Please, no more "drill, baby, drill"

  Aesop's fables were all the rage when I was in elementary school.  I don't really know if students read these any more, but I loved them.  The stories were short and the meaning was clear--and apparently memorable.  Throughout my life I have remembered one which particularly resonated with me: "The Wind and the Sun."  

  In an argument to determine who is stronger, the wind and sun agree to try and get a traveler to remove his coat.  The wind goes first and blows with all his might, which, of course, causes the traveler to pull his coat more tightly around him.  In the version I remember reading, the sun pities the traveler and comes out from behind the cloud to warm him.  The traveler becomes warm enough to remove his coat.

  Even as a kid the story made sense to me--and I loved the paradox.  The expedient, most obvious answer--get your way through force--doesn't always work as expected.  The moral in Aesop's words: "Kindness effects more than severity."

  For the past decade the children of America have been subjected to the harsh blowing of the North Wind.  All those hallmarks of childhood--play, recess, holiday breaks, long stretches of boredom--have been replaced with lots of really HARD work.  Call it rigor.  Call it the harsh realities of the "real" world.  Call it what you will, but it hasn't worked.  Everyone has declared the recent experiment a failure.

  Counterintuitive to the priggish Puritans who are still trying to run things for everybody else (though they hardly follow their own harsh rules) what kids these days need is more and more work. THAT will make them smarter.

  But it isn't true.

  There are many examples of how avoiding the obvious task (more wind! more wind!) actually helps kids get better where they struggle.  Here are a few:

           Schools that put recess back in the schedule saw students improve.

           Schools that added reading for pleasure saw math and other  non-reading scores improve.

           Businesses that allow downtime see productivity improve.

           Countries that give little homework and start school at a later age out perform the US.

  There are many examples of where taking your eye off the ball actually helps.  Writers know that percolating (letting the subconscious work through a writing problem while involved in other activities) is a very helpful part of the process. I personally know of many instances when my best ideas came when I was doing something else (running, stripping wallpaper, driving, painting...).

  Google encourages its employees to "play" by offering areas at work to blow off steam and provides them with the much heralded "genius hour" to pursue individual projects.

  But that is still not what is happening in schools.  

  The practice currently is to provide some remedial time during the day.  If you are passing you get enrichment (fun, social activities).  If not, you get more of the dreaded subject: drill, baby, drill. Imagine hating Algebra and being rewarded with MORE of it.  Yeah.  (And exactly why do we all have to have Algebra?)

  As I write this we are all confined to home for the major blizzard on the East coast.  Just yesterday a radio pundit excitedly remarked that kids home from school could still go to school online!  No more breaks for bad weather!  School all the time!

  My heart sank.  Ugh.  There is still a lot to be learned from a weather break. And we need to get out of people's homes. 

  Yesterday, I watched a whole group of unsupervised (OMG!) kids slide down a hill in the park over and over again.  Lots of experiential learning going on there which will transfer into connections for math classes.  Without this experience understanding slopes, distance, time--whatever--will have nowhere to connect.  Lots of language acquisition too. Describing experience needs words. Experience demands words.  Also problem-solving, organizing, (all those childhood fights have their place, you know), effects of temperature on water, building coordination, fitness. Earth Science makes more sense too if you've, you know, gotten to experience some Earthy things-like weather and - uh- earth.

  And boredom!  Days off require learning how to manage your own time.  Maybe pick up a book on your own?  Try knitting or cooking? My granddaughter, her father, and I played a spirited game of Monopoly.  She counted, added, subtracted (and won!).  No pain there but oodles of hands on self-motivated learning with some joy, trash talk, and strategizing thrown in.

  Please don't make me punish students on a weather break.  They need to experience the North Wind for real.  And some of that distracted--look over here instead of at that grindstone--needs to be put back in a school building.  It'll make us all smarter.

Literacy is Empathy

The teaching of reading and writing goes far beyond imparting two very useful and necessary skills. Reading, of course, is basic to survival in our modern world (think: leases, contracts, small print on the credit card...) Writing, not nearly as much, but is clearly the skill that opens doors.

Not only is literacy the way up and out of poverty, developing these skills improves the world. Yes. They may even pave the road to world peace, saving the planet, eradicating hunger, and a host of other human-created ills.

All of these changes are possible because good readers and writers learn empathy along with their ABCs.

In order to read well (and with pleasure) the fluent reader conjures an entire world in their mind. Like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix we really are having a virtual experience.  We stand in someone else's shoes, have their thoughts, feel their feelings.  We even experience smells, excitement, fear, and love.

All this cognitive practice is transferred to the real world where mind-mirroring grows easier and easier after the accumulation of these virtual experiences.  It is no mistake that my poorer readers have a harder time sympathizing with their classmates. They've had less practice. Pleasurable reading is a long graduate course in understanding our fellow man.  Is it any wonder that the non-reading rabble in Medieval England enjoyed public hangings as spectacle?

And what about writing, reading's conjoined twin?  Writing is also an act of empathy.  Strong writers imagine an audience as they write.  Who will read this?  What would appeal to his or her taste? What does my reader need to know in order to understand my point?

And not only that, the strong writer is often a strong reader who has had years of practice negotiating virtual worlds across continents of imagination.  They need only conjure their own world, and then write it down.  Visualizing experience is the first step in showing rather than telling.

That's why we need to focus on creating readers who love to read, above all else. Even above STEM skills, because what use is engineering, science, technology, and math if you don't know (or have) humanity? And every test--even a math test--is a reading test first.

One day we will expend whatever it takes to create readers out of every child.  We know how.  We just need to commit. Moreover, we need to expand the time students have to learn to read and to learn to love to read. And following on the heels of that will be scores writers.

And one day, we will change the world.

Young and Restless Writers

Yesterday was one of those fun days when a whole lot of work pays off.  The Teacher Consultants of the Shenandoah Valley hosted a Young Writer's Workshop at Shenandoah University.  It wouldn't have happened without the support of the staff at the NVWP offices at George Mason.  Mark Farrington and his student staff did all the behind-the-scenes paperwork that gets the kids, parents, directions, fees, and publicity together.For overworked classroom teachers, that is the only way that an enterprise like this could take flight. Thank guys.

And Young Writers Director Erin Hubbard was the uber-organized leader of NHS volunteers, an accommodating schedule, and Teaching Consultants from surrounding schools that made the morning run with precision. 

On a rainy, wet Saturday, 22 fourth through twelfth grade students trekked, sometimes from long distances, to pursue their interest in writing starting at 9 a.m. on a Saturday!  From nine to one they were prompted to record their imaginative wanderings and share them with their peers.

It's teaching heaven.  Rewarding work for those who often labor throughout the week before an unwilling audience.

And grown ups too, were a part of the fun.

Parents were welcomed to a free workshop on supporting their young writer.  Later they could sit in on a workshop of their own to develop inspiration for personal writing projects.

In the adult workshop, I found inspiration from my own prompts for a writing that has already begun to take shape.  Writing in a room of silent, scribbling writers IS inspiring.  In the summer institute, in my own classroom, in workshops, there is an energy that isn't matched when sitting solo at a computer all alone.  Writing in community is a powerful muse.

How does that work?   Hmmm......