critique groups.  Many of the attendees had been coming for years, knew each others, and quickly formed groups.  I ended up in a random group of those left over.  I remember being furious about this, it felt like the quintessential case of the popular kids shutting out the unpopular ones.  Having people, strangers, critique your work is hard. For the workshop teacher to so carelessly not think about this is something I never forgot.  And so I do not have my kids critique each other in small groups. Instead I model and guide them in how to do it as a whole class. I have kids volunteer to be critiqued, talk a lot beforehand about safe things to say, and so forth. Each is given a postit to write notes as they listen.  I then read the work aloud without identifying the child. I insiste we focus on the WORK and not the author. Even if the kids know who the author is we act as if we don’t.  The author is not allowed to respond to the critique.  I usually start with some comments to model how to do it, but the kids quickly do it themselves beautifully.  (I got the idea for this from a writing workshop I took years ago at the New School run by the legendary Bunny Gabel.)
• Small group work. I don’t have my students do a lot of work in groups because I know how many dislike it, how certain kids get stuck doing more of the work, the way the extroverts and introverts disagree, and generally have seen it not work.  I have tried many ways of doing it, thinking it was my failing as a teacher. It is only now, after listening to Susan Cain, that I can say it is not my fault, but something we all need to take more into account. That group work isn’t necessarily better. I now do some group work, but take into account how to make it work for introverts and extroverts. Sometimes it is just a small-stakes situation and the kids are fine. After having not done them in a few years because I couldn’t seem to get them to work, last year I did a literature circle unit and was very pleased with it and so plan to do one again this year.  I had the kids spend time at the beginning negotiating contracts as to how they would work together, the book was meaty, and the final project fun (a board game).  It wasn’t always easy, but I’m hoping to give it another try this year and see if I can get it to work better, especially for those who normally hate working in groups. We shall see.
• Written communication. I feel very, very strongly about always providing a way for kids to communicate with me in writing — not a random “you can just drop me a note” sort of thing, but something built into the curriculum.  The extroverts tend to dash things off as they happily let me know about their lives by talking to me, but the introverts are often very different. For the first half of the year I use dialog journals. In January we give the kids email and I regularly write each child and encourage them to reply.  There are always a few who flower with this, those who have been quiet in class, who don’t dash in every morning with something to tell me, those who like to quietly let me know about their ideas, their lives, and such via an email. I learn about pain, about happiness, and more through these.
• Time to think.  I need it so I’m sure there are kids in my class who need it too. And so I always allow time after asking a question for kids to think. Sometimes I give them all postits to write down their thoughts so not to forget them.  I watch them and try to be sure that those who are tentative have a chance to speak too if they want to.
• Class participation.  I do not use this as my primary way of determining what a child knows.  I do pay attention to it and there are kids who are awesome public speakers and communicators and I absolutely celebrate them.  But I also do not over-value this particular form of communication. If a child never speaks I do note that and try to help him or her because they need to be able to do so, their future teachers will demand it. However, I do not make a big thing of it. I also do a lot to make my classroom a very safe place for speaking up and generally it is rare I have a student who does not occasionally speak up because of this.

Thanks to Liz Burns who led me to the article “Introverted Kids Need to Learn to Speak Up at School.” written by an extroverted middle school teacher.  I’m an introverted middle school teacher, shy on top of it*, and so have a very different take on this.  First of all, not every part of the world or culture necessarily views outspokenness as necessary as we often do in the United States.  I’ve had teachers complain about children who do not look them in the eye when those children come from cultures where doing so is considered impolite.  Secondly, as someone who feels her best way of communicating is by writing, I think it is important to acknowledge and respect all ways of sharing our views and knowledge.  Of course, we teachers do need to support all our students, provide safe ways for them to speak up, to help those who are reticent to feel confident to make the occasional comment, but to make that a requirement, to grade it, to privilege that as something necessary for success, I don’t agree.

* My admission of being shy may be a surprise to those who know me in the children’s lit world, but  out of my element, in a situation where I don’t know anyone, I am very different.

Lisa had asked Maggie, grade 6, about her classes and received the above reply. Which at first struck me as a hilarious thing to say about science. It was like saying, I don’t know, math should funnier.

But then I realized she might be onto something. When we think of our science teachers, most of them are dry, dull, strict. This is science, this is important: this is serious business!

And in fairness, it often is, kids can get hurt, things might explode.

But then there are those rare science teachers — and scientists like Bill Nye, on television — who bring the joy of discovery into the process. Or should I say, keep the joy. The wonder.

They find the fun and the funny. Like a child with a new toy, figuring out what makes it go. Discovering the awesomeness of it all.

On Facebook I “liked” a site called, “I Love F***ing Science.” I’ve always regretted the F***ing in that title because it makes it harder for me to share with others, especially anyone who might read my books.

This post reflects a few things I’ve picked up from there, and other places.

Just trying to bring the fun, Maggie. I’m glad you like science.

For years one of my favorite books to read aloud to my 4th graders was The Hobbit.  Tolkien’s narrative voice, the adventures, Bilbo, Smaug, the riddles, the wit, everything about it was just great fun.  The last time I did so was when Jackson’s Lord of the Ring movies were starting to come out so it has been a while and I’d been debating to do so again.

Regarding that movie, having not seen it yet (though I will later today) I’ve been trying very, very, very hard not to be harsh about what Jackson is doing with the story — adding in stuff from elsewhere, stretching out the one novel into three movies, changing what is a lovely singular adventure story into a massive epic…and so on.  But still…there is no way it is going to be the charming story I remember. I do get that it is what Tolkien later wanted — to rework what was originally a plain children’s story into a prequel for the LOTR, but to mind something is lost by doing so.

And so what a pleasure to come across (via Mr. Schu) Mark Guarino’s article, “‘The Hobbit’ is a tale that begs to be read aloud.” Guarino and those he interviewed capture beautifully what indeed made the book such fun to read aloud, notably that slightly intrusive omniscient third person narrator.